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Image Tank G2 Portable Storage

by James Wiseman

I decided to order an Image Tank G2 to replace my “Old reliable” Image Tank. The reasons I thought now would be a good time to upgrade are that the g2 has an internal rechargeable battery, the ability to confirm the number of files backed up, the LCD tells and usb2.0 connectity to my pc. The fact that the Image Tank G2 can also be used as a portable USB2.0 hard drive is yet another reason.

This shot shows a comparison of the older Image Tank on the left to the G2 on the Right

I already had a 40gig hard drive, so I opted to get the “bare bones” Image Tank G2 without a drive. Mounting a hard drive is super-easy and my drive is already formattee, so I gigured it would be a breeze. I ordered my kit from: www.insidecomputers.com and selected 2-day Fedex shipping for a very reasonable rate. To my surprise the kit showed up the next day and I was a very happy customer.

Here’s what was included:

Image Tank G2

AC converter

Car Cigarette Lighter Adapter

Faux Leather Carrying Case

Driver Disk

Instruction Book

The G2 no longer has multiple slots – they have adopted a CF Card Only stance, which is fine with me.

Mounting the hard drive was easy and I only needed to loosen four screws to do it. Here’s what the unit looks like inside:

The G2 with the backplate removed. USB2 connection at lower center.

Simply snap in the hard drive, replace the cover, and tighten the screws to have a complete unit.

The assembled unit

If your drive isn’t formatted, simply power up the Image Tank G2 and connect it to your PC via the USB cable. It doesn’t matter if your computer is USB1 or USB2 – either will work. Your PC should detect a device and you can “right click” to format it. The old Image Tank required the hard drive to be formatted FAT32. I didn’t reformat it, so I’m not sure about the G2 - hopefully it is NTFS compliant now.

Using the G2 is easy.

Backup photos: Plug in your memory card and push the EXE button to copy your files. The G2 will create a subdirectory for you. When the download is complete it will tell you how many files have been copied, so you can doublecheck you got everything.

Copy to Computer: Plug in the USB cable and your computer should auto-detect the drive as a USB Mass Storage Device. Then you can access it to copy the photos or the subdirectories (if you have more than one image backup) to your home PC

Erase Card: I don’t know why you’d want to do this, but you can erase all the folders off your card using the G2

Erase Subdirectory: If you have duplicate items or after a backup to your PC, you can erase the photos on the G2 independently – without having to hook it up to a computer.

Summary of Nice Features:

If you decide to get your Image Tank G2 without a hard drive, here is a link to a popular store with notebook hard drives for sale:

search.dell.com

From time to time they have 10% to 20% off sales and you can get some good deals. Other recommended vendors are Newegg.com and compgeeks.com

Conclusion: For the price the Image Tank G2 is highly recommended for travelers who like to shoot a lot and don’t want to carry a computer.