CompactDrive – YLovePhoto https://www.ylovephoto.com/en Intrigued by photography Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:40:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 CompactDrive PD70x User Manual https://www.ylovephoto.com/en/2011/07/12/compactdrive-pd70x-user-manual/ Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:27:10 +0000 https://ylovephoto.com/en/?p=10659 For those still looking for it, here is the user manual of the CompactDrive PD70x (and its HD80 brother).

]]> CompactDrive PD70x / HyperDrive HD80 firmware https://www.ylovephoto.com/en/2011/06/24/compactdrive-pd70x-hyperdrive-hd80-firmware/ Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:32:16 +0000 https://ylovephoto.com/en/?p=10597 Some people still know about the CompactDrive PD70x Flash card reader. During a long time, it has been considered as the fastest portable hard drive to copy your flash cards to a hard disk.

CompactDrive PD70x

Unfortunately, being a relatively bulky product and no longer supported makes it a problem for the owners still wishing to make it go further. One of the major hurdles is that the firmware is essentially gone since the various companies using it have disappeared from the radar.

It was first replaced with the HyperDrive HD80 (apparently, the same electronic content under a slightly different mechanical design). But it did not last very long. However, they both share the same firmware (according to all that I read in all these years – I owned a CompactDrive only up to when I broke it in my bag).

So, here I offer the firmware for these two dramatically good portable hard drives in hope to help its owners.

The newest firmware resolves compatibility issues with certain Lexar CF cards; Fixes bug in usage of fragmented non-contiguous hard disk space (requires reformatting of hard drive); But, it is still unclear if this solves all the 2GB/4GB card problems.

The new firmware increases the battery charge time (to better compatibility with most recent large capacity batteries).

Of course, as you can expect, I make no guarantee that this is working but it’s more than worth the effort.

Nota Bene: If the company now holding the rights to these two designs are willing to contact me, I’ll be pleased. And we can immediately agree to replace my local storage of these firmware files with the more official ones. I’m not intending to break any copyright, just bringing support to some poor chaps with the files I could finally collect from other people using the PD70x and the HD80.

]]>