I never planned on charging the batteries from the unit anyway :P All I consider doing, is charging from a "Real Charger" ( that is not real harm to carry, it takes a bit more room than the 4 batteries I could leave inside of it ), not from the unit. By the way, good news, I got an Email saying my payment is on it's way, so, now I'm counting the days untill I make my order
no. due to the fact its a time/pwr consumer you must tell it to do it each time you want it too. thats saying i am willing to reduce the battery run time to get my chksum done. it will reduce the xfr capability to somewhat below 25GB per charge if on all the time. its smart in making you "screw" yourself on battery power.
i've only used it a few times. it has proven itself so far not to need it.
sjms, Is that a MAHA MH-C808M 8 unit charger to the right of the blue unit? I find it a sweet unit and it's replaced most of my other units.Only thing is it's not exactly small for traveling but it does the job.
sjms wrote:
goto: www.thomas-distributing.com. i have one still prefer the maha chargers though. i find that charger more frustrating the EB-1 finds the HD80
I have a MAHA as well, along with another dozen or so chargers of various types, including a few nasty ones. The BC-900 just needs a bypass cap added and preferably direct power to run well. If you attach three of them on a fixed plate (top of enclosure) and then build in a well-regulated power supply it makes a nice home setup. Ordinarily I like to charge cells the old-fashioned C/10 way, but is this case wanted the display info of the BC-900.
Got my HD80 today, conditioned the batteries once in a separate charger, plugged them into the HD80 and tried it out. It really blazes on the transfer, I was impressed. I will be working it over the next few shoots and if it continues to behave well I will get a second as a backup for travel.
1) Does it come with a DC power option. In other words, can I plug it in the wall to use it or only via batteries?
Yes, it comes with both a car charger and an AC adapter.
2) Does it come with the batteries or do I purchase those separately?
When I ordered through hyperdrive.com, 4 Sanyo 2500 mAh rechargeable batteries were included.
3) Does it really backup 80GB of files before needing to recharge or reload a fresh set of batteries?
I haven't had a chance to test that, but I have seen reports of people testing it to 50 gigs before they gave up in boredom
Anyone ever have one die on them?
I have not heard of this happening yet.
A little more general information on the Hyperdrive HD80 (aka CompactDrive PD70X):
- Downloads a 1 gig CF card in about 1.5 mins.
- Uses AA batteries, available everywhere. Other PSD's use Li-ion batts, sometimes proprietary, hard to find, and/or expensive.
- Uses 24-bit verification for peace of mind.
- Contains a built-in smart charger, making the Hyperdrive a 3-in-one device...battery charger, portable hard drive and card reader when hooked up to a laptop.
- Reads 8 different memory card types without an adapter.
- Using a screwdriver, you can swap out the drive in less than 5 mins. You can use any 2.5" IDE notebook drive. So in theory, you can have almost unlimited storage. If you fill up the drive, swap it out for another. This is great for those 6 month expeditions to the edge of the world
- Hyperdrive offers free shipping anywhere in the world. At $200 for the 40gig model, it's a great deal.
I wrote the review in the link that pamorl listed above and followed my webserver referral log back to here out of curiosity. In answer to your question, according to my digital scale in my kitchen, the unit weighs 15.9 ounces (452 grams)... basically a hair shy of one full pound. That's the bare unit. Add a few ounces if you put it in the velcro pouch.
I've continued to be quite happy with my HyperDrive. Glad to answer additional questions if I can.
Thanks. For clarification, does the ~1 pound/454g mass include the batteries? In a real-world scenario one may start the copying and then leave the device for hours or overnight. The power is still on, though of course the hard drive stops immediately after copying is completed. Does anyone know the power drain after the 30 second period?
BTW, I was able to copy 82GB on one set of 1.5 year-old cells (not the ones supplied with the HD80s). Not bad.
EB-1 wrote:
Thanks. For clarification, does the ~1 pound/454g mass include the batteries? In a real-world scenario one may start the copying and then leave the device for hours or overnight. The power is still on, though of course the hard drive stops immediately after copying is completed. Does anyone know the power drain after the 30 second period?
BTW, I was able to copy 82GB on one set of 1.5 year-old cells (not the ones supplied with the HD80s). Not bad.
