Customer Reviews

Seagate 8 GB CompactFlash Photo Storage Hard Drive ( ST68022C-RK )

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

WARNING! Whatever you do, do not use pliers to remove the card! This is a spinning drive you can easily crush one of the heads, put pressure on the disc, etc!!! The best way to remove this card is to just put a little tape on it, that acts like a tab. If/when you want to remove the card just pull on the tape and the card will come out.

I use this in my Axim x50v and all I can say is wow! The battery drain when using this card (which is a microdrive) and TCPMP compared to my 512MB compactflash card and WMP is about the same. I get a little under 10 hours of music(I have the 2200mAh battery) with the microdrive, and about exactly 10 hours of music with the CF card.

I was skeptical about this card. I put it in my Canon 1D Mark II N and was completely relieved. It works great. If you are shooting excesively at 8.5 fps then you have a little lag time. If that is the majority of your photography, than this might not be the best bet (I will use a seperate card for sport sequences). Aside from that, it is perfect. No pauses or standby for normal photography. I have three photo jobs this weekend so if anything goes wrong I will post. If there is no post after 02/06/06 then one can assume that all went well.

Works great with my Canon 20D that has firmware 2.0.2.

I had to downgrade the firmware from 2.0.3 to 2.0.2, with the 2.0.3 firmware that was extremely bad delay when writing to the drive.

And where else can you get 8GB for ~$200.??

Recommend this drive highly over the Hitachi drives.

Seagate FW Version 3.02 work great with the Canon FW 2.0.3.
If you have a Seagate FW 3.01, seagte will swap out the drive for you as it is a known issue.
Or you can downgrade the 20D to FW 2.0.2.

I just go tthe replacement FW 3.02 from Seagte and re-upgrade my 20D to 2.0.3, and it works great. No problems.

I was really looking forward to taking this card on a trip to Europe later this month; however, when I recieved the card and tried it out in the camera I got a "CHA" error code, which means the card is incompatable/ not functioning. I then updated the D70's A and B firmware to 2.0 (thinking this would solve the problem) and tried it again with the same results. I tried formatting it in the camera but that failed as well. The drive is listed compatable with the D70 and I've never gotten a CHA code before with any other cards so I know its not the camera, so maybe I just got a bad drive... is easy enough to return to amazon though, so its going back. btw the firmware on the drive was 3.01

I picked this up due to the size and price. While a great value for it's price, the performance was less than great.
This card is slow. Taking pictures from my Canon Rebel XT I could get maybe 5-6 shots in a row and then the camera was busy for at least a minute or so. On a regular CF card I can get about 15 shots before it gets busy and even then it stops pretty quickly. Transferring from the card to a PC or Mac also took forever.

If you have a slow camera or don't expect to take many fast action shots were you need to be able to snap quickly, than this product is a great value for it's size. Just be prepared for the slowness and do all your transfer to the PC when you have plenty of time.

Very satisfied with this device. I had to upgrade the CF Type II reader in my computer before the drive would perform well, but that is the fault of an old (over 6 months) computer and not of this drive. I am using it with a SanDisk ImageMate 12in1 and the transfer speeds on the computer are very respectable. I can download the entire 8GByte card in about 8 times the time it takes to download a SanDisk Extreme II 2GByte card (real good consdering that this is a mechanical device). I use the card with my Canon Rebel XT with very good results, the card worked well from the start but performed even better after I re-formatted it with the camera (took about 15 seconds). I have had similar experiences with regular CF cards so I don't see this as a problem. The card has been between my camera and computer many, many times and I have had no reliability problems, however, I am always VERY careful to handle the drive only by griping it on each narrow side NEVER put pressure on the top or bottom of ANY microdrive no matter who makes it.

I have had this item for approximately 90 days. I have used it to take about 500 photos in that time. I just took a handful of photos and removed the card to open them in photoshop, and the card started clicking and clicking and it cannot be recognized in Windows. I put it in another card reader. Same. I changed computers: same. I put it back in the camera (a Nikon D70) and received the CHA error, which means the card isn't functioning.

I recommend avoiding this product. It is NOT sturdy enough to trust your images to it. I have three Sandisk CF cards (Two 1GB Ultra II and a 1GB Extreme) that while are smaller in capacity, have never given me a bit of trouble (and they read & write faster as well).

I can't believe I lost so many images. I never should have trusted a miniature hard drive to be sturdy. I treated this thing like it was made of gossamer strands and it still died on me.

Don't trust it. If I could give it lower than one star I would.

Bought this for my Canon Rebel Digital XT and ran slap into the firmware issues that others have described here. Seagate replaced the drive swiftly and efficiently, but it was a shame that the old firmware units are still in the retail channel.

Once upgraded though, it works just as well as my 4GB Hitachi microdrive and is perfect for my camera.

I had the same issue as many others - Canon 20D EOS DSLR with 1.0.3 requires firmware 3.02 on this drive. My drive came with 3.01 causing extremely slow writes/reads. Contacted Seagate off their website and had a response two days later with instructions to return the new (!) drive for a free replacement with latest firmware. Process is simple but detailed. Sent priority mail - received email confirmation of receipt of drive in two days and another two days later - Presto! a brand new drive with latest firmware. Working like a charm so far.

It cannot beat a pure flash card (Kingston Pro Elite - about 60X) CF Card performance, but comes close. I do not know the effect on the battery yet.

The comments about flat surface fragility worry me, because the edge lines of this drive are rather sharp exposed metal - I have had a nick or two while pulling it out of the camera slot (I use an external CF reader instead of connecting the camera to the PC)

Overall quite satisfied.

The drive had firmware that wasn't compatable with the Canon 20D. Seagate wanted me to ship it to them to swap it out for a newer version. Considering it was brand new being asked to then pay to ship it back was unacceptable. I returned it.

BEFOER YOU BUY - Check to see if the drives are being shipped with the newer firmware - if not then pass!