My portable Hard Drive/Card Reader has died - Time to buy a new one...

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Alex
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I'm planning on replacing/upgrading my portable card reader/hard drive unit since my current (soon to be ex!) one has been acting up badly lately. I'm looking for opinions and suggestions for a replacement that fits some preferred criteria.

What's gone wrong?
The internal battery - theoretically a Lithion Ion that's largely resistant to battery wear - has practically died, and I've been running it on the external 4xAA battery pack for quite a while now.

More problematical though, the external battery pack ran out of power before it had finished transferring a card full of photos - and this was having fitted a brand new set of Duracells just before the transfer.

The transfer times are very lengthy too - it takes approximately an hour to transfer an 8GB CF card onto the HDD. (A bit of rough calculation puts this at around 2MB/s which is well below the capacity of even USB 1. Where's the bottleneck?)

And finally, terminally, and most frustratingly, it stopped recognising any cards I put in it, and then stopped recognising that it had any hard drive inside it...

I've retrieved the data that was already on the hard drive by removing the HDD and connecting it to a desktop computer. I've also run diagnostics and the HDD is just fine - so it's the reader/storage unit that's become the problem.

The culprit that's causing these woes is a Vosonic XS-Drive 2 XL, fitted with a Fujitsu 2.5" IDE 100GB HDD. I previously had a Vosonix 2060 storage unit before upgrading to this one. (I upgraded because I needed a larger drive than the 2060 would support. Coincidentally the internal battery of the 2060 degraded very quickly too.)


And now to the new one...
So.... looking for a replacement and hoping to get some feedback about the possible alternatives. The criteria I'd like in the replacement are:

1. CF card reader slot. Obvious, I know!
2. Reliability.
3. Decent transfer speed. Ideally much faster than the one that I'm getting rid of.
4. Good battery life. A good internal battery is preferred, but I'm quite happy with an external battery pack if that's what it needs to work.
5. High capacity. Capable of recognising a HDD of at least 100MB.
6. Preferably available without a HDD installed, so that I can fit one myself.

Factors that are largely unimportant:
7. Review/editing screen. I'll sort out the photos when I get back - I'm not worried about doing that in the field.
8. IDE or SATA HDD. While it would be nice to re-use my Fujitsu IDE drive, I'll probably want to increase the size soon anyway, so I'll go with whichever interface is more practical.


And that's about the end of the ramble. Suggestions appreciated!

Thanks.
A
 
i might be on my own here but have never known the reason why you would need one of these as i just carry enough card space to last me the day then if im out from home for a day or 2 just copy the files to laptop then sort everything when i get home. as for extra space i use one of thse

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Shar...ection-of-a-25-35-SATA-HDD-to-your-PC-Via-USB)

which allows me to swap between drivers quickly as my comp cant hold anymore drives.
 
I used to own the Vosonic 8360 which was o.k, not great..I've recently purchased a Netbook (Lenovo S10) which is excellent...even runs CS3/Adobe bridge

probably not the recommendation you were looking for though :shrug:
 
i think this is a great question - what do i take with me on 2 weeks holidays - i reckon i could fill my card easily, and would love something like a portable HDD where I can transfer the images into - no computers or anything - just slot my card in and let them DL to it.

so is there such a thing?
 
big pimp said:
i think this is a great question - what do i take with me on 2 weeks holidays - i reckon i could fill my card easily, and would love something like a portable HDD where I can transfer the images into - no computers or anything - just slot my card in and let them DL to it.

so is there such a thing?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have one but it seems to have developed an intermittent fault after a very short period of time.

I paid about £35 for the enclosure and then added an 2.5" 80gb drive. I think the problem could be the internal battery or USB just not having enough juice to power it.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...drive+enclosure+card+reader&btnG=Search&meta=
 
We have the Epson P2000, but the limitation is that it is only 40Gb.

I was searching around for a backup to it recently, concerned that it could go down with 40Gb of pics on it from our next safari and was looking at a netbook. You can get them with 160Gb HDD, they have card slots but a card reader isn't exactly heavy, and size and weight isn't a drawback.

In the end I found another P2000 on ebay for £95 so didn't get as far as the netbook, but I think that is where I'm going next.
 
can i just bump this and find out before I buy one, will the photobank heidfirst has pointed to work as a standalone HDD, so when I'm on 2 weeks holidays, and my card / cards are getting filled, i simply plug the card in, and it will transfer across, no connection to laptop etc. needed.

also, can I add multiple cards, on multiple days to fill it?

thanks again
 
should do but you'll probably only get about 20Gb to a charge.

any queries email or phone them.
 
Just stumbled across this thread.

Im after one too. I nearly got caught short as i have moved from a 40D to a 5D Mkii and the file sizes are alot bigger, so when i went out with 12GB for a pro shoot i just about had enough room.
I think t be safe id want at least 60GB and im not paying £200 + for that in memory cards, so am looking for a decent memory card reader.
Saw the photobank above, but its a bit big, or is that just me ??

Im after an easy, 60GB+, small, card reader that doesnt have to have a screen to view my photos (id get a second hand p2000 if i wanted that)

Any more ideas ??

Ta
 
I found a youtube clip on upgrading the HDD on the Epson. I think when the time comes I'm going to fit new drives in the two epsons now.
 
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