Roxy,

As Bob said, after you off load your pictures, you may either delete them one by one in the camera, or all at one time through camera's "Format" function. Then you will have a "fresh" memory card. Of course, if you connect your camera to a PC, you can also delete pictures using Windows Explorer. Formatting a memory card in your camera should take no time (a couple of seconds for a 128 MB SD card in my Minolta F100) while deleting pictures one by one, on the other hand, will take a while. Another situation I need to format the memory card is after I copy post-processed pictures from my PC back to memory card to have them printed at Wal-Mart. CVS or Wolf Camera provide the same service in Atlanta. Take your memory card to the store, off load pictures to a machine, and select your print options. Wal-Mart has the best price, $.29 per 4x6 print.

No need to worry about memory card being "fried" by x-ray machines at airports. One less thing to worry about. Have fun and take lots of pictures!

Bob,

Have a great time in Barcelona!

Hi rmontouri, Bob I have never been to Barcelona so I will be looking forward to hearing all about your adventures when the time comes. How nice to have a reunion to look forward to. This will be my first trip to Paris and Provence (did visit the Riviera 20 years ago)- plus, I am extending several days in Paris. It is exciting to finally be so near to "go" day and just hope my camera behaves! Otherwise, I'll wing it with the 35mm. (I will be a two fisted shooter! lol). I did change my resolution to M1 to save space. Thanks again for your info; I've learned a lot from your easy to understand explanations. Not hard to spell Connecticut these days....CT

Hi tpc, thanks for sharing valuable info as always. I actually have a compounded problem. I still have windows 95 and so anything to do with pics and the pc is not going to happen for me until I invest in a laptop. (Camera software has a min requirement of Windows 98 and right now I'd rather buy a silk dress in Paris }. So, at the moment I am more interested in viewing the pics on my TV and they do look divine! I also happen to be part of the silent few, I think, who love my photo albums. I have a whole cabinet dedicated to them. I will have a hard time selecting what to print at Wal-Mart off my CFC. The possiblity of shooting several hundred pics on a trip seems outrageous. It will take hours to view them I guess we are definitely products of the "more is better" age in photography once you do go digital. Happy Trails!

Bob,

<<I'm assuming that you opened an image from your "Paint" program, enhanced it and then "saved" it back to the card.>>

That's pretty much what I did. Thank you for filling the blanks for me. I, apparently, left out "a few" details. You're correct that there's no problem accessing either raw or modified images on the card through a USB interface (camera or card reader). However, my camera couldn't view modified images on the card. So I ended up formatting my cards a lot, either after off loading images to X-Drive or loading modified images to the kiosk at Wal-mart.

<<if we made adjustments with their software, would the change be automatically saved to the card and, if so, would it be saved in a format that the camera would recognize?>>

That's a good question. I've never used the Wal-mart kiosk to modify my images, either. Same as you, I think I'd have better control with my own software. By the way, have you noticed that Wal-mart's prints tend to be a little bit dark? A friend of mine told me to always adjust images brighter for printing at Wal-mart.

No, we haven't been to Barcelona, but I can imagine it'd be a lot of fun over there. Spain and Portugal are high on our list of travel destinations. There're so many places we'd like to go. We'll be there someday.

Have a good day.

I have just got back to the BB after starting this subject and am interested in the comment of experiences of X-Drive's failure and loss of photos...how real is this as a risk. Has there been to anyone's knowledge much of this being experienced. I would think taking a laptop has greater, as there is the greater risk of this item being stolen if left in hotel rooms or cases etc, as well as damaged. Then there is the extra weight of lugging it around. I guess one just has to be careful of not dropping the X_Drive and hoping it doesn't fail in any other way. How have people found taking a reasonably sized digital with a 35mm camera just as a backup as far as carrying and use goes.

Peter,

Back in June my quandry was whether to purchase the X-Drive, X-Drive II, Image Tank, or one of the other portable storage devices. I started my research using Google Groups. I don't remember what search terms I used, but there were definitely a number of horror stories to be found (to my chagrin). DPReview has a Storage & Media Forum. Paste this link:

http://search.dpreview.com/forums/search.asp?query=xdrive&forum=1023

and read it for a while. Be sure and notice the next page links, by the way. I did notice in looking a few minutes ago that someone (salesman?) mentioned that the X-Drive II has the fewest percentage of returns.

You're right, of course, about the problems of lugging a notebook around. Something else new that is just coming out is a portable CD burner that accepts various memory cards. I would have considered it if there had been some feedback from users, but it is just too new. I guess I'm just fortunate that I choose cameras that took Compact Flash cards since they're relatively inexpensive for larger sizes. Memory sticks are what ultimately made me cross the Sony 717 off my buying list.

