Wolverine Data 7080 FlashPac 80 GB Portable Digital Pictures and Data Storage

Have had product for several years and works without fail until I got a camera with a SanDisk Ultra II card. It simply would not read. Emailed for help to find firm ware update and with in an hour (ya, an hour!) I was emailed back with link to update and great instructions on how to install. 10 stars for great customer service.

Ready to take tons of video and pictures on Vacation Now ;)

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.

I didn't have to worry about running out of space on my memory card or have to worry if I brought enough cards for all the pictures I wanted to take. Each night I was able to download my card and start fresh the next day. What made this even better was I could download the memory card after each site I visitied, and it put those pics into its own folder! It made my travellog a lot easier to publish with pics from each site in its own place, I didnt have to waste time on vacation seperating them! I highly recommend this item!

So far so good with this little guy. As with any device like this, the more files you allow to accumulate on it before off loading them, the more vulnerable you are to any failure of the machine. I've been using the Wolverine now for about a month and have not had any problem with it. I always wish these things would copy faster, but that's the way it goes. You can view the file copying progress on the display screen as it copies, so although you can't view images on the screen just a glance will tell you whether it's copying or not. The fact that this drive will read a number of memory card shapes and sizes is a real boon for those of us with multiple camera types. I had a Flash Trax unit a few years ago that was also an image viewer, which was nice, but it was five times the cost of this Wolverine and much larger. So if you don't need to proof your images as you go and only need a place to dump lots of files while on the road, check this out. It's a good value for what it costs...

I bought this device before I went on a 4 week trip to Namibia ,Africa.
After each day of photographing the wilderness and the wild animals of the country the Wolverine was a convenient and an easy way of storing the photographs.
It's rather quick in copying the data from the memory card and the battery life was very good and that's very important when a long time could last between possible recharging.