Flash cards vs Micro drive

[dennysb]

It has been a while since I have purchase either one. As of now , I have 3 micro drives; 1GB, 2GB and a 4GB.

Thinking of buying a new storage unit and wanted to get perspective on durability and reliability. I will assume that flash cards are significantly faster and with no latency.

THX

[sojournerphoto]

It has been a while since I have purchase either one. As of now , I have 3 micro drives; 1GB, 2GB and a 4GB.

Thinking of buying a new storage unit and wanted to get perspective on durability and reliability. I will assume that flash cards are significantly faster and with no latency.

THX
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I've got a couple of each, but I always prefer to use flash because I think it's probably a lot more robust and therefore secure.

Mike

[Ken Bennett]

Five or six years ago, a 1-gig Microdrive was 1/3 the cost of a solid state card. I think I paid $500 for the Microdrive (sheesh). 2-gig Compact Flash cards were less than $30 at Costco the last time I bought in any quantity. As they have no moving parts, are significantly faster to read and write, and can't be injured by dropping on the sidewalk or running through the wash, I'm not sure there's any comparison.

[dennysb]

Great,

That is what I believe was the current reality, just wanted to confirm someone other than the little voice in my head :-)

THX!

Five or six years ago, a 1-gig Microdrive was 1/3 the cost of a solid state card. I think I paid $500 for the Microdrive (sheesh). 2-gig Compact Flash cards were less than $30 at Costco the last time I bought in any quantity. As they have no moving parts, are significantly faster to read and write, and can't be injured by dropping on the sidewalk or running through the wash, I'm not sure there's any comparison.
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[DonWeston]

While all my old MDs work still, no failures over 7 yrs, even the original 340Mb, yes mb, not gb, I buy only solid state[read no moving parts] cards at this point. Why take a chance.....does not mean a regular card can't fail, like a first generation Transcend 8gb sdhc card, but that is a whole other story....no issues with any of the cf cards I have bought over 7 yrs....fwiw...Don

[panoak]

I bought a 4 Gb. Toshiba MD about the same time I got the 20D, and now they're basically married.  The big deal with MD's as I see it is that the Toshiba units were designed from the beginning to provide the kind of reliability that is needed in medical applications.  That was the bigger market, at first.  
     In almost every case where I've heard about the Chinese "off-brand" MD's, they are to be avoided, as failure is basically certain in a short time.
     More recently, I've joined the majority, and use only flash media.  I prefer 2 Gb. cards, because they hold a lot from my 20D and 400D, but if one is lost or somehow broken, I haven't lost everything.  I see people paying far too much for fast cards.  Unless you shoot in continuous mode a lot, the write speed almost doesn't matter, because any good DSLR has plenty of buffer.