Customer Reviews

HITACHI 6GB Microdrive MD6GBBP

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I needed storage for my new PDA, a Dell Axim 50v. I specifically went with an Axim because of the CF-II slot, knowing a microDrive would give me at least 4Gb of storage. Well, as things tend to improve over time, so did the storage capacity of these little babies. I took a plunge on the 6Gb model.

Now, a quick note about microDrives. If you intend to use one in a digital camera or PDA, you need a retail microDrive. The OEM ones or the ones harvested from MP3 players like the Creative Muvo2 or Rio Carbon are ROM masked to IDE mode. In short, they won't work in your PDA or digital camera, no matter how hard you hack. You either have to wait for the PDA's operating system to support IDE transfers on CompactFlash (and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5 purports to do exactly this), or go retail.

I went retail, of course, getting the full manufacturer's warranty and the security of knowing it would work... and it sure did. 5.71Gb instantly seen (6Gb is the raw, unformatted number), and about twenty minutes later (slow external card reader), I had filled it with 600 songs.

I've been using it with my Axim for a few days now, and it's everything I expected. No problems this far, and it's a great feeling having a PDA that exceeds the Palm's hot new LifeDrive, for about $50 less.

-Fred

This little device works great: my Canon PowerShot S50 liked it just fine and wanted to shoot 4000+ pictures.

However, the Konica Minolta A2 is not compatible with this device; use a conventional CF interface device instead. A2 only saw 2GB out of 6GB. The A2 has no problem with 4GB Compact Flash cards, I used a Kingston Elite Pro CF successfully.

No i'm not being payed for this review, i just love this microdrive. I use it in my Nikon D70s digital SLR camera and I've never filled it up even half way. I can take nearly 2000 full quality Jpegs every time and I dump them on my computer every time i have like 200 or so. On my trip to the Grand Canyon I took something like 700 pictures so this is a VERY good drive for the $250 i dropped for it here at AMAzon.com. Don't be fooled by camera dealers claiming that this card won't work in your camera or something (I know I did when I was waiting for it to arrive) they just want to sell you a VERY EXPENSIVE "high speed" card. forget those. Buy this, you won't regret it. IF you do or it doesn't work in your camera or some thing, AMAZON has a very hassle free return policy. GREAT ITEM!

It says, plainly, on the information that comes with the Hitachi 6-gig microdrive that you should not drop it onto hard surfaces.
Oops!
My fumble-fingers let the microdrive fall three feet to a hard floor. It was full of images. I feared the worst.

Nothing happened. It still works and much faster than any of my other CF cards. Faster than the best Lexars.

Now, I'm not going to intentionally go around dropping the mdrive and I hope I never let it take a pocket-ride through the washer, but it's holding up well, so far.

I'm ready to buy more.

After 40,000 shots, 2 cameras, 1.5 years and many drops, this chip still performs perfectly. I've used it heavily and aggressively and have had a great experience at a great price. Its almost as fast in write speeds but slower in read speeds during computer upload. There are some myths about the chip that its slow and fragile, which I'll explain below is just totally wrong.

Speed:

On my old Canon 20D, I got its full claimed buffer in RAW and JPEG. On my newer Canon 5D (12.8 megapixel), I get 17 instead of the 19 claimed RAW pictures during continuous shooting, and I pretty much can't run out the JPEG (well over 50). I've used the Sandisk II, and after some testing, I found that the write speed was almost the same, but the read speed is about 1/3 slower when loading onto the computer. Not a big deal, since the write speed is a bigger priority while shooting. Yesterday, I loaded the whole 4gb chip into Apple Aperture in 14 minutes.

Space:

On the 20D or 30D, you'll get almost 500 in RAW, but on my 5D, I get under 280, so I'm now shopping around for a 8gb chip. You might try the 6gb rather than the 4gb since its getting cheaper.

The "Fragile" Myth:

People always say that the microdrive is more "fragile" than the compact flash, which I can say with absolute certainty is B.S. Most people who criticize the microdrive have never used it or known anyone who used it - last time I checked, judging without knowing is called ignorance, no offense.

Anyway, I shoot my college football team, for the college newspaper, and frequently I do landscape and wildlife photography, so I'm frequently taking the chip in and out of my camera and dropping it on occasion. I've have used the camera at 20 degrees, in the hot and humid Florida sun, and have had a light sunshower, but yet the chip keeps going after 1.5 years.

Other Microdrives:

All microdrives are made by Hitachi, even from Sony. Hitachi bought the division from IBM a few years back, and Hitachi will sell under other names for more market share. Don't waste your money on stupid brand image, just buy the one you find cheaper, which is probably the Hitachi.

This is great for digital cameras who take CF cards. With megapixel ratings climbing higher all the time, those pictures take up a lot of space, especially if you are like me and have an itchy shutter finger. The card is fast and durable, and I have never had a single problem after one year of ownership. I am currently using it in my Canon 350D (Rebel XT) which has an 8-megapixel sensor. If you shoot in RAW, you definately need this card, maybe two! Here are the stats that I know of:

Rebel XT
- 2000 JPG of higest setting
- about 625 RAW

The general conversion factor is that one 8-megapixel shot at fine is about 3 + kilobytes.

I have also used this in PDAs, as a small external hard drive to holder photos and music, and as a file trasport device, and it works jsut wonderfuly. You can't really go wrong with this little guy, and I reccomend him to anyone.

I didn't read the fine print apparently. This was a refurbished CF card and would not work in my d70s Nikon. I had to return it. However, packaging was excellent, shipping was perfect, and return was not a problem. Deal Stop was very easy to deal with.

I bought a Hitachi microdirive MD6GBBP in $50 through Amazon, but it was
not able to connect to any notebook PC through any PC card adaptor becasue
this microdrive I bought wqas a white lavel one even though the ADD page
was shown in blue lavel one as shown in this request page of my review.
There are two types of Hitach microdrives according to Hitachi. One has
blue lavel like shown on this web site. The other has white lavel. Cheap
one had white lavel.
I found the defference after I got a response of Hitachi support center
on my question how to get and install the driver. Hitachi said they will
never support the microdrive with white lavel directly.
Now I use it through a memory card adoptor after re-formatting. It runs
well even though the microdrive is white lavel one.

I have been using this microdrive occasionally with my Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 and it worked great - pretty fast considering - until the last time I inserted it and turned on my camera. It immediately shut down and would not power up again. I had to send it into Sony, along with the microdrive, and they reported that the microdrive was "bad" and it caused the DC converter card to blow. $220 later...... and it only has a 1 year warranty.HITACHI 6GB Microdrive MD6GBBP

I needed the 4 GB and not the 6; so they replaced it for me. No problems in getting the item replaced with the one that I needed, the 4GB instead of the 6GB. No hastles, they took very good care of me and I'd be glad to do business with them in the future.