Back from Greece and ready for action!

My PhotoBank worked fine on the trip, but my dad’s didn’t work at all. It seems that SmartDisk has been bought by Verbatim, who continues to service the product. I tried to get it replaced or fixed and didn’t get very far with Verbatim. My dad’s perseverance finally paid off and he got it replaced. It seems to work fine copying from memory cards, but the real problem here is getting the thing to work reliably as a hard drive on our Macs. SmartDisk chose to format the hard drive in FAT32, which ostensibly would make it more cross-compatible (Mac’s and PC’s can both read and write FAT32), but it will not consistently mount when plugged into a Mac.

I have a PC here I can use in the rare case of actually needed to recover photos from it, but it’s frustrating to see something labeled as Mac compatible that doesn’t really work well with a Mac. Anyone know of a better product in this area that’s come along? It seems like a huge market. But, like any kind of backup that’s not automated, your memories are still at the mercy of you remembering to back them up.

The Hyperdrive looks pretty solid, though it’s considerably more than the PhotoBank. Maybe you get what you pay for. Does anyone have any direct experience with this device?

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget