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Digital FOCI Photo Safe II (PST-251) I read many good reports on the Digital FOCI Photo Safe II battery operated drive. I requested a review unit and they sent a package containing: Photo Safe II
Photo Safe II has been tested to support the following memory card formats: I tested the Photo Safe II while at home and in China using SanDisk Storage cards. I used these cards in the HTC Ozone Phone from Verizon Wireless, The Casio EX-FC100 Camera, my S10 Camera, and the Genius G-Shot 520 Photo/Video Camera. I used MiniSD storage cards in the phone as well as in adaptors when using the cameras. SCREEN DETAILS WHEN SAVING FROM STORAGE CARD TO PHOTO SAFE II
The Photo Safe II does not give actual access to the individual photos and videos until you connect to a computer. This is why I did not empty the SanDisk Cards until I got home and copied all the files from the Photo Safe II to a computer and Flickr. If you would feel more comfortable with a product that allows you to instantly view the saved photos and play the saved videos you might wait for the Digital FOCI Picture Porter 35. At this time pricing is not on the website. CLICK HERE to see a comparison of the products. When I returned home I plugged the drive into a USB port on the Lenovo ThinkPad R400 loaner and checked the drive details. A message showed I had 132 GB free of 149 GB total on the drive. When the Photo Safe II competed its install a folder with the title “FILES” appeared on the screen. Clicking on that brought me to a list of folders with names from SD00001 to SD00011. This list also provided the date each folder was created. Opening a folder gave me the usual thumbnails for all of the photos and videos that were on the storage card that were saved to the drive that day. I was very happy to see all of the videos as well as the photos. I was able to play all the videos and view all the photos when they were on the Photo Safe II and it was connected to the ThinkPad using USB. You can also save music and other important files to the Photo Safe II as well. This means you can use it as a data backup drive before or while you are on the road. You can see the China and Tibet photos and videos on my Flickr site CLICK HERE Details for the Photo Safe II As a benchmark, It takes approximately 5 minutes to copy a full 1GB regular speed CF card to Photo Safe II; and approximately 3.5 minutes to copy a full 1GB Ultra II SD card to Photo Safe II. You cannot copy just a single file or a selected group of files from a card. You must copy the entire card. After I had added photos and videos to a card that had unused storage space the Photo Safe II copied the entire card all over again. This was fine as I had plenty of room on the drive. A new file folder is created to differentiate from the previous copy of the card. If you are running low on space in the Photo Safe II I suggest you never go back and add photos to a storage card after you save it to the drive. Just move to another memory card. Saving files twice is a poor use of drive space. Deleting files from a memory card can be done in the usual manner when the Photo Safe II is connected to a computer using USB. Files cannot be deleted directly from the drive. It must be through a USB cable and a computer. As with most external drives you need to use the “Safely Remove Hardware” process before you disconnect the Photo Safe II when using the USB cable to your computer. I suggest you purchase an extra battery and keep it charged at all times to insure access to the Photo Safe II. Batteries can be charged in the drive using the USB cable and a connector on a computer. It also can be charged in the drive using the included AC cable and USA plug. If traveling you should add a multi-country adaptor to your backpack as all plugs are not USA capable. I had no problem charging the Photo Safe II using an adaptor when in different locations as the drive accepts both 110 to 220 current.
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When I decided to put together a number of digital photo/video products for the China trip I thought I would like to have a battery driven photo backup drive to help me safely duplicate and save all the files created on the trip. When I did a little reading on the subject I found conflicting reports. Buyers seemed to have difficulty with saving files from storage cards. Some also were unable to verify the actual results while in the field. A few even found their valuable vacation or business photos, when saved to some portable drives, were not accessible when they tried to retrieve them after the trip.
