Micro drive, Compact flash?

[Brass Monkey]

I’m a little confused about micro drives and compact flash, are they both the same with different companies using different names? While surfing I came across and interesting article about removing the 4GB micro drive from the Movo MP3 player and using it, this player retails for around 139 quid whereas the micro drive goes for 160 quid! The link for this article is below, has anyone done this yet or is it not worth the trouble for 20 quid?

http://photo.net/equipment/hitachi/mp3microdrive/

Dave.

[Adrian Kelland]

I thought compact flash is a chip, micro drive is a disk. Like the Type 2 PC cards (aka PCMCIA). SO both may go in the same size slot, but work different ways to store.

The pictures look like a standard compact flash unit to me.

Adrian

[Brass Monkey]

I thought the same thing but in one of the adds fro the micro drive it had compact flash in brackets, and like you say in the pictures the look like chips. It’s hard to believe a hard drive could be that small as well, I’m sure they must be solid state.

Dave.

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Brass Monkey

I thought the same thing but in one of the adds fro the micro drive it had compact flash in brackets, and like you say in the pictures the look like chips. It’s hard to believe a hard drive could be that small as well, I’m sure they must be solid state.

Dave.

Dave

Believe it or not they are a 1 inch hard disk. IBM started making them about 6 or 7 years ago for Type 2 PCMCIA cards (PC Cards).

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...XRRH&loc=en_US

Adrian

[tom]

I've read that microdrives have slower read / write times than CF cards, so they might not be the best option for photography. Never actually used them though, so I might just be talking rubbish...

[Brass Monkey]

Originally Posted by Adrian Kelland

Dave

Believe it or not they are a 1 inch hard disk. IBM started making them about 6 or 7 years ago for Type 2 PCMCIA cards (PC Cards).

I believe! Wow I should have known better, it's not the size that amazes me it's how they manage to make these things reliable considering they will be used in portable devices.

Dave.

[Bantam]

I use a Fuji S7000 with a 1Gb and 2Gb Hitachi/IBM CF Microdrive (yes, it is a hard disk.) and it works fine.

The 4Gb Seagate microdrive CF is the same disk in that MP3 player and in the Apple iPod Mini.

You can also get 6Gb CF solid state and microdrives for about £200

However, a word of warning. Most CF compatible cameras won't see anything beyond 2Gb due to FAT16 / FAT32 constraints.

The very latest fuji (S3 Pro) will, and I believe so will the new Nikons.

[Sofnolime]

If you are going to be bumping a camera around (e.g. underwater, jumping of a boat) get a solid state compact flash card as there are no moving parts. I have wrecked a mircodrive and lost all the images on it after I dropped the camera. Sandisk Ultra II or Lexar 80x are the best I have used.

John

[David A]

Purely for information's sake, Sandisk release the Extreme III on the 15th of this month, which writes at 20mb/s. It will be rediculously expensive initially, but if the Ultra II is anything to go by, there'll be some kicking around at decent prices within a few months. Available up to 4GB, but personally, I wouldn't go for anything bigger than 2GB.

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Sofnolime

If you are going to be bumping a camera around (e.g. underwater, jumping of a boat) get a solid state compact flash card as there are no moving parts. I have wrecked a mircodrive and lost all the images on it after I dropped the camera. Sandisk Ultra II or Lexar 80x are the best I have used.

John

Good advice, no disk really likes being knocked, even so-called toughened units.

Adrian