You gotta love a gizmo that does only one thing, but does it exceptionally well. And if you find such a thing, let me know, because the Wolverine FlashPac has a few little quirks that leave me wondering if I can trust it completely. And that’s not how you want to feel about your equipment when you’re out on assignment.
The Wolverine FlashPac is designed to copy files from your digital camera’s flash card and store the files until you have access to a computer.
The basic operation is simple. Push the power button. Insert your media card into the universal media slot (if you have a Compact Flash card, there’s a second slot for that.) Push the copy button.
My biggest frustration is that the LCD display doesn’t give you much feedback. It tells you the amount of storage left. It shows you that it is downloading files. It tells you when the download is done. But if you go away for a few minutes and come back to find the unit has gone to sleep there is no way to access the disc’s directory and confirm that yes, it did complete the download of all your files before nodding off.
Twice I found myself wondering if the Wolverine completely copied the contents of my 1 GB Smart Disk. Each time I decided to copy the disk a second time just to play it safe.
The good news, I suppose, is that the Wolverine safely brought back all of my photos from Ireland. And I didn’t find any duplicates from the two times that I copied twice.
The bad news is that it takes FOREVER to transfer the files from the Wolverine to my Intel iMac–maybe two or three hours. And three of the folders were funked-up: the Mac didn’t recognize them as folders. I had to download the three bad folders a second time before I could access the contents.
Here’s where your digital camera’s built-in file management comes in handy. By looking for gaps in the numerical sequence of the filenames I was able to identify missing shots and go back to the Wolverine and ferret them out. Maybe this was a one-time hiccup, I don’t know. Time will tell.
The drive is mechanical, meaning that a healthy fall out of a moving vehicle could wreack mayhem with your photos. But it seems solid enough for careful use.
All-in-all I was satisfied with the Wolverine, but I wouldn’t want to marry it.