As far as carrying a film camera as backup, based on my recent experiences in Hawaii I will take my two digital cameras (Olympus E-10 & Canon S50) plus a small film camera (which one not decided) & a few rolls of film on our next big trip. (That compares with taking multiple cameras and lenses plus 50 or so rolls of film on our two European Trafalgar tours.)

Mike

This discussion seems to have come down to personal choices.

I use an x-drive because my Sony 707 cannot use the 1 gig cards. Even if it could, I can buy 2 x-drives for the price of a 1 gig Sony stick-that's 40 gig of storage.

I had my memory stick case stolen in Rome (flashy aluminum looked like silver at a distance). I lost 4 sticks but only 50 images taken that morning-the other 800 were safely on my x-drive back at the hotel.

Mike, I am also an avid lurker at dpreview.com. I am aware of some of the limitations of the x-drive, most of which have been fixed by updates to the native software and in x-drive II. I never got around to upgrading but I still have no problems.

If you prefer to use large cards, fine. I think sometimes it's a matter of personal preference: do I shoot slides or print film, do I shoot 100, 400 or ISO 800 film, do I shoot film or digital?

Glenn

Hey Glenn, I just got a Canon 10D (no focus problems LOL) and was reading about the x-drive. I got mine right after you and tpc, I think you helped me format it.
Is there any software upgrade available? I've been happy with mine so far, but my files would be larger now. Here is one pic of the moon i took last night with the new toy.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/35941803/80775839zxraMR

Take care,

Fabiola

Fab: Great photo!!

That 10D and lenses goes for a pretty penny.

The current firmware version is 1.5. Check with your dealer on where to get the latest and how to do it.

Glenn
www.pbase.com/gsrunyan

Hi Fab,
great shot! any chance of you sending me a copy of the raw image to have a look at? I've a D60 and don't ever get anything like as crisp a shot as that. Might even persuade the other half that it's time to upgrade lenses...

cheers,

joeseph101@yahoo.com

Hi all,

Here is my experience regarding the X-Drive (the original, not II) firmware upgrade. I applied all upgrades when they were available (v1.02 - beta, v1.03, and v1.04; v2.31 was to support Memory Stick Pro and you have to have a MS Pro card to apply the upgrade). The upgrade program ran without any problem; however, they worked only in Win98 (some reported got it working in Windows 2000; it didn't work for me )! The unit needs to be reset after upgrade! You can download the firmware upgrades (I and II) at:

http://www.vosonic.com/index.php?php_mode=downloads

I didn't do a lot of testing before the upgrades, so I don't know if any of the upgrades fixed any problem. According to Gelnn and Fabiola, theirs work fine without any upgrades. Maybe we were lucky (got ours at about the same time) not getting ones with problem.


Fabiola,

Great photo! I envy your new toy.

Can someone help me. I got my x-drive 11. I am not to good with new devices. I had no trouble transforing pictures from my camera to it then I connected it to the computer and the pictures were there. When I turned it off I got this message "please use the hot plug icon in the status bar to safely remove devices before unplugging them." Does anyone know how to turn them off. Also when it gets full how do you delete the pictures from the x-drive. Thanks

1096,

X-Drive (I and II) can be "hot-plugged" to a computer, i.e. it can be added or removed while a computer is running. When removing such a device, it's recommended to use the Safely Remove Hardware application to notify Windows that the device is about to be unplugged.

1. Click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area. The icon displays a notification bubble with a list of devices currently attached to the system.
2. Click the device you want to remove. The device is stopped and can then be unplugged.

For more info, copy and paste the following URL to your browser:

http://tinyurl.com/h2d7

When the X-Drive is plugged to your computer, you can access its hard drive as any other hard drive(s) on your computer. Use Windows Explorer to COPY images from X-Drive to your computer for editing and/or backup (to a CD or a tape). After you have a copy of images, you may DELETE them off the X-Drive, again using Windows Explorer.

Hope this helps.

I can't seem to find the safely remove hardware icon on my computer. I am using windows Me. Where would I find it. I have tried so many things and still get the message telling me I have not removeed the x-drive safely. I did not install there disk on my computer because I have me and they said it didn't have to. thanks

1906,

I don't own a Windows ME system; however, following steps should work for Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.

1. Double click on the green arrow icon in the system tray (the area on the right hand side of Windows Task Bar; the icon should appear when you plug the X-Drive to PC). The "Unplug or Eject Hardware" dialog box will come up.
2. Select "something USB Mass Storage Device" (don't remember the exact wording) and click the Stop button.
3. The "Stop a Hardware Device" dialog box will come up. Click OK.
4. The "Safe To Remove Hardware" dialog box will come up. Click OK.
5. X-Drive is ready to be unplugged.

TPC Thank you so much for helping me. I would never have found it without your help. ME displays all the drives so I had to keep hitting the stop button on all the drives before it let me do it safely. Thanks again so much.