Microdrive Performance

[Thomas Hanser]

I recently purchased a 4gb Seagate Microdrive for $69.00 (yes, $69)

here in Seattle. I've always purchased Lexan or SanDisk cards in

the past, but since Seagate make reputable HD's, I thought I'd go

for it.

 

I got tired of filling up a bunch of 512 Mb cards, and dumping them

on to a HD in the studio was taking too long.

 

I went in to purchase a 1 Gb card or two, depending on the price,

and then I discovered this 4 Gb Seagate Microdrive. I've never

purchased a "microdrive" type CF card, but I didn't think there

would be any difference in performance.

 

But there is!

 

I can't believe how slow this thing is writing and reading a file.

The red activity light on my Canon 20d is on forever, and I can't

scroll through images at all like I can with a normal CF card.

 

I've formatted the card two or three times now, for what that's

worth.

 

I don't remember ever reading about the poor performance of a

Microdrive compared to a conventional CF card. But I have to say

I'm disappointed.

 

I tend to shoot fast in the studio, too, in groups of 6-10 shots.

Then I scroll through the shots quickly, to review. Well, not with

this microdrive.

 

I shoot RAW, normally, but I noticed that even high quality JPEG's

still take too long to read and write.

 

Can anyone comment on this? What do you use a 4 Gb Microdrive FOR,

anyway? Not for digital cameras? Are these things used in MP3

players?

 

I guess I'll head back to the store and pick up a couple of 1 Gb CF

cards.

 

Thanks!

[jimstrutz]

My Hitachi 4GB Microdrive is fairly quick. It's faster than a regular Sandisk 512MB, and faster than a Kingston 2GB Elite Pro, but not quite as fast as a Sandisk Ultra II. Maybe the low price for the Seagate is justified.

[emre]

I had the same problem with an IBM Microdrive. And it sucked the batteries dry. Flash memory is the way to go.

[eugene_scherba]

<a

href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7303" />CompactFlash

Write Speed - Canon EOS 20D on Rob Galbraith DPI</a>

[phoneguy]

I have a couple of 3GB Hitachi's, and they work as good as a CF. I've had no problems with them at all.

 

Mike

[kuryan_thomas]

Seagate microdrives are also supposedly unreliable. See Rob Galbraith's page for card

performance on the Nikon D2X, which you can find <a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/

bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7697">here</a>. They could not complete testing on the

Seagate because it failed catastrophically after a 2-inch drop to a tabletop.

[Thomas Hanser]

I still don't get it.

 

That list on Rob Gailbraith's site doesn't mention any Seagate microdrives, and I don't really see that Microdrives are at the top of the list (slower media), either.

 

I'll go back to CF cards, that's for sure.

 

Seagate makes good HD's, too, so I can't see why this thing is such a dog.

 

If there were a menu setting on the 20d I missed, I could understand the poor performance.

 

Thanks!

[madwand]

The 4 GB Hitachi microdrives used to be the absolute best performance/price, and have far outperformed the standard Sandisks for example. The Seagates haven't been as good in my experience, but it's good to have an alternative, and they still have lots of capacity for the dollar.<br><br>

 

I've used a 4 GB Hitachi microdrive for years now; I've never had an issue with its speed, and its performance/price advantage was extraordinary originally. However the advantage has lessened over time with CF cards coming down in price greatly.<br><br>

 

Galbraith's site has a strange absence of the Seagate microdrives, which makes me suspicious that something's amiss with them. I've had problems with a 5GB one that disconnects during card-reader to computer transfers. It's also not as fast as the Hitachi; it typically sits in the bag as a backup/overflow card should the Hitachi be exceeded in a shoot. Here's a partial answer from Galbraith:<br><br>

 

<i><q>The Seagate ST1 5GB sustained a fall of about 2 inches onto a desk here, midway through testing. The drop proved fatal - the card's miniature hard drive will no longer spin up. Also harmed irreparably was our desire to track down a replacement ST1. While it could have been an unfortunate fluke that the card didn't survive its encounter with our desktop, it could also mean that Seagate's new CompactFlash offering isn't designed to withstand minor bumps and jolts unless it's nestled inside a portable music player (the CF card has been shipping as an embedded part of MP3 devices for several months, and it was a card pulled from a music player that we tested). Either way, the ST1 is off our To Do list for the foreseeable future.<br><br>

 

