Microdrives or Compact Flash?

[Jenny Taillier]

2GB of Microdrive is about £105 whereas 2GB of Compact Flash seems to be around £160.

I know CF is fairly bulletproof but are Microdrives reliable?

[smele]

Go with the compact flash.

Faster.
Solid State.
Less current cosumption.

Unless you really need to save some money.

[_Dobbo_]

Or just buy the card from ebay. Even if you get stung for VAT it's still a bargain and no-where near £160.

here

2GB microdrives are about £50 on ebay.

[nighthawk]

I've just picked up a brand new 2.0GB CF card for under 100 quid delivered!!!

Integral i-PRO card, 40x speed, (6.1mb/sec write and 7.7nb/sec read)
If the blurb is to be believed, Pro wildlife snapper Andy Rouse uses them.

I got it from www.svp.co.uk

faster than Microdrive i think and my 20D has no problems with buffer locks.

[vetteheadracer]

2GB Microdrive for me, fits in the Canon digital camera and gives me 500 8.3 megapixel pics!

[imperialism2024]

I haven't used microdrive, but I have an 80x 1GB CF for my D70 that I bought for about $110USD on Amazon, so that's... about £130 for two of them I think?

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002MSTW2/002-6290081-1504035?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

>> Edited by imperialism2024 on Friday 18th March 03:23

[Jenny Taillier]

Thanks chaps. The CF seems to have a better reputation for being more robust - certainly less to go wrong.

Is the CF Ultra much quicker/better and do all cameras have the technology to take advantage of this speed?

Camera is the new Minolta Dynax 7D.

Jenny

[Jenny Taillier]

vetteheadracer said:

2GB Microdrive for me, fits in the Canon digital camera and gives me 500 8.3 megapixel pics!

That sounds higher than I expected. I currently have a 512 card which gives me 82 JPEG images on the largest setting. That means I should get about 320 on a 2 GB card. The Minolta is a little over 6 MP so how do you manage to get 500 pics on at a higher res?

[imperialism2024]

A point you may want to consider is whether your camera shoots in RAW mode or not. If it shoots in RAW, you will probably want to use that most of the time... and that will take up about twice as much memory...

[406]

imperialism2024 said:

A point you may want to consider is whether your camera shoots in RAW mode or not. If it shoots in RAW, you will probably want to use that most of the time... and that will take up about twice as much memory...

But not if your taking pics for a website, then you want the smallest which will give over 4k pics on a 2 gig CF card in a D70.

[simpo two]

Jenny Taillier said:

Thanks chaps. The CF seems to have a better reputation for being more robust - certainly less to go wrong. Is the CF Ultra much quicker/better and do all cameras have the technology to take advantage of this speed? Camera is the new Minolta Dynax 7D. Jenny

Hi Jenny,
The latest and fastest cards are '80x' speed, ie capable of transferring 150Kb x 80 = 12Mb/sec. But the buffer in your camera may well be the limiting factor. Reputable names are Lexar and Sandisk - but do watch for the speed as cheap cards are often only 8x.
Oh yes, defo CF. You don't want spinny wizzy things.

[imperialism2024]

simpo two said:

Reputable names are Lexar and Sandisk - but do watch for the speed as cheap cards are often only 8x.

Eh, at the electronics store at which I work, our POS Sandisk CF cards are 4x...

[Phil S]

My last compact flash card (2Gb 80x Lexar) cost £110 of eBay. Can't go wrong with that!

The only advantage Microdrives have over CF is price, but this is now minimal and closing fast.

[dcw@pr]

smele said:

Go with the compact flash. Faster. Solid State. Less current cosumption. Unless you really need to save some money.

MD cards always used to have faster sustained transfer rates, but much slower seek times, maybe that isn't the case any more (about the sustained). I would never have an MD again, my last one broke, and I would agree with the points above too.

[HankScorpio]

Something else to consider....
microdrives help to kill a battery as well.

Everyone's got there own favourite, mine are Kingston SLC, 1Gb for 50 odd quid off ebuyer.

I seem to remember reading (maybe on Rob Galbraiths site) that the D70 writes at a max of about x12 (???) so anything faster wouldn't have a benefit, except of course if the read sped is correspondingly fast for retrieval.
Might be mistaken on that tho, ready to be corrected.

[imperialism2024]

HankScorpio said:

Something else to consider.... microdrives help to kill a battery as well. Everyone's got there own favourite, mine are Kingston SLC, 1Gb for 50 odd quid off ebuyer. I seem to remember reading (maybe on Rob Galbraiths site) that the D70 writes at a max of about x12 (???) so anything faster wouldn't have a benefit, except of course if the read sped is correspondingly fast for retrieval. Might be mistaken on that tho, ready to be corrected.

Hmm I don't know... When I shoot in RAW I average about one shot per second at the least, and I can shoot basically until the card fills up at that rate.

[sjn2004]

simpo two said:

Jenny Taillier said: Thanks chaps. The CF seems to have a better reputation for being more robust - certainly less to go wrong. Is the CF Ultra much quicker/better and do all cameras have the technology to take advantage of this speed? Camera is the new Minolta Dynax 7D. Jenny Hi Jenny, The latest and fastest cards are '80x' speed, ie capable of transferring 150Kb x 80 = 12Mb/sec. But the buffer in your camera may well be the limiting factor. Reputable names are Lexar and Sandisk - but do watch for the speed as cheap cards are often only 8x. Oh yes, defo CF. You don't want spinny wizzy things.

latest and greatest are Sandisk Extreme III, 20mb sec, x133.

Check this link for benchmarks for different cards in different cameras. (realworld speeds)

www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

[HankScorpio]

Sorry, not clear... for 12x I didn't mean 12 shots but the 12x write speed.

The CF data base is a nice reference but when you look at some of the comparisons, you can see there isn't a huge difference in real speed on the D70:

Lexar Media 1GB 40X - 3.185MB/sec
Lexar Media 1GB 80X Write Acceleration - 3.228MB/sec
It's not twice as fast on a D70, speed gain is <0.050 Mb/sec

Kingston Elite Pro 1024MB - 2.957MB/sec
Kingston Elite Pro 512MB - 3.915MB/sec
Smaller is faster for these.

Fastest card tested for a D70 is 4.167MB/sec, with 150kB/sec being regarded as x1, that would make it about x15

Fastest jpg write listed is 6.843MB/sec on an EOS 1D MkII, with raw at over 8.

There is no doubt that faster rated cards do perform faster but it's also worth noting the limiting factors of the camera as well as the relative cost between different ratings. Why pay so much more for an extra 40k/sec...?

All IMHO obviously...

[joust]

I've both.

The microdrive is cheaper, and actually seems faster.

I've a 1Gb Hitachi (used to be IBM) and it has a little higher consumption but I can still fill it with my EOS300D (~200 piccies) on a single battery.

I've migrated to a 2Gb flash Sandisk Ultra II and it's not any faster, but takes longer to fill (obviously).

I bought them a year apart and paid the same (£120) for both. Consequently I'd probably recommend a 2Gb flash over a 1Gb hard disk.

J