Those portable harddrive card reader things...

[mudder]

G'day,
Just tried copying a 1Gb Sandisk II with the powerpack (from external 240V) plugged in without the batteries in the device (ie: I took the batteries out and plugged in the powerpack from 240V) and seemed to copy the CF card OK...

Just to help with info...

Cheers,
Mudder

[PlatinumWeaver]

So what i'm basically seeing as that i'm the -only- melbournite without one of these gizmos...

Well damn

[mudder]

G'day Dean,
It's really handy if you're going somewhere for a while, where you can't easily dump to a CD or something but you don't have enough memory cards to cater for the number of shots you're gonna take...

I'd be definately checking them out for your Africa trip, unless you can invest in a HEAP o' memory... If you like, I could be your memory card dumper for you I'm soooooo jealous... Enjoy mate...

Cheers,
Mudder

[stubbsy]

Just to play devil's advocate. Have you considered the Apacer CD Steno which burns your CF to a CD (even spans disks if you have more than 1 CD worth). Lot's of discussion in this link if you want to have a read.

Cheers

[mudder]

That's a good alternative, seems the only real diff is whether you want the hard drive option or not... I assume the CD's would be more reliable than a hard drive, in that a hard drive can always fail... Spose a disk burner can too but isn't prone to interference from a strong local magnetic field maybe??? Dunno... Good option though...

[birddog114]

mudder,
The Apacer is also good, but transfer and write to the CD is not quick!
But it'll help if you have no choice same as the PSD.
Save up for the D2x and use wifi, so no more worry!

[kipper]

Wierd mudder, really wierd. I'm going to have to confirm this tonight because I'm sure I've had wierd results with flatish batteries. Like when I first bought the PD7X and they weren't charged it wouldn't switch on!

[mudder]

Wonder if the device tries to use the batteries if they're in it... My experiment was with the batteries actually taken out of the device as opposed to having flat ones in it...

Cheers,
Mudder

[plukaduck]

I have a 60gb X Drive Pro.

I do not know how long the transfer takes, the reason being is I have never timed this function. I have 2 x 1 gig cards and when 1 of them is filled I simply remove from camera and place in X Drive, turn on then press copy. This turns off automatically when it is finished copying.

I have never had the case where I would shoot faster than the images will copy.

Great device well worth the money!

Cheers,

Darryl.