On Mar 29, 7:20*am, "Focus" wrote:
"the_niner_nation" wrote in message

.. .





"Focus" wrote in message
...
I just got a Mustek portable HD. It's really fantastic as a back up for
all the cards and even straight from the camera.
Works up to 2 hours on the internal battery (that means copying 1,000's
of pics), so more than enough to fill the whole disc several times.
I tested it with my D300 and it works flawless: attach the cable, turn
the camera en de HD on and press the button. For every transfer it makes
a new folder, even if you copy the same.
You can attach any cardreader you may have and it will copy anything on
it.

Now it is "only" 20 GB, but the sweet things about it are these:

1. you have a back up anywhere you want
2. even if your cardreader should fail, you can still download the pics
from the camera
3. you'll save on expensive CF cards, because you only need 2 fast ones
to keep *shooting
4. much less waiting time for pics to transfer; from the HD goes much
faster than the fastest CF cards!

I bought this one from Media Markt in Sintra, Portugal, for 39,- euro.
Think about it: even 1 Sony CF card 2 GB, 20 MB speed, cost 49,

From my D300 the highest quality pics are 14 bit NEF, from which it will
hold about 1250 pictures! That's a lot for any day.

If that's not enough, just buy another one!

Here's a link:

http://www.mustek.de/eng_/html/produkte/phd20.htm

And don't worry about not being solid state: it handles G forces up to
100 G in operating mode, 1000 G in non operating mode.

I rate it a 9.9 on the Focus scale.

--
Focus

but wouldn't attaching your camera to this unit cause severe battery
drainage to both camera and the storage device?

No because it has it's own built in battery.
Of course you don't keep it connected, only attach when your card is full. A
full 2 GB takes about a minute to download.

Unless you have access to electrical recharging points, this feature would
put me off buying this...i would never attach a camera directly to the
storage device.

And how do you call a CF card? ;-)

Also, 20gb is way to small, esp if you shoot in RAW.

Do you want to tell me that you shoot more than 1500 pictures in one day ???

We don't all shoot the same MP cams.... 20Gb is only 1100 pics with my
mine.

There is also the problem of dumping the last card..... use 8Gb cards
and it will only hold 2. Use 4Gb cards and it will only hold 4....
and with a 17mp cam I personally don't even want to think about using
2Gb cards at an event.

So I would agree that 20Gb is way to small for some people.... Average
Joe would be quite happy with it though.