Customer Reviews

Wolverine Data 7080 FlashPac 80 GB Portable Digital Pictures and Data Storage

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I purchased the Wolverine to store photos taken on a wildlife safari. My access to electricity was limited and I had a severe weight restriction, so I was looking for light, reliable storage and good battery life. The Wolverine did not disappoint. Every night I copied about 1GB of photo files onto the Wolverine and then cleared out my camera memory cards ready for the next day. The Wolverine made it possible to travel with only two photo memory cards yet bring thousands and thousands of photos home.

Operation could not be simpler. You insert the photo card, hit copy, and it transfers your files. It doesn't take long, and it confirms that the files are copied. It also tells you how much space is left available. The battery life is excellent. Recharging is easy and you don't even need a converter, as it's designed to work on US and foreign currencies. Operation is quiet.

There is no way to view the photos as with FlashTrax, but then, you can view them on your camera before copying them over, or wait until you copy them to your computer to view them in more detail. I was willing to sacrifice that feature for a lower price, smaller size and lower weight of the Wolverine.

For three weeks my Wolverine was subjected to exceedingly bumpy, rough roads and harsh travel conditions, variations in temperature and humidity, and generally les than ideal conditions. However, it never gave me any touble.

I bought the Wolverine 60Gb unit for a trip to Greece. Since I shoot 8 megapixel shots and panoramas, hard drive space is essential as is the transfer rate. The Wolverine was pro quality taking both SD cards from my Elph and compact flash cards from my Canon 20D. Transfering 2Gb took a little more than 5 minutes and shooting as much as 3Gb per day on a 10 day trip was a piece of cake for the unit.

When other people in my tour group discovered I had it, they asked to store their photos on it too, since their cards were full. The Wolverine took a friend's XD card, which I'd never tried before, without a hitch.

After transferring 3Gb, only the first of 3 LCD battery indicator bars was used up. The battery never came close to running out. Plug it in at the hotel with a 220 volt adapter, and it was charged in about an hour.

I had used an iPod video on another trip in December. The battery on the iPod would die after 45 minutes and less than 1Gb transfer. The iPod was painfully slow. A nightmare. I literally had to stay up until the middle of the night to wait for the battery to recharge to finish transfering my pictures, since the iPod could not be plugged into AC and the camera at the same time. The Wolverine is industrial strength by comparison and ready for prime time.


In addition, it does not have to be connected to the camera to transfer photos as the iPod does. So you can shoot on one card while transfering from another. Very handy.

The display is simple and doesn't permit previewing the photos. This is okay because it indicates when the copy is completed. I tested it several times at home in a controlled environment to be sure it worked as advertised. Only one note, don't connect or disconnect the power cord during a transfer as it will cause the Wolverine to blink momentarily. This is just enough to corrupt the transfer. Restarting the transfer will solve the problem. Once connected to a computer, delete the first incomplete copy.

After 10 days of heavy use and 6,000 photos, the Wolverine was roughly half full--even with the addition of friends photos. All photos and video clips were faithfully stored in folders designated by each transfer. Very simple. My PowerBook instantly booted it.

Having returned home, the Wolverine now doubles as a handy companion drive for my PowerBook, adding 60Gb of storage. This every day usage makes the purchase even easier to justify.

Versatile, well-built, great price and performance. 5-stars!

I loved this deviced when I first purchased it. Small, solid, streamlined. No video screen to add to the list of things that could go wrong. Just unblemished, easy photo backup for the photographer abroad.

It backed up seamlessly on a recent trip to Thailand, verifiying and promising me a hassle free trip. I backed up 60GB worth of images and returned to the US. Only to find that 2/3 of the images were corrupted on the disk.

Wolverine tech support was rude and condescending. Kept repeating that I had done something wrong, without being specific as to what that could have possibly been. Also kept repeating that I just had to mail it in, but no guarantees.

I ultimately brought it to a data recovery center which pulled off all of the data for $300 and told me that the disk had been faulty.

So ultimately can I recommend this? Well, perhaps I just had a dud. I know they can happen. I was burned though, not just by the devices failure but by the company's rudeness and unwillingless to offer data recovery.

Wolverine is off of my list. Hopefully they can do better by the next consumer.

This unit accompanied me to Morocco and Egypt for a month in May and June, 2006. It worked as advertised, much faster than my 40GB HD-to-Go from Mediagear. The Wolverine does show a message that the copy was successful or not and if there was an error when inserting the memory card. I used SD and CF cards. Once or twice there were errors with my SanDisk Ultra II 1GB SD card upon insertion and I appreciated that message. Removing and reinserting the card eliminated the message and the copy worked perfectly.

Improvements requested - Do not clear the copy complete/failed message if the unit is on wall power. More than once I left the unit to copy media, came back and it had gone to sleep. Upon waking it up, there was no indication whether the copy was successful or not. Transfer always was successful but that's a definite user interface issue to shut off after 2 minutes.

