CompactDrive PSD PD7X Serial Review Part 3 of 3

CompactDrive PSD PD7X Serial Review
Part 3 of 3

So now we have the hard drive properly formatted and installed
(see parts 1 and 2), and it is time try it out!

Here is the drive from the front, and below is the Compact Flash card.

And here we see the one drawback. The Compact Flash card below is fully inserted. If you look at the packaging again, you will see that this fact is actually shown on the box. Now I, for one, didn't really notice it, or think much of it. However, if I am bounding through Arches National Park and switch Compact Flash cards, and go to empty this one in the CompactDrive PSD PD7X, well, I'll have to live with the fact that the cover is open and the card is sticking out. This will make it harder to throw the CompactDrive PSD PD7X in my backpack while it copies the files off the card (a full 1 Gig card takes almost 5 minutes to copy over). This is an annoyance and a bit of a design flaw, but tolerable.

Once I have copied the test files over to the CompactDrive PSD PD7X, it is time to try getting them on to a computer. So I plug in the USB cable.

The drive was instantly recognized...

... installed itself and showed up in "My Computer".

A couple of clicks and I was browsing the pictures.

Typically in a reviewer will perform an exhaustive number of tests to benchmark the transfer speeds under various conditions. I haven't the time. All I can say is that the times seem to match the manufacturers claim. The Compact Flash to HD transfer speeds are about 4 megabytes per second ( or a bit over 4 minutes for a 1 Gig card) and the transfer from hard drive to computer via the USB2 cable is about what you would expect for USB2.

CONCLUSION:

The CompactDrive PSD PD7X meets my expectations, and does exactly what the manufacturer claims it will do. Be aware that any hard drive you install has to be formatted FAT32 before you install it, and this can be tricky if you only have Windows XP.