Wolverine Data 7080 FlashPac 80 GB Portable Digital Pictures and Data Storage
by Wolverine
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Wolverine Data 7080 FlashPac 80 GB Portable Digital Pictures and Data Storage
Customer Review: Great companion for all photographers on the road!
Summary: 5 Stars
Size, price, accessories and ergonomics: all this fits precisely the needs of a photographer on the road! Especially the ergonomics! Two buttons is all you need to make the backup, and not be tempted to make something wrong. Plug in the card, hold on button, press "copy." Done. One single multicolor LED shows a combination of 'on,' 'charge' and 'copy' status. To save battery life, the device powers down itself very fast if you do not start copy. Very clever. Wolverine FlashPac is a no thrill device, making the essential job for you, however with a few small glitches, as I see it:
1) As mentioned by others, after a copy is done and the device shuts itself down, you cannot see anymore if the copy was successful, or if you have copied already at all. I made a few times 2, once even 3 copies of the same card, just to be sure.
2) If you have copied files on this drive using USB connection, free size indication is not correct. Seemingly Wolverines software counts only its own subdirectories. This could hurt you outdoors! You might run out of space without a warning! Better erase all data before leaving for a trip! There is no standalone erase function, probably for your own good!
3) The copy progress indication does not tell you the estimated time to end of the copy.
4) There is no indication of how many times a card was copied, and how many files have been stored total.
All this might be resolved in a later firmware. Chose your best needed hard drive space for travel, especially if you shoot RAW, but better be generous to yourself considering the ever growing pixel size of the images!
But wait, there is more: At home you can use this unit as your regular external drive, and the both card readers of the Wolverine are also usable directly in your OS. This unit will even power itself down, when you shut down your computer! Excellent! Most of the external drives unfortunately do not do that, and run your drives "to their death" when you travel and leave them on by mistake.
The unit is very small, and yet it does not have any soft pads for shock absorbing. Personally I am skeptic about the integrity of the hard drive lacking any shock absorber. I did not wanted risk any damage to the drive inside and I added big, fat vibration dampening pads to the bottom of my device. You might consider doing the same. Use pads provided specifically for table top loudspeakers, made of vibration dumpening material.
Customer Review: Not bad but consider the flaws
Summary: 3 Stars
Summary: You get what you pay for. I would return the one I have to get a more expensive one if I had the chance and buy one with a image viewer.
How it was used:
I bought this backup device to replicate date from my SD cards to a backup device while I was on a cruise. I did not need the ability to see the images on the disk (viewable from the camera). The idea would be that I would securely store card data to the the drive a store it in a safe each day while I walked around with my K20D.
Pros:
1. The drive does pull off data to the HD.
2. The drive does accept multiple storage card types.
3. The drive does increment folders for each backup made.
4. The drive doe not need a computer.
5. The drive is small enough to carry with you and included a decent nylon case.
Cons:
1. The fat32 drive is too large for windows XP to natively format. To fix the partition, you need to use 3rd party or UNIX tools.
2. Deleting the data off of the Wolverine sometimes conflicts with Microsoft OS's and their recycle bins. Deleted data is not simply deleted but this is a Microsoft problem.
3. The drive is not shock-resistant or water resistant, but that feature was more of a nice-to-have for me.
4. The battery life is not bad but consistently I could only get about 5 or 6 backups of an 8GB SD card.
5. Without a way to verify (view) the data, I was always wary to delete data off of my SD cards.
6. Macintosh systems cannot natively view the card readers on the Wolverine device. It was necessary to replicate the data and take the card out before I could view the card on an iMac.
7. Replicating data from the SD card (class 6 memory) took as long as 20 minutes.
8. You cannot delete data from the device; you must do any work on the drive from the computer you are working from.
9. Without the included AC adapter, charging the internal battery with a computer's USB ports took a very long time.
Customer Review: Excellent photo storage solution
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased the Wolverine to store photos taken on a wildlife safari. My access to electricity was limited and I had a severe weight restriction, so I was looking for light, reliable storage and good battery life. The Wolverine did not disappoint. Every night I copied about 1GB of photo files onto the Wolverine and then cleared out my camera memory cards ready for the next day. The Wolverine made it possible to travel with only two photo memory cards yet bring thousands and thousands of photos home.
Operation could not be simpler. You insert the photo card, hit copy, and it transfers your files. It doesn't take long, and it confirms that the files are copied. It also tells you how much space is left available. The battery life is excellent. Recharging is easy and you don't even need a converter, as it's designed to work on US and foreign currencies. Operation is quiet.
There is no way to view the photos as with FlashTrax, but then, you can view them on your camera before copying them over, or wait until you copy them to your computer to view them in more detail. I was willing to sacrifice that feature for a lower price, smaller size and lower weight of the Wolverine.
For three weeks my Wolverine was subjected to exceedingly bumpy, rough roads and harsh travel conditions, variations in temperature and humidity, and generally les than ideal conditions. However, it never gave me any touble.
Customer Review: Excellent value for the money
Summary: 5 Stars
This unit accompanied me to Morocco and Egypt for a month in May and June, 2006. It worked as advertised, much faster than my 40GB HD-to-Go from Mediagear. The Wolverine does show a message that the copy was successful or not and if there was an error when inserting the memory card. I used SD and CF cards. Once or twice there were errors with my SanDisk Ultra II 1GB SD card upon insertion and I appreciated that message. Removing and reinserting the card eliminated the message and the copy worked perfectly.
Improvements requested - Do not clear the copy complete/failed message if the unit is on wall power. More than once I left the unit to copy media, came back and it had gone to sleep. Upon waking it up, there was no indication whether the copy was successful or not. Transfer always was successful but that's a definite user interface issue to shut off after 2 minutes.
I used a Kodak 5MP camera and a Nikon D200 with Sandisk 4GB Extreme III cards without any issues and this thing held all of the media and showed how much space was left on the unit, valuable as I came back with 20GB of media. The Mediagear unit does not give an indication of percentage full, it only shows the unit is full. That's not good if you shoot a ton of images and video.
This unit will go with me again on assignment. I will purchase a second unit as a backup in case this one is destroyed or otherwise.
Customer Review: Seemed like the perfect device until . . .
Summary: 2 Stars
I loved this deviced when I first purchased it. Small, solid, streamlined. No video screen to add to the list of things that could go wrong. Just unblemished, easy photo backup for the photographer abroad.
It backed up seamlessly on a recent trip to Thailand, verifiying and promising me a hassle free trip. I backed up 60GB worth of images and returned to the US. Only to find that 2/3 of the images were corrupted on the disk.
Wolverine tech support was rude and condescending. Kept repeating that I had done something wrong, without being specific as to what that could have possibly been. Also kept repeating that I just had to mail it in, but no guarantees.
I ultimately brought it to a data recovery center which pulled off all of the data for $300 and told me that the disk had been faulty.
So ultimately can I recommend this? Well, perhaps I just had a dud. I know they can happen. I was burned though, not just by the devices failure but by the company's rudeness and unwillingless to offer data recovery.
Wolverine is off of my list. Hopefully they can do better by the next consumer.