Harley Ogier says the HyperDrive Colorspace is a fast and robust unit that can be easily upgraded

Sanho is responsible for the HyperDrive range of photo backup devices, an award-winning line of hand-held units that allow you to back up your digital photographs quickly and easily on the road.

The Colorspace Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) is the latest addition to its line-up.

Strictly utilitarian

The casing is made up of a black plastic front and a black metal back, with open slots for memory cards and a power cable. You won’t find plastic or rubber flaps for dust protection, nor will you find anything ergonomic. However, it’s a solid machine that’ll transfer files from your card at blistering speeds.

The model I reviewed came with a 120-gigabyte hard drive, which could easily hold tens of thousands of 12 megapixel JPEGs or several thousand RAW files; other versions are available up to 500 gigabytes. The drive is easily user-replaceable and a case-only version is available for people who want to install the drive themselves.

Quick save

The Colorspace UDMA provides extremely quick back-up of memory cards, at up to 40 megabits per second (depending on the speed your card allows). This means you can back up a two-gigabyte memory card in a minute.

Incremental back-up is supported so you can copy just those images that have been added or changed since your last back-up. This is a great time saver if you’re keeping your photographs on both your memory card and the back-up device.

Transfer from the UDMA to a computer is also reasonably fast when using a high-speed USB port on your PC. The unit appears as a removable hard drive on your computer, so there’s no software to install — just plug and play.

Sanho claims the battery will last for 250GB worth of back-ups between charges. However, that assumes you won’t view your photos on the screen, because — as you’d expect — doing so will put extra pressure on the life of the battery.

Usability issues

The Colorspace UDMA features an extremely bare user interface that looks like something out of MS-DOS days.

Browsing images is awkward using the inbuilt screen, especially when you have a few hundred in one folder (as most cameras tend to store their photos).

You can’t hold buttons down to scroll, so you end up pressing a button a few hundred times to get through 
a list.

However, there is a particularly nifty calendar view in which you can see a thumbnail for each day you’ve taken photographs, but it’s impossible to browse more than one month at a time.

But you can view picture histograms layered over the photo shown on the computer’s screen, which is really nifty.

Conclusion

The Colorspace UDMA is brilliant as a portable back-up device, but rather limited as a media viewer. It offers a lot of storage, can be upgraded and has a fast and powerful back-up system. However, its awkward user interface may limit its appeal for those who want more than a fast, solid, back-up unit.

Sanho Hyperdrive Colourspace UDMA Specs

• Manufacturer: Sanho Corporation

• Model: HyperDrive Colorspace UDMA

• Display: 3.2-inch LCD, 320 x 240 pixels

• Hard disk drive: 2.5-inch SATA, 120GB, user replaceable

• Memory card support: CompactFlash (Type I/II), MicroDrive, SD, SDHC, MMC, Memory Stick, MS MagicGate, MS Select, MS PRO, MS PRO MagicGate, xD, xD Type H/M

• Image Formats: JPEG, RAW (Canon CR2/CRW, Nikon NEF, Olympus ORF, Panasonic RAW, Pentax PEF)

• Battery: Lithium-ion

• Size: 133 x 75 x 26mm

• Weight: 298g (including battery)

Contact

www.hyperdrive.com

PROS

• Great storage capacity

• Powerful back-up features

CONS

Dated user interface

Design                      14
Performance             15
Features                   17
Image Quality           14
Value for money       15

TOTAL     75/100

This article if from D-Photo issue 29.

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