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Jul 23 2006
4GB Memory Stick PRO Duo Review
PSP Hardware Review | Memory
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| Summary: Very Nice, Big Time Storage
99
I can't imagine ever having too much storage for the PSP. Music, movies, saved games, flash games, and pictures all make the PSP the most impressive portable out there. You need room for all of that keen stuff. You could just carry a bunch of smaller sticks, but a long movie is going to need a big memory stick.
My biggest movie file so far is over a gig. I'm sure when I've ripped some of the longer ones they'll be even bigger. I also like to occasionally use the PSP to play music when I'm exercising or moving around a lot. You can get plenty of songs on this. This 4GB stick is just about perfect. Going on a long trip? Bring along ten average length movies, or the Lord of the Rings Trilogy! I really like that I would have to recharge the battery in my camera twice to full this card with the 1140 seven mega pixel photos it will hold.
This memory stick does have the words “High Speed” printed on it. I never felt that the speed of a memory stick was such a big deal. They are all fast enough for full motion video and clean sounding music. It's not really that important to me to save time copying files to the PSP. I pick what files and playlists I want, click sync, and find something else to do. But, this thing is so large if you are in a hurry you might want some halfway descent transfer speeds. You might be disappointed. I did some speed tests with this 4GB stick and a standard SanDisk 1GB memory stick. I did multiple tests with each stick, copying the same 437 meg directory repeatedly to each one. The “High Speed” 4GB stick came in at two minutes but the SanDisk stick averaged more than fifteen seconds faster. 437 megs and fifteen seconds may not matter, but almost ten times as much could get a bit tedious at times.
My only real problem with this memory stick isn't really it's own fault. The first thing I did when I got it home was put it in the PSP and plug that into my Mac so I could fill it with movies, songs, and pictures. The Mac did not appear to see it. No disc icon, nothing in PSPware. I found that odd as you might imagine. I put a 1GB stick back in the PSP to make sure everything else was fine. It was. I put the stick in my camera and took a few pictures, and then plugged the camera in. Same result. No iPhoto, no disc icon. I put the stick back in the PSP. I could pull up the pictures just fine. I put the stick in my television and it worked fine there too.
I was worried that I had wasted $122. I put the stick back in the PSP and this time I plugged it into my PC. Windows installed something and then opened up an Explorer window with contents of the stick. Basically everything I own can see the stick just fine, except the Mac. I did NOT like that. I called Apple to see what the deal was. While the tech had me on hold to ask around the office, I found the problem in the Mac Disk Utility. The stick did appear there so I ran a quick verify on it. I got an unknown error. But when I looked at the results window I saw “File system too large for a non fat 32 partition.” I tried re-partioning the stick and then the Mac could see it fine. The PSP could tell how big it was but I had to format it, which instantly renders it unusable for the Mac again. In the end this didn't wind up being a deal breaker. I can just use my PC to get movies on it until Apple realizes they need to do something about this crap.
Conclusion
Pros: Biggest Memory Stick available today. Can hold hours of music and moves or thousands of images.
Cons: Not really very “High Speed”. Not usable with a Mac, yet.
If you use a PC and you can get a good deal on this stick, you won't regret buying it. It cost less than my first 512 meg stick did when I got that one and this one is far more useful. The fact that it doesn't work with my Mac is only mildly irritating and I'm holding out hope that eventually Apple will deal with this.
REVIEW IT
PRODUCT INFO
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Comments
where the hell did u get a 4gb stick for $122
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thechosenone said: "where the hell did u get a 4gb stick for $122"
eBay! I just picked up a 2GB one for $41. As soon as it gets here I'll play with it and post a review.
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Watch out for counterfeit sticks on ebay, they are rampant.
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Other than the whole Mac issue it's working fine. I try not to buy anything on there unless the seller has a high rating anyway. There's enough stuff for sale on there to always be a bit picky.
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Well, hope it works fine. I got a 2gb from ebay a few months ago, seller had a decent rating, but the stick stopped being readable about 2 months in. I discovered it was a fake by looking up the telltale signs. A fake stick has packaging that is sealed with glue in small dots rather than a tight seamless seal around the blister packaging. Good luck with yours.
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You can fit 10 average length movies on this?
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I can fit 3 average length movies on my 1-gig, so I don't see why that is surprising...
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Funny that Mac can't read it. I know FAT partitions can't get above 4GB so maybe it can't read fat32 on memory cards. Maybe if it was formatted at less that full. maybe 3.5 or something it would work. Or copy all your data off. format it as FAT on a PC then see if the mac can read it.
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then copy all the folders back on
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how much free space on stick? in GB
both readings i.e. 988/949 mB on a 1GB before formatting
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I found the answer for using a 4 GB memory stick with a mac and the psp.
