Portable Storage for Travel

[brutus123]

Hi all,

I'm looking at options for portable storage to take along on a trip to USA in August. Since I'm not taking a laptop etc I was hoping for some advice on USB drives of a reasonable capacity (say 20GB) to enable me to download CF card photos using the USB 2.0 of an Internet cafe PC.

Any assistance or advice would be appreciated as this stuff is all new to me.

[SmartWombat]

I've used several.

My current choice is the Hyperdrive Space.
Makes copies of Cards, verifies the copy, and acts as a USB drive.
You just switch on, plug in the memory card and press copy.
No other fancy viewing functions, no large screen, just 5 control buttons.
Excellent battery life.

Before that I used a Vosonic Xsdrive VP2160.
Even simpler with only two buttons. On/off and Copy.
But it has much shorter battery life.
The Hyperdrive is really outstanding in that regard.

[another view]

I've been happy with my LaCie and it does have a built-in USB transfer cable. Also heard good things about the WD Passport drives - both are very small.

Only thing is, I'd be afraid to have only one copy of important shots. In other words, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with shooting, downloading to a portable hard drive and then reshooting the same cards before I had a chance to do another backup. If something happens to the drive (gets lost, stolen, dropped), you're out of luck.

If you can make DVD copies at the same time you transfer to the HD, you might be fine but another option would be to just buy a bunch of cards. Looks like a lot of 4gb cards are in the $50 USD range at newegg.com but I'm not sure of their policy regarding international shipments. A couple or few of these, plus what you already have, should be a fair amount of storage - assuming your camera works with 4gb cards.

[gahspidy]

I had started a thread about this in the other forum Portable Storage Devices . . .
After looking over many of the available units out there for backing up your cards I went with the Epson P-3000. I intend to write a review about it soon. So far, I find it to be everything I wanted. Upon receiving it the battery was very low as it had not been charged yet. With the low battery I was able to get my self familiar with it, transferred 2GB of images to it (rather quickly too) and viewed the images over and over checking out all the features and functions. The battery with it's low charge held up well. I later charged the battery (3 hours) and have been using it on and off again and the battery is still at full indicator. I don't see battery life being a problem at all. The screen is amazing. Very sharp.
For me, it wa a choice between this, the Digital Foci, and the Wolverine unit but the Epson had the better screen, Adobe color space support, and full RAW functionality.
Also had a 50.00 rebate from Epson good if oredered by June, 30th.

[fx101]

If all you care about is huge space and backup speed the hyperdrive's your tool. For image previewing the epson's your bet.

[Loupey]

I just returned from an extended trip abroad where I had to travel extremely light (no laptop, minimal photo gear) so I took a Sanho 120GB hyperdrive. I also purchased two 16GB CF cards to add to my existing two 8GB cards.

Looking back, the 16GB cards were a mistake as the hyperdrive was so useful and effective that I could have only used the smaller 8GB cards and simply cycling between them faster. Each night, I had about 500 RAW files which I would transfer to the hyperdrive in only a few minutes. I averaged 3~5 days per charge on the hyperdrive depending on how much I viewed the transfered images.

I did not have any other means to make backups and I erased all images from the CF cards every night.

[another view]

Looking back, the 16GB cards were a mistake as the hyperdrive was so useful and effective..........I did not have any other means to make backups

But if the hyperdrive wasn't so good (succumbed to a drop test, had a bad day) then the cards would have been a lifesaver. Murphy's Law usually applies to me. In the last year (since I've had a laptop), I haven't had to go away for long enough to run out of card space without having my laptop and backup hard drive for transferring - I have two copies this way. I guess by now I have about 10gb of card space. Five years ago that would have cost a fortune but not the case these days. Solid-state cards can handle all sorts of abuse, don't take up hardly any room and weigh next to nothing. Pretty much ideal for traveling.

