Portable storage/back-up.

[fluffnik]

I've been thinking of getting something like this Camera Buddy as a less bulky alternative to dragging a laptop along on holiday.

Does anyone have any experience of these dump-to-disk card readers?

I'm not fussed about being able to view photos on the device, just want copies of what I shoot...

[RobDickinson]

I have an old xsdrive pro Ii or soem such, 40gig inetrnal IDE, 7+ card reader.

Works OK, dont use it often now(3gig of CF is enough for a day or two) but do use it as a photo backup.

[fluffnik]

RobDickinson said:

I have an old xsdrive pro Ii or soem such, 40gig inetrnal IDE, 7+ card reader.

Works OK, dont use it often now(3gig of CF is enough for a day or two) but do use it as a photo backup.

I've seen those... Reliable?

I'm off to Brazil for a fortnight and plan to take enough cards to see me through, just kinda fancied some braces to go with my belts.

(I'll probably end up taking a CD burning lappy too...)

[RobDickinson]

It hasnt let me down, HDD's are fairly robust so long as you dont throw em round when there working - once the data is on there its on to stay.

its not quick at reading cards, it doesnt have a good battery life so I usualy have to charge it freequently when in use (tho it'll do a few gig in one go easily).

Its old and uses old battery tech tho, plays MP3's and I've used it as an in car mp3 player on travels too (now have an ipod tho).

[lowdrag]

I got around it another way by carrying two 8GB Sandisk Extreme III cards. You have to go a very long way to fill both of those up! Light and easy to carry too.

[VxDuncan]

I have a previous version of one of those (digimate III I think). WOrks well, though the hard disk wasn't clamped that well. Bought from ebay for about £20, then you add a laptop drive of the capacity of your choice (mine has a 30Gb). Also have another one (redundancy) from ebay - was about the same but USB II and clamps the drive better. Has 120Gb drive, cost about £60 all in. Trouble is fat32 means it's split into four patitions (a pain) and it goes into stanby mode if not touched for a couple of minutes - even if you're copying off the card at the time! Lost a a few photos this way. Will try and dig it out for the name.

Stick with one or two gb cards. Big cards are a BAD idea. If one fails (and they do), you'll loose half your photos. One fo the reasons why I have two portable storage devices, one to take out, one to stay in the hotel safe.

[CVP]

I have an old Flashtrax, 40GB. Downsides are slow card copying and woeful battery life, but I've knocked it around and it still works just fine. Screen is not the best though. I would replace with something along the lines of the Epson P-4000. I do like a screen just as a safety check that it has successfully copied all images before I reformat the card.

For cards I stick to my mix of 1Gb and 2Gb cards to give me 14Gb in total. That way if I'm away on vacation for a while and either the camera gets nicked or a card goes bad I won't lose too much.

Chris

[robbydee]

i have a jobo gigaview 40gb i think... was a really good investment especially when we went to le mans, where a few of us downloaded images every night, basicly filled it in 4 days of shooting..

However they still rely on a disc drive...

So i try to keep everything on solid state flash cards etc..

[190Evoluzione]

I agree on the small cards front. 4GB max imo.
Re: portable drives - The Epson Ps are lovely, a mate hasd the P2000 and it's great for travel stuff.
Canon p*ssed me off by not allowing theirs to read RAW files from anything other than Canon DSLRs.
I use PhaseOne half the time, and the Epson handles the files easily.
I'd get the P-5000 if budget allows...

[190Evoluzione]

I agree on the small cards front. 4GB max imo.
Re: portable drives - The Epson Ps are lovely, a mate hasd the P2000 and it's great for travel stuff.
Canon p*ssed me off by not allowing theirs to read RAW files from anything other than Canon DSLRs.
I use PhaseOne half the time, and the Epson handles the files easily.
I'd get the P-5000 if budget allows...

[fluffnik]

190Evoluzione said:

I agree on the small cards front. 4GB max imo.
Re: portable drives - The Epson Ps are lovely, a mate hasd the P2000 and it's great for travel stuff.
Canon p*ssed me off by not allowing theirs to read RAW files from anything other than Canon DSLRs.
I use PhaseOne half the time, and the Epson handles the files easily.
I'd get the P-5000 if budget allows...

I have a Fuji S9600 and a selection of 1G and 2G xD cards - huge cards are not an option...

Jobo say they support many RAW files but don't list which.

I think I'm being swayed towards something that previews, but I've not seen anything that explicitly supports Fuji .raf...

Epson P*s and Jobo Giga Vus do look good but they're not cheap compared to laptops.

[DJ_AS]

I have a Vosonic VP2160 that I got from memoryforless.co.uk. Apart from the fact that the power charger has a euro two pin plug, its all good. 100GB for less than £100 IIRC.

Doesn't have a screen but thats why its so much cheaper than the fancy Epson ones!

Its about 20mins to transfer 2gb of files and will do about 5-6 ish before running out of juice.

[Mad Dave]

I've got an Epson P2000 and it's excellent. It's quite old now so you'd probably get it for not-a-lot.

[fluffnik]

Mad Dave said:

I've got an Epson P2000 and it's excellent. It's quite old now so you'd probably get it for not-a-lot.

I'm watching a couple in eBay as we speak.

[chris.mapey]

I use my iPod 80Gb.

Got the camera adaptor, and a USB card reader.

Stick the CF card in the card reader, into the camera adaptor, into the iPod...

You can use it for music when not doing photos

Chris

[F308 MAN]

robbydee said:

i have a jobo gigaview 40gb i think ....

i have the same unit :



works very well for me, even when some fat tw@ stood on it (at Le Mans) and broke the view screen.

32g of cards travel with me, but the GIGA is very useful on trips and as mentioned before, "belt & braces".

highly recommended !

d

edit: ..... you cannot view your downloaded files.

Edited by F308 MAN on Sunday 14th October 19:01

[darthdicky]

Chris, how do you get on with the Ipod connector? All the buyer reviews on the Apple site suggest it's not very quick, runs the batteries down and generally isn't all that good.

Anyone else got one and recommend it?

[Byker28i]

I have an iWith Innoplus that I picked up cheaply. It has a cf slot on the side and happily accepts my CF to every other memory card adaptor so I can back up all our digital cameras on holiday.

It even reads canon raw files, even my new 40d format ones.

Plus it has a 4"? screen fro displaying, plays films, music etc. Ok it's not as trendy looking as other devices but the menu is easy to use and has a bog standard laptop large hard drive in it.

Worth keeping an eye out for as a cheap device.

[jackal]

i ahve an archos AV500
~150 quid on ebay

doubles up as an 80gb mp3 player and movie player with an extremely good screen

[ae111sr]

DJ_AS said:

I have a Vosonic VP2160 that I got from memoryforless.co.uk. Apart from the fact that the power charger has a euro two pin plug, its all good. 100GB for less than £100 IIRC.

Doesn't have a screen but thats why its so much cheaper than the fancy Epson ones!

Its about 20mins to transfer 2gb of files and will do about 5-6 ish before running out of juice.

I bought one of these a month ago before I went to Florida. Worked like a charm, no problems with it at all. It takes about 15 minutes to upload a 2GB Sandisk Extreme III filled with NEF (raw) files. For years I'd been using an Image Tank but that was USB I and only had a 10GB drive. It had been fine when using my Nikon D70 but I need a lot more space with the D200 and I'm taking lots more photos too