Storage Reviews

Our first memory card review looks at SanDisk’s Extreme III CompactFlash card, which is designed for professional photographers who work in extreme conditions and claims to offer high-speed viewing and downloading of shots plus the ability to recover accidentally deleted pictures. For our tests, we used two totally different DSLR cameras – the Nikon D2X, which claims to be one of the fastest cameras on the market and the comparatively sluggish Canon EOS 300D.

Nikon’s Coolwalker is an attractive looking, thoughtfully engineered, portable storage device with plenty of features to please photographers. Designed to work with CompactFlash cards and Microdrives, it can accept other card types via a CF adapter and the card slot has a slide-up cover to prevent ingress of detritus. Its 30GB hard disk can store approximately 10,000 high-resolution JPEG images from a 6-megapixel camera and the 2.5-inch, 117,600 pixel colour TFT LCD screen allows images to be viewed anywhere.

Iomega’s external Super DVD Writer offers fast burning speeds for CD and DVD disks and is compatible with high-capacity Double-Layer DVD technology, making it useful for photographers with digital images to archive. Solidly built, with a smart grey and black exterior it comes with a generous software bundle containing applications for burning disks containing photos, videos, music and data. A wizard-based interface helps beginners to perform key tasks and launches the right application for each job.

The Imagetank G2 is solidly-built, with reinforced corners and a recessed on/off switch. CompactFlash cards fit into a slot on the left side panel. The rectangular LCD data panel has a monochrome display that doesn’t support image viewing, and the instructions it provides are basic, but adequate. Only six control buttons are provided, along with a central ‘Exe’ key that activates selected functions. The operating system automatically copies the files and folders as they are in the camera so, if your camera creates a new folder for each shooting session, that’s what’s transferred. You can track the progress of a download via a message that shows the percentage of data and number of files copied.

Epson’s P-2000 combines personal entertainment with data storage in a portable device with plenty of appeal to photographers. It has the largest, best-looking screen we’ve seen so far. The display has VGA resolution and shows three colours per pixel image, at a density of 212 pixels per inch, which is double the resolution of most competing products.

Imation’s Disc Stakka system combines a carousel that can hold up one hundred 12cm optical disks with a USB cable and database software. It identifies each new disk as it’s loaded and prompts the user to enter details they want to store about the disk.

An elegant and versatile, high-capacity external hard disk drive with an affordable price tag.As indicated by its name, the casing of Western Digital’s My Book series of external hard disk drives is shaped like a book, with cooling vent slots in the area that would contain the ‘pages’. The covers have a smooth, matte finish that resists fingermarking and scratching. Along the ‘spine’ of the drive is an LED strip that lights up as data is transferred to the drive.

High-capacity backup drives with the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface that is 10x faster than USB 2.0 connections. With the release of two USB 3.0 ‘Super Speed’ Desktop Hard Drives, Verbatim joins the growing number of storage product manufacturers releasing devices with high-speed interfaces. Although the USB 3.0 interface hasn’t appeared in many laptops so far, most of the latest desktop computers provide it as an option (although you may have to request it specially). For photographers who want to transfer large image and video files it has a huge advantage because it’s up to ten times as fast as existing USB 2.0 connections.

An easy way to store and display digital photos in your living room.It’s a great concept in theory: take an 80 GB hard disk drive (HDD) and stick it into a box with memory card slots and USB and A/V connections and sell it as a ‘Digital Photo Album’. In a nutshell, that’s the Sony HDPS-L1. Looking a lot like a small DVD player, with standard and component TV connections, the HDPS-L fits neatly into any home entertainment set-up. Too bad its versatility has been limited by software that is clearly targeted at everyday consumers.

An attractive, easy-to-use portable backup drive that comes with an excellent software package and a five-year warranty.Creeping into the portable storage market with a smaller footprint than its main competitors, Seagate’s FreeAgent Go drives have some advantages for photographers who want high-volume, highly-portable data storage. Although they’re available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, the Windows drives are USB 2.0 only, while the Mac drives are available with USB and FireWire connections. The highest (500GB) capacity is only available for Windows users.