HITACHI 6GB Microdrive MD6GBBP

I needed the 4 GB and not the 6; so they replaced it for me. No problems in getting the item replaced with the one that I needed, the 4GB instead of the 6GB. No hastles, they took very good care of me and I'd be glad to do business with them in the future.

14 months after I bought this POS for $279.00 plus tax, it stopped working completely. Okay, I thought I would send it back to Hitachi and they would repair it and charge me for the repair. It turns out that they will not service this product after the 1 year warranty. It says something about their faith in their own product and Hitachi customer support. Three months after I called them I got a call from their customer service department to see if my issue was resolved to my satisfaction. When I told their service rep about their policy, she said that was incredible and she would follow up and get back to me.
NEVER HAPPENED.
I will never give Hitachi the opportunity to screw me again!
NEVER AGAIN will I buy a Hitachi product.

Worked great for 14 months using a Nikon 2Dx, at 14 months completely died- camera and computer will not recognize. Lost 6 gigs of photos and wasted money on card. Contacted customer support at Hitachi and they said, "Its out of warranty. Nothing we can do."

This is great for digital cameras who take CF cards. With megapixel ratings climbing higher all the time, those pictures take up a lot of space, especially if you are like me and have an itchy shutter finger. The card is fast and durable, and I have never had a single problem after one year of ownership. I am currently using it in my Canon 350D (Rebel XT) which has an 8-megapixel sensor. If you shoot in RAW, you definately need this card, maybe two! Here are the stats that I know of:

Rebel XT
- 2000 JPG of higest setting
- about 625 RAW

The general conversion factor is that one 8-megapixel shot at fine is about 3 + kilobytes.

I have also used this in PDAs, as a small external hard drive to holder photos and music, and as a file trasport device, and it works jsut wonderfuly. You can't really go wrong with this little guy, and I reccomend him to anyone.

After 40,000 shots, 2 cameras, 1.5 years and many drops, this chip still performs perfectly. I've used it heavily and aggressively and have had a great experience at a great price. Its almost as fast in write speeds but slower in read speeds during computer upload. There are some myths about the chip that its slow and fragile, which I'll explain below is just totally wrong.

Speed:

On my old Canon 20D, I got its full claimed buffer in RAW and JPEG. On my newer Canon 5D (12.8 megapixel), I get 17 instead of the 19 claimed RAW pictures during continuous shooting, and I pretty much can't run out the JPEG (well over 50). I've used the Sandisk II, and after some testing, I found that the write speed was almost the same, but the read speed is about 1/3 slower when loading onto the computer. Not a big deal, since the write speed is a bigger priority while shooting. Yesterday, I loaded the whole 4gb chip into Apple Aperture in 14 minutes.

Space:

On the 20D or 30D, you'll get almost 500 in RAW, but on my 5D, I get under 280, so I'm now shopping around for a 8gb chip. You might try the 6gb rather than the 4gb since its getting cheaper.

The "Fragile" Myth:

People always say that the microdrive is more "fragile" than the compact flash, which I can say with absolute certainty is B.S. Most people who criticize the microdrive have never used it or known anyone who used it - last time I checked, judging without knowing is called ignorance, no offense.

Anyway, I shoot my college football team, for the college newspaper, and frequently I do landscape and wildlife photography, so I'm frequently taking the chip in and out of my camera and dropping it on occasion. I've have used the camera at 20 degrees, in the hot and humid Florida sun, and have had a light sunshower, but yet the chip keeps going after 1.5 years.

Other Microdrives:

All microdrives are made by Hitachi, even from Sony. Hitachi bought the division from IBM a few years back, and Hitachi will sell under other names for more market share. Don't waste your money on stupid brand image, just buy the one you find cheaper, which is probably the Hitachi.