Update, January 19, 2005: After this article was first published, a Seagate representative got in touch to discuss the paragraph above. John Paulsen, Sr. Manager in Corporate Communications at the company, indicates that the version of the Seagate CompactFlash card we tested is intended for use in embedded applications only, and that the design of the upcoming retail version, to be known as the Seagate CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive, is different enough from the ST1 that we should rethink our decision to exclude it from further testing. As we have no particular axe to grind with Seagate, we're likely to have a look at the Seagate CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive when one comes available, in the hopes that it will in fact withstand slight rough handling better than our tester ST1 did.</q></i><br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-6463-7492">http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-6463-7492</a><br><br>

 

Formatting the Hitachi microdrives to 32K sector sizes can improve performance noticeably -- as shown in the Galbraith chart.<br><br>

 

The OP seems to indicate a high performance need, perhaps higher than what even the Hitachi's have been capable of -- the performance database could be used to identify top-end cards for such application; they'll be CF.<br><br>

[Thomas Hanser]

I've always formatted my cards in the Canon, not on either my Mac or Windows XP machines.

 

How can I format this Seagate microdrive to improve performance? NTSF? Or Fat32?

 

I can't even scrub through my images at ALL as is. It takes about 15 seconds (it seems) to review one image.

 

Thanks!

[madwand]

If you connect the card to a card reader, then you should be able to see it as a regular drive in the OS. Then you can format it using the command line for example in XP. I'll assume drive "G" in my example -- change it to whatever drive your card maps to.<br><br>

 

You can check the format using chkdsk G: <br><Br>

 

Here's an example output; it indicates FAT32 32K sectors:<br><br>

 

The type of the file system is FAT32.<br>

Volume Serial Number is 6003-13E0<br>

Windows is verifying files and folders...<br>

0 percent completed. <br>

50 percent completed.. <br>

100 percent completed... <br>

File and folder verification is complete.<br>

Windows has checked the file system and found no problem.<br>

4,874,464 KB total disk space.<br>

32 KB in 1 folders.<br>

4,874,400 KB are available.<br>

<br>

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.<br>

152,327 total allocation units on disk.<br>

152,325 allocation units available on disk.<br>

<br><br>

format /? gives the command-line help.<br>

<br>

To (quick) format FAT32 32K sectors, you can use e.g.:<br>

<br>

format G: FS:FAT32 /A:32K /Q<br>

<br>

Your drive may be defective. See here for a test method I previously used together with performance results. If your performance is much below that, you might have a bad card. You can also use such a test in stores to check/compare performance.<br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009t7K">Seagate vs. Hitachi microdrive performance in 20D</a>

[Thomas Hanser]

Thanks - I just formatted the Seagate Microdrive from within My Computer, using FAT32. I also checked the drive for errors, and there were none.

 

I guess I'll have to handle this card with extreme care, and not rely on it too much.

 

I'm off to buy more CF cards!

 

Thanks, everyone.

[Gary Naka]

One thing to remember is that is a mechanical device, and almost by definition a mechanical device is slower than a solid-stated device that has no moving parts.

 

In the past the micro-drives brought BIG CAPACITY to the format, where the CF cards were down at 256k for a BIG card. I remember my first 256m CF card, and it was about $100. Today the CF is much lower in price that it makes better choice to go CF.

 

Gary

[Mike D]

Tom, I use 2 6GB Hitachi microdrives for backup (when I run out of CF storage)in a D200. If shooting scenics the microdrives are adequately fast. If shooting rapid sequuences of flying birds, the microdrives are noticably slower than an 80X CF card and you may miss a few shots. I like to view each image on the camera LCD and that's when I notice the microdrive is extremely slow.

[john_h.1]

Microdrive's performance do not perform well when dropped, even from a foot high. How poorly, they cease to function altogether. MAybe somneone has a survivor but this should be considered when making a purchase.

[Spearhead]

Please give some statistics on microdrive fatality by dropping. One anecdotal report is worthless.

[jimstrutz]

One more worthless anecdotal report... :)

 

I dropped my 4GB Hitachi onto a concrete floor from about 3 feet, and it still works fine.

 

Many of the early ones had reliability and durability issues, but the more recent ones survive quite a lot of abuse. Their shock ratings are pretty high. They are far more durable than your camera. It might survive a drop too, but it's less likely.

[john_h.1]

"Please give some statistics on microdrive fatality by dropping. One anecdotal report is worthless."

 

I'm not the only one who has made such reports on this board.

 

Why don't you do your own research and type something like "dropping a microdrive" on Google and see what you get. Better yet, why not drop one yourself to see what happens and you need not consider the worthless ancedotes of others.

