Memory cards reliable enough?

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 21:54:41 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

It seems to be a problem of some kind in Windows. I have had related
problems with a 2TB Western Digital on W64 Pro.

I can't remember exactly what Vantec told me, but the rep did seem to
be implying that 64 bit was the main issue.

the issue is that they wrote ****ty firmware and are not accepting the
blame.

Yeah, or the fact that they didn't provide a means for users to update
the firmware. Or they didn't want to, forcing everyone to buy their
latest hardware.

I forced Win 8 onto two
computers that did not support it, including one with Win 7. I had
problems that did not make any sense at all. I think it's a
combination of firmware and drivers, and some coders who got careless.
On the Win 7 computer, the DVD drive would not work at all with Win 8,
and Toshiba never updated any drivers.

drivers for a dvd drive??

In this case, yes. They were apparently proprietary with Toshiba, and
added functions that they thought people would like. Whatever. But
once those drivers were grenaded by Win 8, nothing worked.

I had to go online to find
generic drivers. It works fine now, but why should I have to do any
work to get it that way?

because you're using oddball components.

But in this case, it was a DVD drive. I thought more of Toshiba back
then. I had no idea that people would want to make a plain old DVD
drive into something special.

And I've had continuing problems getting a
second display to work consistently on that laptop. I mean, how long
have they been at this stuff? Things are supposed to just work these
days.

they do.

Mostly.

I'm signed up for Win 10, but I'm starting to dread it.

it's not bad but it's still windows.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 22:12:45 -0400, PeterN
wrote:

On 7/14/2015 9:30 PM, Bill W wrote:

snip


I'm signed up for Win 10, but I'm starting to dread it.


Just this afternoon I was talking to an MS beta tester/technician about
that very subject. He told me that he would not advise anyone to adapt
just yet, although he found no issues. (He and I know each other for
over 12 years.)

I'm never on that bleeding edge. I'll wait at least a month after the
rollout, and try to keep up with the reviews. I put a lot of work into
some things on my computers, and I don't want take any risks.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 22:17:28 -0400, Tony Cooper
wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 18:30:59 -0700, Bill W
wrote:

I'm signed up for Win 10, but I'm starting to dread it.

So am I. I just attended a presentation by a person that's been using
Windows 10 for a while. He's one of the founders of the Central
Florida Computer Society. This was Part 2 of a 2 part program.


It's on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rF8l2X-IM

There are some bells and whistles that don't interest me, but some
that do.

I was going to watch it, but then I saw the time... I'll have to set
this aside for now. I haven't heard of any issues yet, and as long as
it plays nice with all my photo and music software, I'm not too
concerned about anything else. There aren't any bells and whistles
that mean much to me, and the main reason I like to get the new OS's
is that they always tend to have improved stability. Even though I
suck at music, it's really, really, frustrating to work for
hours/days/weeks on something, only to have it vaporized by a crash.
And I mean gone - never to be found again. And then just to rub it in,
it takes out my soundcard at the same time. WTF.

In article , Bill W
wrote:

It seems to be a problem of some kind in Windows. I have had related
problems with a 2TB Western Digital on W64 Pro.

I can't remember exactly what Vantec told me, but the rep did seem to
be implying that 64 bit was the main issue.

the issue is that they wrote ****ty firmware and are not accepting the
blame.

Yeah, or the fact that they didn't provide a means for users to update
the firmware. Or they didn't want to, forcing everyone to buy their
latest hardware.

it shouldn't have failed in the first place.

a usb device should not care whether a host is 32 or 64 bit.

I forced Win 8 onto two
computers that did not support it, including one with Win 7. I had
problems that did not make any sense at all. I think it's a
combination of firmware and drivers, and some coders who got careless.
On the Win 7 computer, the DVD drive would not work at all with Win 8,
and Toshiba never updated any drivers.

drivers for a dvd drive??

In this case, yes. They were apparently proprietary with Toshiba, and
added functions that they thought people would like. Whatever. But
once those drivers were grenaded by Win 8, nothing worked.

what happens if you ditch the drivers? does the drive fall back to
standard functionality?

I had to go online to find
generic drivers. It works fine now, but why should I have to do any
work to get it that way?

because you're using oddball components.

But in this case, it was a DVD drive. I thought more of Toshiba back
then. I had no idea that people would want to make a plain old DVD
drive into something special.

lots of companies do that. sometimes it's for good reasons and
sometimes not.

here's an 18 button gaming mouse, which definitely requires custom
drivers:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71c7d1FE6tL._SL1500_.jpg

savageduck mentioned a lexar jumpshot card reader, which only worked
with lexar cards, a colossally stupid idea.

On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 01:41:00 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

It seems to be a problem of some kind in Windows. I have had related
problems with a 2TB Western Digital on W64 Pro.

I can't remember exactly what Vantec told me, but the rep did seem to
be implying that 64 bit was the main issue.

the issue is that they wrote ****ty firmware and are not accepting the
blame.