First put a functioning memory stick in the psp, plug it into the mac and run disk utility. then save the psp memory stick as a new disk image onto your desktop. eject the psp and put in the 4 gb memory stick.
Connect the psp with the card to the mac. Run disk utility on the mac. select the psp memory card and partition the disk with 1 partition using the MS DOS file system.
This will take up to 5 minutes. Once the new partition is done then click on first aid and verify the memory stick. Should get a green message that it is verified.
Now click restore at the top left of the disk utility.
Drag the disk image from the deskop (from above) to the source and drag the memory stick (probably called untitled 1) to the destination underneath.
Click Restore.
eject the psp and now my 4 gb (3.9 after this process) is available and recognized by the mac, pspware, etc.
I bought my 4 gb sticks for about $75-$90 on ebay. I was pysched to figure this one out. Hope it helps you too.
David
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Thanks David!
I was hesitant to buy a 4 gb stick because of the problems that theazhrei had in his review. But now that you figured out a workaround, I will be picking up a new stick the next time I see a big sale.
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daytondavid said: "I found the answer for using a 4 GB memory stick with a mac and the psp.
First put a functioning memory stick in the psp, plug it into the mac and run disk utility. then save the psp memory stick as a new disk image onto your desktop. eject the psp and put in the 4 gb memory stick.
Connect the psp with the card to the mac. Run disk utility on the mac. select the psp memory card and partition the disk with 1 partition using the MS DOS file system.
This will take up to 5 minutes. Once the new partition is done then click on first aid and verify the memory stick. Should get a green message that it is verified.
Now click restore at the top left of the disk utility.
Drag the disk image from the deskop (from above) to the source and drag the memory stick (probably called untitled 1) to the destination underneath.
Click Restore.
eject the psp and now my 4 gb (3.9 after this process) is available and recognized by the mac, pspware, etc.
I bought my 4 gb sticks for about $75-$90 on ebay. I was pysched to figure this one out. Hope it helps you too.
David"
Thanks David, but it didnn't work. When I click Restore I get a "Restore Error, Couldn not open connection to helper tool" message. I may play around with it some more to see if I can get it to work, maybe using Terminal or something.
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how to (or at least what I did) to make the 4GB PSP Stick compatible:
* if you have another PSP Stick that does work on PSPWare, connect it.
-- if you don't, read further below --
* show invisible files with a utility.
-- if you don't have one, read further below --
* copy all files and invisible files to a directory.
-- do not copy .DS_Store --
* unmount and disconnect your current stick and connect the 4Gb one.
-- if it does not mount on the desktop, open Disk Utility and select the device on the list (to avoid choosing the wrong one, do not connect anything else than the PSP). Choose the Erase tab, select format and name, and press the Erase button. If there was data, it will be erased. the process may take a few minutes. --
* once the 4Gb stick is mounted, drag every file you copied from the previous stick into the 4Gb stick.
* disconnect and reconnect again. your new stick should be recognized by PSPWare.
here is a link to have the files I had from my PSP (FW 1.50 but I don't think it matters) plus a little script to show invisible files:
link (click on "Free" on the right bottom, then on the next page type the letters in the box and press Download.)
hope this helps.
SK.edited: Dec 06 2006
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skalb said: "how to (or at least what I did) to make the 4GB PSP Stick compatible:
* if you have another PSP Stick that does work on PSPWare, connect it.
-- if you don't, read further below --
* show invisible files with a utility.
-- if you don't have one, read further below --
* copy all files and invisible files to a directory.
-- do not copy .DS_Store --
* unmount and disconnect your current stick and connect the 4Gb one.
-- if it does not mount on the desktop, open Disk Utility and select the device on the list (to avoid choosing the wrong one, do not connect anything else than the PSP). Choose the Erase tab, select format and name, and press the Erase button. If there was data, it will be erased. the process may take a few minutes. --
* once the 4Gb stick is mounted, drag every file you copied from the previous stick into the 4Gb stick.
* disconnect and reconnect again. your new stick should be recognized by PSPWare.
here is a link to have the files I had from my PSP (FW 1.50 but I don't think it matters) plus a little script to show invisible files:
link (click on "Free" on the right bottom, then on the next page type the letters in the box and press Download.)
hope this helps.
SK."
OK this was what I did. It worked. But now when I put more than one movie file onto the card it reads them as unsupported data even thuogh they're fine. Sadly I got duped on ebay but am hoping the memory card is still ok to use. Somehow I feel it could be due to the speed. It cannot load all the data in time may be or something that happened during disk utility caused it to go a bit mental. Any ideas?edited: Feb 15 2007
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