[spoli]

Well, I've got the same 4GB Seagate Microdrive (ST1) in Seattle (from Frys) and I noticed the same issue with my 20D:

 

- start-up time 5...15 seconds (depending on the number of files on the card)

- writing one RAW + JPEG takes about 40...50 seconds

- writing a burst of 6 RAW + JPEG photos takes 4...5 minutes

- formatting takes ~15 minutes

- reviewing photos is very slow and a painful process

 

I formatted the CF on a PC using 32KB cluster size: no visible effect in my Canon 20D.

 

However, in a PC (using a card reader) this little thing was amazingly fast! The transfer rate is about 6MB/sec (determined using the HD Tach benchmark -- see http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach). But I cannot say this is the real performance as long as my card reader is not fast enough (the CF might be faster).

 

I decided to try it on my PocketPC: it works just fine -- it's not as fast as a 1GB Sandisk Ultra II, but the performance is not too far. My conclusion is that 20D and the 4GB Seagate Microdrive don't work well together (I guess this applies to the 8GB version as well). One thing to notice here is that the 1GB card was formatted FAT16 in the camera and the ST1 4GB card was formatted FAT32 with 4KB cluster size in my PC. I need to experiment more with formatting: maybe there is a winning combination.

 

Maybe Canon firmware doesn't know how to handle this beast properly -- don't forget that at the time the latest 20D firmware was released, there was no Seagate microdrive. I remember that Canon had some issues with Lexar CF's fixed in 1.0.4 version of the 20D firmware. The current version (2.0.3) was released in October 2005 before any Seagate microdrives.

 

Hitachi microdrives are essentially IBM microdrives -- well known from 2000 when the 512MB and 1GB microdrives were announced. Digital camera manufacturers had enough time to tune-up their firmware for Hitachi/IBM devices. Seagate is the new player in this market: ST1 comes in two capacities -- 4 and 8 GB -- and the new ST1.3 will be 12 GB. Both are supposed to have a 2MB internal data buffer that (in theory) should help -- compare this with 128KB from Hitachi/IBM. However, in a 20D camera Seagate is slower! I bet Canon 20D firmware doesn't know how to take advantage of the 2MB internal data buffer and the way ST1 physically organizes the information. Remember, a microdrive is a mechanical device and the layout of the file system can make a huge difference by minimizing the seek times. A compact flash doesn't have this problem!

 

I'm actually curious if Nikon has the same problem with ST1.

 

I decided that I can use the Seagate ST1 microdrive as a backup solution, especially when shooting static (i.e. architecture, landscapes, flowers, etc.). For the rest of the time the ST1 works fine in my PocketPC -- 4GB is still a good deal for $69...

 

I will continue to play with it and keep you posted.

[madwand]

<i><q>Well, I've got the same 4GB Seagate Microdrive (ST1) in Seattle (from Frys) and I noticed the same issue with my 20D:<br><br>

 

- start-up time 5...15 seconds (depending on the number of files on the card) - writing one RAW + JPEG takes about 40...50 seconds - writing a burst of 6 RAW + JPEG photos takes 4...5 minutes - formatting takes ~15 minutes - reviewing photos is very slow and a painful process<br><br>

 

I formatted the CF on a PC using 32KB cluster size: no visible effect in my Canon 20D. </q></i><br><br>

 

Something's definitely wrong. In my Oct. 24/2004 post of Seagate MD performance in a 20D, linked above, I measured 40s to write 20 RAW frames.<br><br>

 

My old Seagate MD was probably pulled off some audio device and bought off eBay (I've forgotten the details). It's a 5GB ST1.<br><br>

 

Doing tests matching the above, I get:<br><br>

 

Startup (with >100 images on card): near instantaneous.<br><br>

 

Single image RAW + JPEG fine write time: 6s.<br><br>

 

Burst of 6 RAW + JPEG fine write time: 30s.<br><br>

 

Formatting -- not tested, formatted externally using FAT32, 32KiB sectors.<br><br>

 

Image browsing (RAW) -- about 1 per second, a little sluggish, but very usable; faster when flipping through multiple images. <br><br>

 

In your place, I'd send the card back to Fry's and move on -- my almost 2-year old 5GB Seagate that was not intended to be used in a camera, and was not expected by Canon, performs much better, and my even older Hitachi performs even better. BTW, I have one of the first production 20D's and am using the 2.02 firmware at present.

[madwand]

To clarify a couple of points in my above post:

 

I used RAW + JPEG large fine in the recent tests. The original tests were done with just RAW and black images (lens cap on) for consistency and reproducibility. To more closely match other tests above, I just used random non-black images for today's measurements.

 

I also just timed the erasing of 230 or so mostly RAW + a handful of RAW + JPEG large fine images in camera, and that took around 75s.