I used a Kodak 5MP camera and a Nikon D200 with Sandisk 4GB Extreme III cards without any issues and this thing held all of the media and showed how much space was left on the unit, valuable as I came back with 20GB of media. The Mediagear unit does not give an indication of percentage full, it only shows the unit is full. That's not good if you shoot a ton of images and video.

This unit will go with me again on assignment. I will purchase a second unit as a backup in case this one is destroyed or otherwise.

Size, price, accessories and ergonomics: all this fits precisely the needs of a photographer on the road! Especially the ergonomics! Two buttons is all you need to make the backup, and not be tempted to make something wrong. Plug in the card, hold on button, press "copy." Done. One single multicolor LED shows a combination of 'on,' 'charge' and 'copy' status. To save battery life, the device powers down itself very fast if you do not start copy. Very clever. Wolverine FlashPac is a no thrill device, making the essential job for you, however with a few small glitches, as I see it:

1) As mentioned by others, after a copy is done and the device shuts itself down, you cannot see anymore if the copy was successful, or if you have copied already at all. I made a few times 2, once even 3 copies of the same card, just to be sure.

2) If you have copied files on this drive using USB connection, free size indication is not correct. Seemingly Wolverines software counts only its own subdirectories. This could hurt you outdoors! You might run out of space without a warning! Better erase all data before leaving for a trip! There is no standalone erase function, probably for your own good!

3) The copy progress indication does not tell you the estimated time to end of the copy.

4) There is no indication of how many times a card was copied, and how many files have been stored total.

All this might be resolved in a later firmware. Chose your best needed hard drive space for travel, especially if you shoot RAW, but better be generous to yourself considering the ever growing pixel size of the images!

But wait, there is more: At home you can use this unit as your regular external drive, and the both card readers of the Wolverine are also usable directly in your OS. This unit will even power itself down, when you shut down your computer! Excellent! Most of the external drives unfortunately do not do that, and run your drives "to their death" when you travel and leave them on by mistake.


The unit is very small, and yet it does not have any soft pads for shock absorbing. Personally I am skeptic about the integrity of the hard drive lacking any shock absorber. I did not wanted risk any damage to the drive inside and I added big, fat vibration dampening pads to the bottom of my device. You might consider doing the same. Use pads provided specifically for table top loudspeakers, made of vibration dumpening material.

Love the flash pac. It is compact, fast and easy to use. One small glich occured because of my misuse. If you use ms pro duo cards, do not forget to put them into the adapter before putting them into the card reader slot. It ate my card without the adapter and I am out for repair. Wolverine was reasonable about fixing it and I will never be so stupid again.

This 80 gb hard drive holds more RAW + JPEG pictures than I can shoot in 6 months. Well worth the investment.

The Wolverine does what it says it will do and no more. I used it on a 3 week trip to Japan and downloaded 29GB of pics and they were all there when I got home. The carrying pouch is handy and it works pretty smoothly. It eats the batteries pretty quickly, but works just fine plugged in if you only want to download at night. Otherwise I got about 5 or 6 downloads out of one charge.

I recently took this with me to shoot a wedding. After I would fill a card I would stick it in the Wolverine and push copy. The wolverine was thrown back in my camera bag to do its thing and by the time the next card was full I could repeat the process. I shot and stored 12 gigs that night and the Wolverine did everything I asked. The battery held out nicely. That night I charged its battery again so I have no idea how long you can go on one charge. I only had SD and CF cards to transfer. I have no idea how long it takes to transfer either, as I was busy doing other things like it transferred.

Two things really impress me. One is how easy it is to use. Literally, stick your card in, turn it on, press copy. It copies the card into a folder. Each card you get in and press copy gets its own folder so there is no worries about overwriting images. You might have a mess of duplicates but that is easier to fix than over writing images.

The second is that it will read HDSC cards. Very handy.

I was in the remote jungles of northern Australia for 3 weeks and this wonderful device never failed me. Virtually limitless (80 gigs.....try filling that in 3 weeks) storage and a very cheap price....without it I wouldn't have come back with any photos.

This is a very handy product. I have a 1GB CF card, a 2GB CF card, and a 1 GB SD card for my cameras and palm pilot. The Wolverine is great for taking all my RAW images in the field to free up my CF cards for more shots.

Operation is extremely simple. Turn it on, stick the card in, press "copy", and you're done! At 80GB, it will take me quite a while to fill up. I plan to take this baby to my Peru and Africa trip later this year.

I gave it a 4-star because the copying speed is a bit on the slow side. If you are shooting in a fast-moving environment, and you only have one memory card, then you'd be missing the action while the Wolverine is making the copy from your card. Other than that bit of limitation, I'm very happy with the product.