[ninekit]

Dear brothers, sisters,
Over a year of using a no-brand 256M CF card, I have found from time to time I may lost some of my pictures taken.
So I would like to buy another bigger and more reliable, preferably branded one storage.
Mind throw in some of your recommendations and pls. kindly advice where I can find a good price for them as well?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
9Kit

[jeffrey]

Transcend 的 CompactFlash 速度高，兼有 5 年保養，shop@dcfever.com 門市有售。

[ninekit]

Thanks jeffrey, may I ask the price difference between the 512M Transcend CF card and 1GB IBM microdrive? and the PROs and CONs of the two?
In mind I am a little favour MD as it seems its better valued.
Pls. advice.

[trent]

I suppose CF is more durable.
MD is a miniature hard drive, it consumes more more power than an ordinary CF, slower read/write speed, shocks may cause damage to it, and with a chance of mechanical failure. It has all the disadvantages of a mechanical drive, but its price can be cheaper than CF.

[ninekit]

I have checked the hkgolden for the price of Transcend 512M 30X CF cost around HKD 800.
will be appreciated if any brothers, sisters can advise on prices of IBM microdrives.
Yes, understand the CONs of using MD, but I am thinking of it from the cost effectiveness, as always thinking its cheaper than CF. Speedwise, I remember I have read a speedtest in dpreview that MD is actualy as fast as CF in write speed which is more important to me than the read speed.
Thanks very much.

[ERICSAN]

ninekit hing, me again.
I use 1 gb IBM microdrive and a 256 mb 30X Transcend CF for my CP5700.
I buy the above two storage media is base on the info from dpreview.com on digit-film. I think write speed is much more important than read speed for us when taking photographs. If you look at chart of dpreview, the write speed of IBM microdrive is much better than many many CF cards.
The 1 gb IBM microdrive was bought from Wingsing in March @ HK$16xx. The performance of this is very good up to this moment.
Since the microdrive is a mini hard disk and every body knows the hard disk is very fragile and therefore, I also bought the 30X transcend CF ( from Centralfield of Golden @ HK$550 also in March ) for backup purpose when I travel to Japan in April.
For your info : @ res. 2560 X 1920 the 1 GB micro can store 437 photos and the 256 mb Transcend can store 105 photos in my camera. As you know storage media price is dropping, nowadays the pice of both should be cheaper.
Hope info is useful to you.

[ninekit]

thanks ERICSAN hing, (or shall I address your name as two words Eric San ? ^_^, guess you must be a big fan of Japan la, me too, its really a nice place to live or travel)
Guess MD price may not be dropped as quick as CF, its yet to be confirmed by my friend in HK, i think if 1G MD is more expensive than 2 x 512M CF, i will go for CF for the cost and power consideration lu. Will see, and your information definitely help. Thanks very much.
BTW, do you know if there is any good low-level formatter for my corrupted CF card? it will be just fantanstic if i can format it again and get the bad clustors marked as bad, so that next time the camera won't write data into them, then I can have it as a backup as well.
Mind asking is the MD noticably faster than CF when in use?
Rgds,
9Kit

[ERICSAN]

inekit hing, I am not a big fan of Japan. Yes, Japan is a nice place to visit. I have been there twice. One trip to Osaka/Tokyo- nice place for shopping. The other trip to Sapporo - nice place for sight seeing only.
I try to register as a dcfever member with my real name i.e. Eric and family name but that is not acceptable, since I recently have been to Japan, at that time just a sparkle in my mind is to add san after Eric, and that is why I have this name.
Well, it is just a sign that can identify me so that we can communicate. You can address me Eric San it doesn't matter, but I am a typical chinese guy. ( old man )
I just take few photographs as an experiment of write speed comparison between the 1 gb microdrive and the 256 mb cf card. The result is micro takes 5.7 - 6.1 seconds to save an 2560 X 1920 image, on the other hand the cf takes 3.8 - 4.1 seconds to save same images. I never do this before. I believe this may be helpful to you to decide which way to go.
If you ask me to make decision now I may go ahead to buy four 256 mb or two 512 mb 30x Transcend CF ( providing 256 and 512 both have same writing speed, heard that same band CF different capacity will have different write speed, but I am not sure on this ) reasons as follow :
1. 30x cf write speed is much faster. 2. no need to care about the fragility. 3. If one card is out of order you will have 768 mb or 512 mb in good condition.

By the way I don't know any low-level formatter, and actually I am a newbie on dc, and I am learning hard now.
Does you dc has the format cf card function ? Have you try that ? The CP5700 has this function.

[ninekit]

thanks eric, your result is definitely of great reference for me. surprise dpreview actually give somehow the opposite indication of speed. if thats the case, i think i will just go get 512MB CF for the moment which should be able to serve me well for quite a while and then by the time i need more, i can probably buy another 1 or 2GB for the same $. :D
Yes, I have tried both windows format and my CP5000's format, but both have no luck. where the card is bad, it seems its still bad. :(
so i will accept i should write it off and get a new one la.
Or if i can find something really do low-level formatting then the faulty one may serve as a backup card.
thanks very much again.

[ERICSAN]

ninekit, I have same memory as yours that my test result is differ from dpreview. After I post you the test result I go to dpreview and look thrugh the digital film comparison charts again.
The charts must have been revised and the info now is similar to my test result. In order to provide update info ,This is the job they should do. It is strange that I look through the charts and there is no info on Transcend 512mb. If you go get 512 mb you have to assume the performance of this is similar to 256 mb. You don't konw the end result until you use it, unless you can obtain info from other contact.

[ERICSAN]

ninekit, I am sorry that I give you wrong info on above post, dpreview's barchart still contradict to my test result. Notice that the Transcend card
dpreview tested is 28x while the cf I test is 30x. Anyway, go ahead for cf is still my best suggestion.

[ERICSAN]

Regarding speed of cf cards, I remember I read a post in other forum saying that the write speed of image to cf card or microdrive is limited by the firmware of the camera.
I don't know whether this is true or not, but this kind of downgrade case is usual in pc. If this is true then same cf on different dc the write speed may be fifferent also.
This usually happen on the newly developed high speed cf because firmwares of cameras either outdated or not update enough.

[ninekit]

Thanks Eric, I am pretty much made up my mind to go for CF after your test, which I trust more than dpreview :D, for the similar models we are using.
Yes, I also did some searches on CF cards, and at the top end, card manufacturer can optimise their products to match with particular camera models.
e.g. Lexar has a WA enabled card to work with camera with the same feature (Nikon D1H, D1X, WA=write acceleration), and some card manufacturers even optimise card for EOS 1D and so on.
but I think thats something won't benefit me much for my coolpix la.
So I am just waiting for friends to come and brought me the new card lor.
Had no luck reformat my old one with windows 98, the bad blocks are still there, and the camera keep writing onto them, resulting 3, 4 images lost out of 110 frames. so I have to be careful when making 'critical' shoots.
Thanks Eric again for your help and advices.

[ERICSAN]

A suggestion to your old cf.
Try to find out the positions of pictures will be lost. For example if you are sure picture 2,4,17,28 reguarly lost out of 110 pictures, then you try to have images permanently engaged the picture position of your card from 1 to 30, then you will have assurance that all pictures will be there from 31 to 110. This is somewhat manually mark out the bad sectors.
I think this is worthwhile for a try.

[ninekit]

Hello Eric, thats a great idea, i have just fired 12 x RAW at slowest aperture and fastest shutter. and i have 65 frames left for 5M pixel at FINE compression JPEG. will test them out and see if they will be all OK. thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks very much.