Technical Details
- SD Card Slot
- Hi-Speed USB compliant (USB 2.0)
- Large 40GB Hard Disc Drive
- Quick Transfer Time (SD 4GB AVCHD: 10 min)
- Stores 9 Hours of High Quality AVCHD Footage
Product Description
The perfect storage unit for footage captured on SDHC memory cards. Comes with supplied accessories: Rechargeable Battery Pack (CGA-S303), AC Adaptor, AC Cable, USB Cable and Carrying Case.
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Customer Reviews
"Excellent SD back up device" 2009-03-26By
TravelGuy (Fremont, CA)
I always have the need to have a place to copy my photos on my SD cards when I am on extended photo taking trips. This can be for the reason of needing to create space on the SD cards or just to create a backup of the contents on SD cards.
I had owned a Creative Zen Vision W before. It was a very expensive device with a beautiful LCD and did a lot more things than I ready need it to do. I only want to be able to dump the contents of the SD card to a Hard Drive while on the road and later copy it to my computer storage when I get home. So I sold the Creative.
Lately, I decided to shop for another device like it but one that is a lot less expensive and did only what I needed. I looked at many similar devices some with small a LCD and player function.
I decided on the Panasonic VW-PT2; and I made the right decision, for the purpose that I need this device for.
The VW-PT2 is a very simple Hard Drive based device that will copy any content on the SD or SDHC card that you insert. It creates FAT32 folders with a date stamp. The date is derived from the date of the photo files on the SD card. So there is no need to set any clock on the unit itself. Very simple design. Later when you attach the device to your computer (PC or Mac), it shows up as a USB storage device. You can then copy the folders onto your computer storage and organize them as you wish.
The VW-PT2 does not have any complicated user menus to learn. It communicates with you via a few LEDs and push buttons. It uses a rechargeable Lithium battery that should last for 90 minutes of copying. Each 4GB SD card is claimed to take about 10 minutes to copy to the Hard Drive. So you can copy quite a lot on one charge of the battery. Battery charging takes about 1.5 hour. The charger is 100-240V world voltage.
Operation:
Insert an SD or SDHC card into the SD card slot.
Turn the Power switch to ON.
Wait for the COPY light to be lit.
Press the COPY button.
The COPY light will start to flash indicating that stuff from the SD is being copied. The SD card slot access light also blinks indicating SD card is being read.
When the copy process is done, the COPY light stops flashing and stays on solid.
You can now turn the POWER switch OFF and take out the SD card.
That's it.
Other lights and buttons:
Hard Drive remaining capacity indication: there are 3 lights (FULL, 75%, 50%) to indicate the Hard Drive fullness.
CANCEL button: if you want to cancel a copy process that has been started. Pressing this will remove what was just copied to the Hard Drive.
ERROR light: if there was a problem reading an SD card. You are instructed to power off and re-insert the SD card and try again.
Low battery: it is indicated by the POWER light flashing slowing while using the unit.
Auto Power Off: when the unit is not used for 3 minutes, it shuts down itself to conserve battery.
There is also an Hard Drive Safety feature where the copy process is stopped if the unit was moved. It can be defeated by a switch.
This is a very simple and inexpensive device for a photographer to have as a backup device in the field when carrying your laptop is not practical.
"Simple to use, great back-up device" 2008-09-10By
MW (Miramar, Florida United States)
I use this with my Panasonic HDC-SD5 camcorder (see my review on that) and it works great as a back-up device once my SD card gets full. I normally only use 4GB cards because they transfer so easily onto a 4.7GB DVD-R disc. I transfer the video first to the blank DVD-R through a Panasonic VW-BN1 DVD burner (great device), and then back the data up to this hard drive prior to erasing/formatting the SD card so it's ready to go again.
Once this device gets full I will download the files to my external hard drive through my PC for storage, and then clean this hard drive off and start over again.
The instructions are very clear; make sure you take the time to read them so you will understand what all of the flashing lights are about, the proper procedure in using it, etc. It charges in about an hour so you can take it on the road or in the field with you sans the power cord.
When you put in the SD card, it will alert you if there is not enough room on the hard drive to take all of the data. It does this through lights indicating if the drive is full, at 75%, or at 50%. If all is a go (the copy light goes green), you hit the copy button, the green light flashes on and off while it records the data from the card, and then the same light turns solid green once the transfer is complete.
It also has a safety mode switch you can activate that will stop the data transfer if the device is moved, unlevel, or shaken during the transfer procedure. Oddly, it states in the instructions that it will stop anyway if this happens, so I am not all that sure why they have the switch...perhaps it makes it even more sensitive to movement during a file transfer. Anyway, I keep it on just in case.
If you should stop the transfer halfway, any data copied up until that point will be erased. Every time you perform a new transfer, it creates a new file in the order that you performed the transfer. Copying a fairly full 4GB SD card takes about an hour. I gave it four stars instead of five because 1) for the price, which interestingly is wide in range at the time of this review for some reason, it should really be 80GB instead of 40GB and 2) for only a 40GB storage device it is awfully large, heavy, and clunky, presumably because of its capability to be charged/store power.
Overall I am very satisfied with it. I hope this information was useful.
"Used this in Italy" 2007-10-21By
Michael Palmer (Dallas, TX United States)
Having the Panasonic HDC SD1 camcorder and 2 SDHC chips 4GB and was going to Italy. I thought this VW-PT2 40GB hard drive from panasonic would be a good place to store my video footage. However, I never used up the 2 SDHC chips. I did go ahead and copy all the video onto the VW-PT2 hard-drive basically as a backup copy in case I lost my camera or customs took the video camera.
Copying worked flawlessly. I only wish Panasonic would have a little light that said "DONE" or FINISH when the process was complete. I never really could tell when everything had been copied, so I just left the unit alone for an hour.
Transferring to my computer using Ulead VideoStudio 11 was fairly easy, having no experience with Ulead. It did take me sometime to figure out how to download the files, but once I did, it seems to working pretty well.
Overall, the VW-PT2 works great and stored my video data as advertised. The $199 for a 40GB hard-drive is a bit pricey, but I would recommend it for anyone traveling to use as a backup device for precious video.
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