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Datels 4GB Hard Drive for PSP Reviewed

PSP News writes "The announcement that Datel was producing a 4GB Hard Drive addon was just the thing the PSP Community was looking for and today Lik Sang has done a great hands on review of the product that provides more details and a much nicer price of $199 instead of the rather high $249 which was originally posted."

28 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Whats the point? by Hellad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With sony's efforts to kill the homebrew market, whats the point? For music? iPod. I guess for video, but a giant harddrive like that seems to be a detriment rather than an addition...

    1. Re:Whats the point? by 8127972 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Sony won't kill the Homebrew market. After all, these were the same geniuses that came up with copy protection that was defeated by a magic marker.

      --
      This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
    2. Re:Whats the point? by richy+freeway · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It doubles up as a larger battery as well.

    3. Re:Whats the point? by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      are you nuts? the psp would be the killer portable video platform, and it falls on it's face because they did not put a HDD in it to begin with.

      If the PSP was a game,video, pocket tivo playback, mp3 player all in one with a nice big vivid screen it would start to take a helluva bite out of the ipod market share.

      it had the potential, but as usual, sony stopped short.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Whats the point? by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, for those who have legally dumped their games onto memory sticks and played them, the speed increase is *wonderful*. A lot of games have very low load times now (and it seems a few have hard coded delays since they show the developer/publisher/etc splash screens with no UMD/memory stick activity.

      UMD is slow. Pathetically slow. (Slow enough that the UMDs often have dummy data near the beginning to shove the real data to the end of the UMD, where it can be read much faster, as well as possibly to make it easier to seek around). It's also nice that I can store my games in two 512MB memory sticks (plus have space for a few homebrew emulators). Much smaller than carrying a few UMDs and cases. This will be good for those with larger collections to carry around.

      Plus there are a few that use it as their iPod Video... holds a few more movies. Or a few more MP3s.

  2. PSP by Mr.+Vandemar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Portable Secret Porn! This will probably create some awkward public transportation encounters for me...

  3. Great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, it's only $450 to get a PSP+4GB hard drive. Um.. great.

    How long until we can just give up on and start addressing it as what it is: a high-end PDA with high-end PDA prices and, coincidentally, a D-Pad?

    In the meantime, just for the record, if you go out and buy a 30GB Video iPod plus a Nintendo DS, your grand total will be $420. Just saying.

    1. Re:Great. by Thud457 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      "In the meantime, just for the record, if you go out and buy a 30GB Video iPod plus a Nintendo DS, your grand total will be $ 420 . Just saying."

      So it also serves as bong?

      --

      the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  4. Bad idea by Work+Account · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you're going to use a battery-slurping technology like hard disk with all those moving parts, you should at least offer more than what modern RAM technology can store (i.e. the 1,2,4 GB range) on the disc since it wouldn't require any more size or power resources to go from 4GB HDD to 10 or 20GB.

    You'd get a lot more for your money and could actually store all your portable data, such as a decent song collection in mp3/ogg/wma as well as some videos of TV shows perhaps and some photos.

    --

    If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
    1. Re:Bad idea by ForestGrump · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you RTFA...eh I'll just give you the gist.

      They went out and tried a larger drive (6 gig I beleive).

      Long story short, the PSP firmware didn't like the 6 gigger and refused to use it.

      Grump

      --
      Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
    2. Re:Bad idea by snuf23 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      These aren't laptop style hard drives, they are Compact Flash micro drives which are much smaller and use less battery juice. The largest capacity I can seem to find is 6GB, or 8GB flash modules. The 8GB flash cards cost over $700.
      And as the other poster mentioned, the current PSP firmware won't work with drives over 4GB in size.

      --
      Sometimes my arms bend back.
  5. Can't put it in your pocket by blackmonday · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The pics show a much bulkier PSP. It's almost impossible to pocket a PSP now, forget about it with this add-on. The article has some interesting points, 4 GB is the largest capacity supported by the PSP's OS, and inside the gadget is a run of the mill 4GB microdrive that can be swapped with Compact Flash cards (better battery power?). They didn't reveal the battery impact of this gadget, its still in "testing" phase.

    1. Re:Can't put it in your pocket by Bri3D · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I believe the neoflash team(a group working on PSP memory adaptors) was able to add up to 36gb on the PSP and have recognized, and haven't tested higher simply because their hardware can't do anything higher. By the way an average PSP game is ~600mb, a movie ripped off UMD is 1.8gb exactly, and a good-quality feature length movie for 2.0(H.264) is about 600mb while for 1.5(MPEG4 Simple) it's about 800mb.

  6. Sounds good to me... by B11 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    4 gigs of pr0n to go? Sound like a winner to me.

    --
    insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
  7. Nicer is Relative by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Insightful
    a much nicer price of $199 instead of the rather high $249 which was originally

    $50/GB ($49.75+tax/GB for the purists) leaves me believing that you and I have a different definition of nicer.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  8. Combine this with the TV adapter! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    And this on the heels of the announcement of the TV adapter!
     
    So combine the hard drive plus the TV adapter, and your PSP can now serve as a ... comfortable home for a family of four?

  9. i'll be a proud owner.. by torpor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    .. not of PSP, but of GP32X of course [since its an extremely inexpensive open gaming system, ripe for hobby, potent new-market development], and i'll be bunging one of these babies in it which, fortunately for me, are not quite as expensive as the press releases parrot, at least not in decent bulk orders .. a condition undoubtedly set to diminish, as the market floods with bigger and bigger SD cards.

    so, i think its a bit passé to be cheery about this hard drive business on PSP. hard drives are terrible things to chuck around, and well .. no game machine worth its salt doesn't get chucked around, or at least thats the way i see game machines. i'd be happier if i could use SD in the PSP, natively, without requiring 3rd-party accessorization, anyway ..

