>In , on 10/28/2004 
>   at 09:08 PM, Kevin Johnson  said:
>
>>Hi anyone any opinions on the magicstor microdrives 2.2 gig,  CF+ II, 
>>with a name like that you know from whence they come, like everything
>>else.
>
>>Maybe they are so new is why I cannot seem to find any reviews, but at 
>>$84us, maybe it's a good gamble?

You don't mention what you're going to use the card for, but speaking
as a amateur photography buff who's taken over 10 000 pictures (yes,
really!) with digital cameras in the last three years - who has used
both Microdrives (Iomega and IBM, 340MB - both actually made by IBM)
and standard CF Flash cards - I can tell you without reservation NOT to
buy a Microdrive... at US$84, it's VERY tempting - but they just don't
have the durability... they're SO small, they get fumbled and dropped
very easily.

My Iomega 340MB is now useless because of sector failures, and the IBM,
like the Iomega when it worked - sucks battery power like crazy.  Since
it's a physical hard drive as opposed to solid-state memory, there's
power required to spin it up, write it, read it... and it just drains
batteries at a much higher rate than CF cards.

You should also note that many (most?) digital cameras use FAT to
record to these media - and thus, anything above 2GB will not be
usable, anyway...  (who'd have thought we'd ever be talking about
partitioning removable memory?)

You're eventually going to own $84 worth of junk unless it gets
completely babied for its entire lifespan... I've given up on
Microdrives completely and gone with Kingston Elite Pro 512MB CF
cards... about 80% of the cost you mentioned, and only 1/4 the
capacity, but MUCH more durable.  At the Toronto Air Show in September,
I took 285 pictures on a single 512MB card with a 6.3Mpixel camera.

In terms of speed, I ran an unscientific test - but basically, copied
and verified a 280,829,952 byte file to the drive, using a USB 2.0 card
reader, and a batch file to automate the time display at the start and
stop of each run...

IBM 340MB Microdrive - 4m 4s  (244s)

Kingston CF/512 card - 5m 15s (315s)

Kingston CF-512-S Elite Pro card - 3m 28s (208s)

The Microdrive is 17% slower than the faster flash card - maybe not a
concern if you're taking pictures slowly - especially with a camera
that won't write fast enough to matter, but if you're using it to
transfer files between machines, or for backups... well, that time is
going to add up.  Bear in mind that's only a small portion of the total
capacity, so that lag will increase as the data transfer size goes up.

Maybe the newer versions have increased the transfer speed, I don't
know - but the lack of durability and the power requirements tilt the
Microdrive out of favour for me.


Of course - it depends on your need, your usage, and your tolerance for
waiting. :)

Hope this helps!

-Derek



Derek W. Keoughan,
Finnegan Software, Inc.,  Brampton, Ontario, Canada  http://www.finnsoft.com
416-410-4774 phone - 800-258-0033 toll free - 905-846-5516 fax

Consulting, Networking, Cabling, Internet, Hardware, Software, Tech Support
eComStation, OS/2 Warp/Server, Win9x/Me/NT/2000/XP, Linux
Customized PURRformance PC's & Servers, OnSite Services, Installations
and Upgrades








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