Temporary Photo Storage Options

[WestyCarl]

Hi,

Going on holiday for 4 weeks with various camera's; EOS, Drift, etc and wondering about the best storage.
I'm not planning taking a laptop so can't transferor download pics. Is there a (cheap) hard drive gadget I can drop the cards into to transfer the pics or should I just buy a number of SD cards and keep them safe?

Thanks

p.s. I'm estimating we'll end up with 3000+ pics plus videos.

[Craikeybaby]

I had one of those harddrive/card reader devices for a trip to Central America, infact I think I still have it somewhere, it was crude, but did the job. Its probably telling that I haven't used it since though, I prefer to take an iPad/laptop with me.

[rich888]

Must admit I would be tempted to save the photos onto several SD cards, I tend to use a 32GB class 10 card which allows storage of several thousand photos though don't like leaving that number of photos on the card without copying them.

As you have suggested, perhaps use smaller capacity 8MB or 16MB SD cards just in case to allow for multiple redundancy.

Thing about copying the photos off an SD card onto a portable HD is that it too might be faulty and then you lose the lot - all apples in the same basket comes to mind.

Due to the relative cheapness of SD cards nowadays I tend to buy my SD cards from PC World to avoid fakes, otherwise perhaps online from Amazon just so long as they are 'supplied AND fulfilled' by Amazon. I wouldn't touch eBay with a bargepole.

[Craikeybaby]

To clarify I kept files on cards AND copied off.

[Fordo]

This looks like it might do what you are after:

http://www.kingston.com/en/wireless/wireless_reade...

I've seen demos where you plug in a drive, put your card into the device and using a smartphone, you can tell the device to copy across to a hard drive.

Personally, if your going to backup in the field, i'd use a cheap netbook with usb3, and a couple of drives. (must be a tonne of tony small netbooks on ebay.). At least that way, you can do spot checks and make sure the copies are good.

Or, as above, a batch load of cards is the easiest solution!

[sgrimshaw]

If not taking a laptop etc, then I'd look to copy SD cards onto something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-Wireless-Portabl...

As already mentioned, SD cards are cheap enough so that there's no need to delete them from the card, at least that gives you two copies.

[ian in lancs]

http://store.wdc.com/store/wdeu/en_GB/DisplayAcces...

[Colin RedGriff]

Fordo said:

This looks like it might do what you are after:

http://www.kingston.com/en/wireless/wireless_reade...

I've seen demos where you plug in a drive, put your card into the device and using a smartphone, you can tell the device to copy across to a hard drive.

Personally, if your going to backup in the field, i'd use a cheap netbook with usb3, and a couple of drives. (must be a tonne of tony small netbooks on ebay.). At least that way, you can do spot checks and make sure the copies are good.

Or, as above, a batch load of cards is the easiest solution!

This is what I did for our trip to South Africa last year. We had an old netbook lying around so I loaded Linux (Mint) on it and then used an app called Rapid Photo Downloader to copy them off the SD card and onto the netbook and then used a backup utility (lucky backup) to copy them to an external USB hard drive. I did that at the end of each days shooting and let it run each evening.

I didn't wipe my SD cards so I had 3 copies of my data.

I shot over 3600 images over 2 weeks in RAW and it worked well for me.

[Robertj21a]

As others have said, just buy more SD cards. No point in adding extra complications.

[WestyCarl]

Robertj21a said:

As others have said, just buy more SD cards. No point in adding extra complications.

Thanks all, it's only a holiday and not something important like a wedding so I think this is the best solution; 1/2 dozen or so SD cards and change them every 3-4 days (and don't keep them in the same piece of luggage)

[rich888]

WestyCarl said:

Robertj21a said:

As others have said, just buy more SD cards. No point in adding extra complications.

Thanks all, it's only a holiday and not something important like a wedding so I think this is the best solution; 1/2 dozen or so SD cards and change them every 3-4 days (and don't keep them in the same piece of luggage)

Just to follow up on what I said earlier, I noticed that recording 1080p video eats memory so it might be a good idea to buy larger capacity memory cards - nothing worse than running out of space half way through recording some decent footage. Am pretty sure I'm using 32GB class 10 SD cards which are plenty fast enough for my DSLR and video cameras.

Just taken a look on amazon.co.uk and they are selling Kingston 32GB class 10 SD cards for £7.35 that are 'Dispatched from AND sold by Amazon'. At that sort of price you really can't go wrong!

[noell35]

There's a readers letter in AP magazine this week where a guy says he uses a raspberry Pi. He posted this link chiselapp.com/user/dmpop/repository/little-backup-box/index

I've no interest but thought of your thread