[fx101]

But if the hyperdrive wasn't so good (succumbed to a drop test, had a bad day) then the cards would have been a lifesaver. Murphy's Law usually applies to me. In the last year (since I've had a laptop), I haven't had to go away for long enough to run out of card space without having my laptop and backup hard drive for transferring - I have two copies this way. I guess by now I have about 10gb of card space. Five years ago that would have cost a fortune but not the case these days. Solid-state cards can handle all sorts of abuse, don't take up hardly any room and weigh next to nothing. Pretty much ideal for traveling.

True, but what I usually do while travelling is when I get home at night I upload my files to an online FTP server (I pay $30 for about 50GB)). That way I'm backed up in case something happens the next day. I have a 16GB card but I find I usually just never end up reaching 16GB. I feel like I HAVE to back up every once in a while so in that case 4GB cards are more convinient (and faster).

[Loupey]

But if the hyperdrive wasn't so good (succumbed to a drop test, had a bad day) then the cards would have been a lifesaver.

Very true and I thought about that every night before I did the "erase - all".

I originally planned to use the 16 GB cards this way: shoot with one card, backup to the hyperdrive, protect the very best images on the CF, delete the rest, slowly build up a file of protected images until capacity was reached, and then start on card #2. That way, I figured I'd at least have the very best images backed up onto the CF cards.

But I was really too worn out every night to go through every image and do that (I fell asleep a couple times during the backup process). And I treated the hyperdrive more preciously than my camera during the entire trip.

I also planned to use the hyperdrive to back up images from my wife's G9 which uses SD cards. Never had to do that as we had enough SD cards/capacity. But my aunt handed me the SD card out of her P&S at the end of the trip and I copied all the images she took in a few seconds. A hidden benefit if traveling with multiple shooters/cameras.

[another view]

I fell asleep a couple times during the backup process

Must have been a good trip! I know you and fx101 know what you're doing and not trying to suggest otherwise - just devil's advocate.

fx, I know someone who might really benefit from an FTP site like that but I know very little about all of that. Can you point me to what you're using? Thanks.

[fx101]

Must have been a good trip! I know you and fx101 know what you're doing and not trying to suggest otherwise - just devil's advocate.

fx, I know someone who might really benefit from an FTP site like that but I know very little about all of that. Can you point me to what you're using? Thanks.

I use exavault. I pay $35 a month for 50GB. www.exavault.com

It's easy, pretty cheap at around 80 cents per gigabyte, and convinient when I'm travelling since there's not a lot of software to use.

[gahspidy]

I did not have any other means to make backups and I erased all images from the CF cards every night.

I think in doing that, just having alot more CF cards would have done the trick and made traveling a little lighter without the Sanho.
For me, the idea behind the portable storage would be to have security backup, so that that the files are on two locations. Fx 101 idea of the ftp set up sounds good too, but then I need internet access and I would imagine alot of time.

[fotomatt]

I use my epson p2000. I have owned this for years and it still works great...a bit slow....but holds 40 gigs and has amazing 4" display...still one of the best in the industry.

and i store the cards after they are shot. only way i would erase is if i had option to burn CD's.

[fx101]

I think in doing that, just having alot more CF cards would have done the trick and made traveling a little lighter without the Sanho.
For me, the idea behind the portable storage would be to have security backup, so that that the files are on two locations. Fx 101 idea of the ftp set up sounds good too, but then I need internet access and I would imagine alot of time.

Usually I would be staying in a hotel and I usually "buy the internet" to use anyways so I just leave the thing uploading overnight. I rarely take more than 4GB a day unless I'm doing some sort of shoot for someone (but that wouldn't happen on a trip).

[SmartWombat]

I can go through 10G in a day, I planned to shoot more at Le Mans 24h than I actually managed. Only 20G in 24 hours.

[fx101]

I can go through 10G in a day, I planned to shoot more at Le Mans 24h than I actually managed. Only 20G in 24 hours.

Well, if you're shooting an event (especially LeMans since there's so much to see) I guess it would be really easy to use up a lot of space... fast. Whenever I have to take an extensive number of pics away from home I just bring a 500GB portable hard drive along. It's kind of risky since HDD's fail sometimes but it's the only cost effective way (for me at least) to backup enormous amounts of data away from a home computer.