V1.02
Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
Page 116
•
Some card readers don’t work readily with Microdrives
due to power consumption requirements (especially true if
you connect your card reader through a USB hub).
•
The mechanical nature of a Microdrive makes it likely to
have a shorter usable lifespan than a CompactFlash
.
• Microdrives are slower than state-of-the-art solid-state
CompactFlash cards
. The fastest Microdrive writes at
about 6MB/sec, while a UDMA CompactFlash card can
write at 45MB/sec on a D300.
• Microdrives can’t be used to update camera firmware
.
Nikon recommends against using a Microdrive for
updating camera firmware, and several users I know can
confirm this has caused troubles on earlier Nikon DSLRs.
If you use a Microdrive with your D300, I’d recommend the
following:
• Avoid using it in extremely cold or hot weather.
• Always carry one or more spare CompactFlash cards with
you, in case the Microdrive fails. I carry several memory-
based cards with me as backups.
• Turn the power switch on the D300 to
OFF
when you’re
not using it; otherwise, you run a slight risk of the
Microdrive overheating. (Note that this seems to conflict
with my earlier comment about battery life; the issue here
isn’t solely the battery, but trying to keep the camera
electronics from generating heat, which ultimately may
impair Microdrive use.)
• Copy images from the Microdrive to your computer as
soon as it is practically possible. Don’t accumulate images
on the drive over the course of several days or weeks if
you can avoid it. That’s because the Microdrive is more
prone to physical damage that could result in total loss of
image data.
Tip:
If you have a Microdrive (or CompactFlash card) die on you
and you absolutely need the images that were on it,
Drivesavers Data Recovery (
http://www.drivesavers.com
)
can perhaps recover them for you, though this is not an