Yeah, or the fact that they didn't provide a means for users to update
the firmware. Or they didn't want to, forcing everyone to buy their
latest hardware.

it shouldn't have failed in the first place.

a usb device should not care whether a host is 32 or 64 bit.

I forced Win 8 onto two
computers that did not support it, including one with Win 7. I had
problems that did not make any sense at all. I think it's a
combination of firmware and drivers, and some coders who got careless.
On the Win 7 computer, the DVD drive would not work at all with Win 8,
and Toshiba never updated any drivers.

drivers for a dvd drive??

In this case, yes. They were apparently proprietary with Toshiba, and
added functions that they thought people would like. Whatever. But
once those drivers were grenaded by Win 8, nothing worked.

what happens if you ditch the drivers? does the drive fall back to
standard functionality?

It seems they wrapped the drive with their very special software, and
the driver was integral to that software. I can't remember what it was
supposed to do, mainly because I never use the gimmicky **** that
comes with PC's. That's one good reason to build my own, but I can't
build laptops. As it is now, I can read and write with it, and that's
all I ask of it. I wish I made notes - I can't even remember what I
used, or where I found it.

I had to go online to find
generic drivers. It works fine now, but why should I have to do any
work to get it that way?

because you're using oddball components.

But in this case, it was a DVD drive. I thought more of Toshiba back
then. I had no idea that people would want to make a plain old DVD
drive into something special.

lots of companies do that. sometimes it's for good reasons and
sometimes not.

here's an 18 button gaming mouse, which definitely requires custom
drivers:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71c7d1FE6tL._SL1500_.jpg

We all need one of those, whatever it's for...

savageduck mentioned a lexar jumpshot card reader, which only worked
with lexar cards, a colossally stupid idea.

That sort of thing is getting more and more rare. I started building
PC's in the early 90's, so I am very aware of how much easier things
are now. It's almost like digital vs. DIY film with your own darkroom.
I never got the hang of the enlarger filters. Now you just push a
slider around until it looks right. Technology is beautiful.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 18:17:58 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2015-07-15 01:03:20 +0000, PeterN said:

On 7/14/2015 8:08 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On 2015-07-14 23:39:09 +0000, PeterN said:
On 7/14/2015 2:33 PM, PAS wrote:
"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2015071207534598521-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom...
On 2015-07-12 12:59:17 +0000, Alan Browne
said:
On 2015-07-11 16:01, Alfred Molon wrote:
In the past it used to be so that you could not trust memory
cards, so
you would not use too large sizes, to avoid losing all images in
case of
a malfunction. But I get the impression that nowadays memory cards
are
very reliable, so you could in principle put a 256GB memory card into
the camera, and only use that for an entire trip. Any thoughts about
this?


I don't recall them being considered unreliable. Indeed we all cried
the chorus of better to get solid state memory than the small
spinning mass disks that were cheaper (and far as I can tell no
longer marketed).

There are all sorts of stories of lost cameras found years later with
all the data intact. Indeed a recent camera was fished out of a lake
6 years after it was lost and all the photos were retrieved and the
owner eventually located.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...ipeg-1.3136501

Then

there was this one.
http://www.cnet.com/news/google-reunites-lost-waterlogged-camera-owner/


That said, any electronics can fail. I bring a laptop and offload
images to the laptop as I go. There are other solutions as well that
include data tanks and uploading images to a "cloud" account on the
fly.

You can even operate your own 'cloud' drive at home and send the
images there.

The trouble of course, on the road, is getting sufficiently high
bandwidth connections to the net. In some places it's hard to get
something that can reliably and quickly take off the 5 - 10 GB+ of
images one can easily shoot in a day.

This has been my travel fail safe redundant storage. It does full and
incremental backups.
http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive/HDU2-000.html

When I became interested in photography and got my first DSLR, a 256MB
card cost around $80.00 and would hold about 32 RAW images from camera.
I bought a Tripper with a 30GB hard drive to use to off-load my files
once the memory card was full, I carried it around with me.

http://photo.net/equipment/digital/tripper/

The cost of the thing would have bought me three additional 256MB cards
but the Tripper holds 30GB which was large at the time. I was a newbie
so wasn't considering backing up my files "in the field", just
off-loading the files so I could use the memory card again. The Tripper
still works too. I haven't used it in some time and found some of my
original images that I took still on there. I think that a 1TB device
that can transfer at USB 3 speeds would be nice to have.


Portable WD and Seagate USB3 2Tb drives sell for about $90, lse if you
buy several. The 1TB drives cost about $60.

Yup! However, with the ColorSpace UDMA or UDMA2 all you have to do is
insert your CF or SDHC card and do a full or incremental backup. No
computer required. Let's see you do that in the field with an external
USB3 HDD.

Yup. You have not yet reached the age where 8oz in your bag makes a difference.

