B M Mills 
, Sep 10, 2008; 02:09 a.m.
For the benefit of others I thought I would post some comments about this portable hard drive which came on my
recent expedition throughout Asia.
Battery life - It was charged fully before I left, and when I got home 31 days later approximately 50% of this charge
remained. Use during this period was uploading of 10x 4GB cards of RAW images and 4x 2GB cards of JPG, plus
an estimated 2.5 hours total of using the device as a viewer (eg. showing stored images to friends)
Upload time - A full 4GB SDHC card took around 9 minutes to upload (I use Lexar Platinum 66x cards)
File errors/problems - nil to report
Ease of transfer to home PC - files could be easily found and transferred via either Windows Explorer or through
Nikon Transfer
Tips - Once I was satisfied that my cards were copying without problems, I turned off the preview thumbs where not
required. This sped up the unit by a noticeable amount. I was still able to do random checking using the browser
function prior to erasing/reformatting the card. Also, as the unit is underpinned by a standard laptop HDD and USB
interface, I was able to store scans of essential travel documentation (eg. passports, e-tickets, bookings, visas) on it
as a backup to my hard copies.
Summary - Delighted with this unit and would recommend it to anyone. Pleasantly amazed that the promises about
battery life held up as absolutely true - with careful use, this device could do a couple of months for me in a really
remote location without need for external power.
Robert Body , Sep 10, 2008; 02:44 a.m.
I transferred 16gigs in 20minutes with default settings and preview on. It's a nice product, I wish the interface was more sophisticated but it's quite usable. A friend's no-name SD card didn't read at all in it, surprisingly because my other PC reader read it just fine. There is no competition to this product, no other product has the battery life nor the transfer speed....... and those 2 are the most important features... great product.
There was a posting a while back about someone taking the product over 10,000ft and 15,000ft in Himalayas and it performed very well, no issues.
Good job
B M Mills , Sep 10, 2008; 02:54 a.m.
Robert - the posting about the Himalayas was initiated by me before the Chinese Govt decided to give this little Aussie (along with other Olympic-related tourists) a hard time getting visas into Tibet, causing my plan to change to elephant riding on the Thai-Burma border.
So while I tested it, as written above, for over a month all my use of the device was at low altitudes and in warm-to-hot and humid conditions. I believe that the tech specs of the hard drive have a limitation of 15000ft so I imagine you'd have to be careful to take images on cards/solid state when higher up and only back up to the Sanho device once below 15K.
Oh and for other readers, my reported transfer speed was with SD card. I believe CF cards fly much faster again in these devices.
Henry D'Silva , Sep 10, 2008; 10:49 a.m.
Bernard Mills, I agree with you. I use this product and it's fantastic.
Erik Christensen , Sep 10, 2008; 11:17 a.m.
Bernard - which of the 2 models did you use?
I am happy to hear about the good performance of the Hyperdrive, as I am/was in doubt if it should be
the Vosonic VP8860.
Joel Jermakian 
, Sep 10, 2008; 11:22 a.m.
Just so it is out there, I use and love a much cheaper version of what is essentially the same thing - the Digimate III. I bought it from Meritline quite a while ago and recently upgraded from a tiny 20GB drive to a 80GB unit. It is USB2.0, relatively fast, though probably not 1G/min, small and reliable in my experience. It comes with everything you need apart from a 2.5" hard drive.
Oh, and the price was $35 when I bought it.