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
    1. Re:i'll be a proud owner.. by Elranzer · · Score: 2

      Same here. I can't wait for the GP2X to come out and shut these PSP homebrew peeps up for good. PSP's homebrew "scene" was about as exciting as a dead Korean whore compared to Gamepark32's, and the GP2X is only gonna overshadow them both.

  10. Re:The simple question EVERYONE is asking by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Funny

    RAM technology sucks down power like like a coke whore on vacation in Columbia
      FLASH technology may or may not be a great idea either because of its relatively limited (compared to a HD) # of read/write cycles

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  11. Re:Whats the point (of posting w/o RTFA)? by ReverendLoki · · Score: 2, Insightful
    FYI, as the article states, this drive ships with a X2 battery with it. They even tested battery length, comparing a standard battery w/ a 1 GB memory stick against the x2 battery and 4 GB HDD. Direct quote:

    • Playing movie with Standard Battery and SanDisk 1G Memory Stick: 4.45 Hours.
    • Playing movie with Datel X2 Battery and Datel 4GB Hard Drive: *Still Testing* (Updated within 24h)

    Looks to me like the new setup is/was able to run for around 24 hours under the new setup. I'm not surprised, given the size of the thing... I mean, it fits the lines of the device fine so it doesn't look out of place, and supposedly it doesn't weigh that much, according to their stats, but damn that's huge for a handheld device. Certainly doesn't really qualify as a pocket device with those attachements.

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  12. On eBay... by Darius+Jedburgh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...you can buy a used laptop with better graphics and much more storage for less money than a PSP+4Gb HDD. Sure, an old laptop might not be something cool to show off to your friends, but you can run games on a laptop. Come to think of it, I think you could get a new laptop for that price.

    1. Re:On eBay... by AndreiK · · Score: 2, Informative

      Already have. 40GB Hard drive laptop, good power output, and a much bigger screen was under 200 dollars.

      I really can't see the appeal of a PSP.

  13. It is a ripoff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The 4GB drive inside is not a Hitachi or Toshiba, but a Magicstor microdrive, which is much ceaper. On February I purchased two Magicstor 4 GB microdrives for $79.95 a piece. How do the justify the $120 difference?. A box and a board are worth $120?. They wanted to charge even more, $249, that is $170 for the board and the box!!

  14. THE REAL REASON FOR THIS DEVICE by ferrellcat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let's not kid ourselves. This is not about putting 4GB of video on the PSP, it's about 4GB of GAMES on the PSP. Right now there is a pent up demand for a larger storage device on the PSP. Many people who became aware of the cracked status of the PSP ran out and bought a 1GB memory stick. This allowed them to play about 95% of the games released so far. (A small minority are larger than 1GB in size without ripping content from the game). Several people, however balked at the high price of a 2GB memory stick. This 4GB device from Datel serves a very important nitch. The size of a single PSP game is now no longer a blockade to playing a pirated version of said game, and with several games coming in at 200-500MB each, this means one can carry anywhere from 3-10 (or more) games (plus a whole bunch of emus&games) on the PSP at once.

  15. Datel broke MagicGate. by Col.+Bloodnok · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They must be using their GateCrasher chip to pull this off, since it has a memory stick interface.

    I have a lot of respect for that firm. Standing up to Sony and creating some really cool products for their closed platform - the hard way.

  16. Re:Whats the point (of posting w/o RTFA)? by ReverendLoki · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I got the impression based upon the fact that they used the past tense (updated) as opposed to a future tense (will update). I know these guys are in Hong Kong, and English is a pain in the ass, even for native speakers (just peruse these forums for further proof), but their grasp of the language was impressive enough based upon the rest of the article, that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Now if I'm wrong, so be it. However, based upon the language used, I assumed that they had already updated the psoting of their results within the first 24 hours, and planned to update it further later on. That's all.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  17. Re:Hm.... by Koil · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have had my PSP since near launch (1.5) and have just recently gotten into putting the Emu's on my PSP and I absolutely love it. I only have a 32Mb card that came with it, so this allows me Tetris, Doom, and my SNES Emu with MKII, MKIII, and Killer Instinct (man, I forgot how much I loved that game). I don't have any black bars or stretched screens when I use my NES/SNES emulators and I have run quite a few games through them. This may be the case when using the GameBoy emu's, as I haven't used any of those.

    Anyway, this addition is for the people who are looking for more space and allow there PSP to be all things to them, except and interactive PDA, I'll give you that. But for people that can watch there movies, assorted videos, play the homebrew apps, play the games released for it, listen to their MP3's, look at their pics, etc....I'd say that the PSP still has a pretty damn good bit going for it.

    Myself personally, I think carrying around a HD attached to the PSP does take away from the last P in the name, but to some...its not an issue.

    Its quite annoying to hear the fanbois from the Nintendo side, or whatever that GP32 (or a GP2X) system is, call us fanboi's, when thats JUST what you're doing yourselves. If thats what you want, fine...honky dorey, but don't knock the PSP because your tastes are different.

    The homebrew scene for PSP is doing quite well if you ask me. Its evolving, and will still take a bit longer before I think its as easy as it needs to be for the masses to come to it, but I think it will.

    *I* am waiting for them to find some adapter that isn't clunky and awkward as hell that will let me use other FLASH media, instead of having to pay Sony's insane prices for their's.

  18. Serious Storage by MrSteveSD · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you want some serious storage and it's really video you're interested in, the Archos Av500 is a much better idea. The Archos Screen is only a little bit smaller (4 vs 4.2 inches) but the 30GB storage makes up for it. It can also record TV directly and supports more video formats than the PSP.