Portable Photo Drive Failure and Recovery

[RW]

Hi, I own this Image Tank compact flash portable photo drive which I've always suspected was gray market but wasn't sure since I bought it off an internet electronics dealer, and it crashed on me when I was trying to upload pictures from a short trip I took to Vegas in December. It took my entire computer down with it. So I had to reformat my computer and then lost half of my photos from the trip that were on the drive. The only reason why I had the other half was because I used CF card recovery software to get those photos. But then the other day I decided to try booting up the drive again on another computer. Still didn't work. So I decided to try plugging in a 4gb CF card and see if I could upload the files onto the card. It took all day but it worked! Though the drive is otherwise useless. The lesson I learned is that for my next trip, I should get an Epson P-4000 which I would assume is more reliable than an Image Tank, for the day shooting then double backup onto a laptop / portable HD / DVD at night.

I have two posts about this on my photo blog as well. http://www.rwongphoto.com/fieldreport

[peterkrogh]

Richard,
If you use the Epson, you may want to also get a second USB drive as a backup, if you intend to erase cards in the field.  All of those devices are laptop hard drives, which are subject to failure.  Prudence dictates having the images in at least two places.

I recall that when I saw the device at Imaging USA, Epson told me that you can plug in a USB drive and duplicate the files to it without the help of a computer.
Peter

[RW]

Thanks Peter. Interesting. I do intend to get a USB drive as well since they can easily fit into my computer bag. Reliability and all that backing up stuff is the one thing that drives me nuts about digital. Though I don't miss having to clone out scratches from film.