Customer Reviews

Wolverine FlashPac/7160 160 GB Portable Digital Pictures and Data Storage

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

 

 

I bought this flashpac for my wedding. We had guests insert the memory cards from their cameras. Instead of having to wait for guests to remember to send us their best shots, we had them all by the time the wedding was over! I have since used this flashpac as an external hardrive, edited the pictures directly on the drive w/o saving them to my computer, uploaded them to flickr, etc. It is fast and reliable. It accepted all but one memory card we encountered (something too skinny and small from sony???) The battery lasts a good long time, and the interface is simple, you stick a card in and it tells you when it is done copying, or if there is an error (there was one card it couldn't read b/c something was wrong with the card). One negative: if you stick a card in and walk away, it will copy it, display the message "copy complete" (or something like that) and then turn itself off after a few minutes. When you come back and you turn it on, it does not still say "Copy Complete" so you do not know if it was successful. If you press copy again, it will not tell you if it has already copied a card, it will just make a new folder and copy it again.

Wolverine FlashPac/7160 160 GB Portable Digital Pictures and Data Storage

Here is the thing; my In-Laws always need "something copied off of this" or "something move to this or that". I don't mind helping them, but it's frustrating for them to not be able to do these things them selves. I decided to get them a media storage device for Christmas.

We, like most families have several photographers in our group. They like to share their photos and it's both easier and harder now with digital cameras. The Wolverine FlashPac was something I research fairly heavily before buying. My Criteria was three things.

1. It needed to be a mass storage device.

2. It needed to have multiple card reading capabilities.

3. It needed to be a stand-alone unit (meaning work on any system).

<u>As a Mass Storage Device:</u>
A mass storage device is a long name for a hard drive. Just like the one that's in your computer, a MSD is used to put upload files to then transport then between computers. Usually it's connected with a USB port connection. This unit has a 160GB hard drive on it (optional 80GB available). For most this means you could effectively back up; your entire computer to this device. It's sufficient to say that from hobbies photographers to professionals this will more that serve as a great backup to your digital catalog.

<u>As a Card Reader:</u>
This is capable of reading 7 types of memory cards directly via built-in card slots. They say slots but it just has the popular multi card slot which is sometimes difficult to get your card into. With some practice it will work just fine for you though.

<u>Here is the basic function of this device: </u>Instead of putting you memory card into your computer/laptop then clearing off your memory card so that you can take more photos,.....all you do is put the card into this unit, push one button,....wait a few sec's then remove the care and keep shooting. Its catalogs and files your data from that card and later you can go in and manipulate that data just like it wa son a hard drive on your computer. ........no ponder this far just a bit, because with you realy think about this, it's a VERY handy little device.

<u>As a stand alone unit. </u>
This is a difficult task for any hard drive, but for one that takes files and makes them available to other operating systems it's increasingly difficult. Keep in mind that different operating systems do view some file types in different ways. If you computers are less than 4 years or so old, you should be fine with this unit. Older operating systems might have some difficulties. It states that it's compatible with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Vista, or Mac OS X and OS 9.0 or higher, or Linux Kernel 2.4 or later. I would be wary about having a Windows 98 OS and transferring files to a Vista computer, but they say it works and I've not been able to actually prove them wrong on this. Mostly I needed this to work across MAC to PC operating systems and it did great! There is a small install for PC's (as usual) but is a very small disk and if you need to use this on other computers it's made to fit in the carrying case with the unit.

<u>Overall:</u>
It looked a little "cheesy" online, but arrived in a hard aluminum case and appeared to be a lot tougher than I fist thought. I transferred over about 50GB of data in about 5 min, with really surprised me how fast it transferred that data though a USB connection. Power wise, it dose have a "Real" hard drive inside it meaning it's not a flash drive, which the name "Wolverine FlashPac" does cast some confusion of that point. The hard drive works fine, but my concern is the battery life of this unit. I'd keep the bulky power cord handy just in case. "FlashPac" is referring to it connection with cameras, the people at Wolverine seem to primarily be going for the digital camera market, but this device can be used for just about any file types including video and raw data files.

It comes with a slightly under quality carrying case, but if this is going to be going into your camera bag it should do fine.

All-in-all it's a great until and quite unique which really surprised me?? I think many other units like this will be out in the market very soon. The price for this is comparable to the hard drive cost it's self so it's a pretty safe purchase with the one year warranty that come with the device.

I took this product on a two month trip backpacking through South America. So it went through extremes of cold and high altitude. I did fill up my camera card, so I was a little nervous about deleting all my pictures from the card after I backed them up onto the Wolverine, but there was nothing to worry about. All of my files were there on the Wolverine when I got home.

I had the Wolverine data storage device for 2 years and it's been working well, although I haven't used it a whole lot. It's definitely handy when I travel.

I bought the Wolverine 7160 as I was headed to China for two weeks and wanted a portable data storage device I could use without the need of a computer. The Wolverine met all the criteria I had set for my needs. It is easy to use, I just wish the directions were dumbed down for us old timers that are not computer savy. I know, Old Man, turn the darned thing on and push download. My sticking point had to do with downloading the photos onto my computer. However I did figure it out. The reason I gave the Wolverine only a four star rating delt with some lost data. I do not kow if it was me or the Wolverine, but everything else is there. Overall I would give it a five star rating, but some killer photos are not where they should be.

I purchased a Wolverine flash pac that allows me to backup my photo cards as I choose. The major problem with this item is that I cannot name the backup. The Wolverine will number the card for me. So that if I would like to name the backup, say Denver 2-2-09, I cannot do that,. It will name the backup SD0004. I therefore need to have a way to identify just what backup SD0004 is. I think that is a major pain. Short of that, it works well.