[LV Dan]

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Do the Microdrives (such as the Hitachi 4G version) work well in the *istD, or would it be better to use a 133x CompactFlash drive?

Are the Microdrives reliable?

Ironically, the Hitachi Microdrive specifies a much higher operating shock specification (200G@2 mS) than the Lexar Pro CompactFlash (50G@11mS). But we all know how specifications fare in the real world!

[dwinnert]

Compact Flash is more reliable.....You have something with moving parts and one without....Friend of mine runs a photo studio in San Francisco and they phased out all Microdrives.

Do the Microdrives (such as the Hitachi 4G version) work well in the *istD, or would it be better to use a 133x CompactFlash drive?

Are the Microdrives reliable?

Ironically, the Hitachi Microdrive specifies a much higher operating shock specification (200G@2 mS) than the Lexar Pro CompactFlash (50G@11mS). But we all know how specifications fare in the real world!

[roy]

i've had a 340meg m/d in my fuji for 4 years without a problem. still going strong. one thing to think about is the m/d uses more power.

[mattdm]

Are the Microdrives reliable?

Pretty amazingly reliable for a tiny hard drive -- but of course there's more to go wrong.

Either way, though, do you really want to put 4GB of eggs in one basket?

[LV Dan]

A Hitachi 4G Microdrive comes with the *istD body I am looking at on eBay and I was wondering if I should consider the value microdrive into the equation:

eBay: Used Pentax *ist D 6.1 Megapixel (item 290119124824 end time May-26-07 12:27:13 PDT)

Speed is another area of concern for me.

[davemdsn]

Memory is so flippin' cheap any more that I wouldn't consider it a purchasing motivator. I also agree that images should be spread out over a few cards, not all on one. If something goes wrong you could lose all your images. I use 6 2gig cards and 5 1gig cards (rarely need to dip into those).

Great camera by the way. I had the *istD for 3 years, just sold it to my father-in-law. I was going to keep it but I rarely ever need two cameras and my father has the K100 if I need to borrow it for a second to my K10.

[RiceHigh]

Do the Microdrives (such as the Hitachi 4G version) work well in the *istD, or would it be better to use a 133x CompactFlash drive?

Yes, I had the Hitachi 4GB MD and I had used it to shoot thousands of shots. It works very well although it was a bit power hungry.

Are the Microdrives reliable?

I dropped it for a few times from a few feet and no problems of any kind was seen. You know, it is very difficult to get the MD out of the *ist D CF compartment :-(

The static shock resistance, i.e., when the MD is not running, is actually much higher than one would expect and suspect.

Ironically, the Hitachi Microdrive specifies a much higher operating shock specification (200G@2 mS) than the Lexar Pro CompactFlash (50G@11mS). But we all know how specifications fare in the real world!

Anyway, I cannot see if there is any reason to choose MD now as the CF cards are damn cheap. Back to 2003 in the *ist D era, to get a 4GB card is just like a dream, with its ridiculous high price and limited availability, even the 4GB Hitachi MD was selling very expensively. So, I got a Creative MuVo2 and you know what I had done! (for all those who had thought about that! ;-))