Has anyone tried the 5D with the Hitachi 6 GB microdrive? New Egg has them for $200 with a $40 rebate. I think I had read of some compatibility issues.but don't remember which cameras and drives. Also are there any multiple horror stories for this brand? Thanks.
Hitachi drives are reliable, I have over 50,000 exposures with no problems, and another 60,000 on IBM microdrives. I haven't lost any images to card failure.
I use my 5D with a 4GB Hitachi MD. While it's not the 6GB, I think the compatibility issues were the result of older digital cameras and their inability to use fat32 formatting. If you put the card in an older DSLR and format it.. the older camera my format it with fat16 (which limits the capacity to 2GB). Also, the fat16 file system is slower than fat32...so there's a performance loss in addition to the capacity loss. Either way, the 5D is both fat16 and fat32 compatible. Also, Canon literature says the 5D is compatible with Hitachi MD's.
Although I only have an XT, I use the 6 gig Hitachi MicroDrive. It works wonders. If you want to get a LITTLE free extra speed out of the MD, format it on your PC to use 32k clusters, as opposed to the default 4k clusters.
The difference might not be readily noticable, but it's a free 4 - 5 percent increase to write speed performance.
Pondria wrote:
I got it from NewEgg for my 1Ds2. No problem.
Hey, Happy New Year, Pondria...
Question (about half on/half off thread)
Do you use microdrives in the field?
Or studio only?
The moving parts thing bothers me.
Sandisk Extreme III seemed like the better long term investment for me.
Bought one from NewEgg a couple of weeks ago and it's been working flawlessly!
Even the rebate submission has been confirmed by e-mail and in process.
A great value for 6GB of storage.
The 1DMKIIn has two slots. In Slot 2 I've got a 1GB Sandisk Ultra II SD and I've been switching between them to compare read and write speeds. Although the CF MD is slightly slower, the increased Burst capacity (varies with image format and size selection) is fantastic.
To foster good performance from your MD and avoid File Allocation Table or Bad Sector problems from corrupting the drive and your images, let the camera reformat the MD. There's no down side to reformatting the drive often and it keeps things running smoothly.
Although I've never tried a MicroDrive, Hitachi are the only hard drive I'll buy now because they're so reliable - I've never had a single problem with them. I would absolutely trust their MicroDrive and I'll probably get a 4gb one soon enough.