EB
Yes, sorry... I should have been clearer. That is the bare unit WITH batteries but not the velcro case.
The unit does turn itself off after about 30 seconds of inactivity. If you mean leaving a card in it to copy and walking away, yes... it would clone the card, sit there a bit to acknowledge it (lights and display) and then power down. I find myself using it on my belt in the pack this way as I'm in the field. I can turn attention back to it when I need to do another card swap and by that point it's usually gone to sleep. It tends to spin the drive down almost immediately after it's done an operation... so even the time prior to going to sleep is nothing more than the LCD and the indicator light.
Granted, you've stated most of that above... I don't know the specific amount of drain, but it seems minimal to me.
One note: don't try to run it for any length of time on USB to your computer without the power adapter. That will grind the batteries into the dirt in no time at all. The added drain of driving the USB interface is more than it can handle on batteries short of maybe a very quick and small dump of a gig or so... and definitely don't do it if you plan to go back into the field again immediately since you'll have pummeled the charge.
Aaron, I like to congratulate you on a well written and comprehensive review of the HD80 (aka PD70X). Readers of the review should be able to fully understand the intended use of the device as well as some of the nuances and experiences one learns after using the device in the field. As I have stated previously, this is an excellent tool for a specific job that is priced right. For those wanting more, sjms recently posted an announcement of a newer device that seems to address the needs of the ipod crowd by incorporating some entertainment features.
amahler wrote:
One note: don't try to run it for any length of time on USB to your computer without the power adapter. That will grind the batteries into the dirt in no time at all. The added drain of driving the USB interface is more than it can handle on batteries short of maybe a very quick and small dump of a gig or so... and definitely don't do it if you plan to go back into the field again immediately since you'll have pummeled the charge.
Arghh! That is one of my greatest concerns. How does one transfer files to a notebook in the field when no electricity is available for days at a time? I suppose it is possible to swap the hard drive from the HD80 to an external enclosure, but that is a hassle and risky without a ground or ESD precautions.
EB-1 wrote:
Arghh! That is one of my greatest concerns. How does one transfer files to a notebook in the field when no electricity is available for days at a time? I suppose it is possible to swap the hard drive from the HD80 to an external enclosure, but that is a hassle and risky without a ground or ESD precautions.
EB
I don't disagree with you... wish it was better in this regard. However, it's not -impossible- to do... just pretty brutal for the batteries. Granted, you could carry a slew of fully charged batteries with you and probably pull it off.
Honestly, though, part of the purpose of the unit is to avoid carrying the laptop in the field. So, in theory, if you could do without daily downloads you could travel for days at a time with just the one pound weight of the unit in your pack. Of course I can't stand to go for long without downloading to the laptop and seeing them, too, so I totally feel your pain. My use so far, though, hasn't been multi-day treks... just spans of hours where I benefitted from not having to be conservative with my shooting. Blast away - take hundreds or thousands of images... but by the time I'm dumping them to the laptop, I've got power again. The unit cost me less than a third good sized card. In theory, I have ~40 gigs of cards with me (since that's the drive I'm using at the moment).
EB-1 wrote:
Arghh! That is one of my greatest concerns. How does one transfer files to a notebook in the field when no electricity is available for days at a time? I suppose it is possible to swap the hard drive from the HD80 to an external enclosure, but that is a hassle and risky without a ground or ESD precautions.
EB
depending on the size and speed of the HD you would use in the HD80 an external enclosure swap may not be an option. the larger the HD the higher the current draw. using it in a powered FW port on a mac or a USB port on a PC
1- on the PC may not have enough to run the drive/enclosure off even 2 USB ports and if it does you vampiring the PC battery too
2- on a mac will draw down the mac battery fairly quick too. diminishing returns there
essentially if you can plug in your pc you can plug in your HD80
in a car there's plenty of power
in a airport hotel or just about any city or town theres always a power port of some form. the a/c adapter is international volts
on safari there is generally a portable generator these days due to the perponderance of electrical devices man needs to survive with today.
last but not least if your "days" away from power. you need to start to think like the old days in i have a limited amount of film(media/storage) i'm carrying in need to make my shots count.