I am the one in this room who actually reduced his load by buying into
a mirrorless system with my X-E2. You and Eric seem to be loading up
with fat cameras and fatter glass.

The biggest load I have to lug around is me.

I don't go off road any more.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 7/14/2015 10:17 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 18:30:59 -0700, Bill W
wrote:

I'm signed up for Win 10, but I'm starting to dread it.

So am I. I just attended a presentation by a person that's been using
Windows 10 for a while. He's one of the founders of the Central
Florida Computer Society. This was Part 2 of a 2 part program.


It's on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rF8l2X-IM

There are some bells and whistles that don't interest me, but some
that do.


I am more interested in enhanced reliability and compatibility with the
programs and peripherals I use. As with any critical program, I do not
wish to be an early adaptor. I prefer to wait until at least one service
pack has been released.
YMMV


--
PeterN

On 7/14/2015 11:43 PM, Bill W wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 22:12:45 -0400, PeterN
wrote:

On 7/14/2015 9:30 PM, Bill W wrote:

snip


I'm signed up for Win 10, but I'm starting to dread it.


Just this afternoon I was talking to an MS beta tester/technician about
that very subject. He told me that he would not advise anyone to adapt
just yet, although he found no issues. (He and I know each other for
over 12 years.)

I'm never on that bleeding edge. I'll wait at least a month after the
rollout, and try to keep up with the reviews. I put a lot of work into
some things on my computers, and I don't want take any risks.

Yep!

--
PeterN

On 7/15/2015 2:05 AM, Bill W wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 01:41:00 -0400, nospam
wrote:


snip


savageduck mentioned a lexar jumpshot card reader, which only worked
with lexar cards, a colossally stupid idea.

That sort of thing is getting more and more rare. I started building
PC's in the early 90's, so I am very aware of how much easier things
are now. It's almost like digital vs. DIY film with your own darkroom.
I never got the hang of the enlarger filters. Now you just push a
slider around until it looks right. Technology is beautiful.

Some things certainly are easier now. In the DOS days I found it easier
to write my own apps than to learn third party apps, only to find out
that in the majority of cases they were not as advertised, and then on
to app 2, etc.


--
PeterN

"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2015071417080436162-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom...
On 2015-07-14 23:39:09 +0000, PeterN said:

On 7/14/2015 2:33 PM, PAS wrote:
"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2015071207534598521-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom...
On 2015-07-12 12:59:17 +0000, Alan Browne
said:
On 2015-07-11 16:01, Alfred Molon wrote:
In the past it used to be so that you could not trust memory
cards, so
you would not use too large sizes, to avoid losing all images in
case of
a malfunction. But I get the impression that nowadays memory
cards are
very reliable, so you could in principle put a 256GB memory card
into
the camera, and only use that for an entire trip. Any thoughts
about
this?


I don't recall them being considered unreliable. Indeed we all
cried
the chorus of better to get solid state memory than the small
spinning mass disks that were cheaper (and far as I can tell no
longer marketed).

There are all sorts of stories of lost cameras found years later
with
all the data intact. Indeed a recent camera was fished out of a
lake
6 years after it was lost and all the photos were retrieved and
the
owner eventually located.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...ipeg-1.3136501

Then

there was this one.
http://www.cnet.com/news/google-reunites-lost-waterlogged-camera-owner/

That said, any electronics can fail. I bring a laptop and offload
images to the laptop as I go. There are other solutions as well
that
include data tanks and uploading images to a "cloud" account on
the fly.

You can even operate your own 'cloud' drive at home and send the
images there.

The trouble of course, on the road, is getting sufficiently high
bandwidth connections to the net. In some places it's hard to get
something that can reliably and quickly take off the 5 - 10 GB+ of
images one can easily shoot in a day.

This has been my travel fail safe redundant storage. It does full
and
incremental backups.
http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive/HDU2-000.html


When I became interested in photography and got my first DSLR, a
256MB
card cost around $80.00 and would hold about 32 RAW images from
camera.
I bought a Tripper with a 30GB hard drive to use to off-load my
files
once the memory card was full, I carried it around with me.

http://photo.net/equipment/digital/tripper/

The cost of the thing would have bought me three additional 256MB
cards
but the Tripper holds 30GB which was large at the time. I was a
newbie
so wasn't considering backing up my files "in the field", just
off-loading the files so I could use the memory card again. The
Tripper
still works too. I haven't used it in some time and found some of
my
original images that I took still on there. I think that a 1TB
device
that can transfer at USB 3 speeds would be nice to have.


Portable WD and Seagate USB3 2Tb drives sell for about $90, lse if
you buy several. The 1TB drives cost about $60.

Yup! However, with the ColorSpace UDMA or UDMA2 all you have to do is
insert your CF or SDHC card and do a full or incremental backup. No
computer required. Let's see you do that in the field with an external
USB3 HDD.

Yes, I was referring to an OTG device that can be used in the field like
my old Tripper and your device. Just pop the card in and transfer the
files to the OTG device.