On Oct 22, 2006, at 7:33 AM, Paul Fretheim wrote:
<snip>
I was on a long hike with a young woman recently. We were climbing Mt.
Whitney from the west side, which requires a long approach of a few
days
hiking. She was using a Canon digital and had a small hard drive with
her to store her images so she could download the card in her camera
and
have more space to shoot. After 5 days of hiking in somewhat dusty
conditions, the hard drive malfunctioned and most of her work was lost.
I wonder if it was altitude (reduced atmospheric pressure) rather
than dust? I recall reading somewhere about people encountering
altitude limits on either hard drives or possibly even compact memory
cards. (I can't quite see why a card would be affected, though.)
Of course, dead is dead, regardless of the cause. But if it was air
pressure, "better dust filters" wouldn't make any difference. And,
gee, I thought that drives were sealed anyway. ?
eo
I don't know how frequent a problem that is with using digital on long
treks, but I was glad I was using film.
