Drives on the go

[Viperman500]

I wanted to know what kind of hard drives you photographers use when on vacation. I am going to Europe for a few days but only have 5 gb of CF and XD space. I would like to shoot RAW but I am going to be limited with my 5 gb. That's why I am looking for a portable hard drive in which I can store about 20 gb of photos. Which ones do you use? I want somethings not too big (don't need more than 100 gb) and something that's not too expensive.... Thanks for the advice!

[travelfotografer]

I use a Nexto-DI ND-2300. Bought the enclosure and HD separately. You can buy them separately (so you can pick what kind and how large you want the HD, and cheaper too) or pre-installed with HD. It has built-in CF slot and USB OTG capability (i.e. can serve as a USB host device and copy to/from most USB storage devices, including card readers and your camera's USB port)

There are other similar products by Nexto-DI, just pick your desired features. Some come with hardware-based bit-for-bit verification after the copy. All Nexto-DI boast very fast backup speeds.

There are other brands of PSD (Portable Storage Devices), popular ones include Epson ($$$) and Hyperdrive.

[Viperman500]

I use a Nexto-DI ND-2300. Bought the enclosure and HD separately. You can buy them separately (so you can pick what kind and how large you want the HD, and cheaper too) or pre-installed with HD. It has built-in CF slot and USB OTG capability (i.e. can serve as a USB host device and copy to/from most USB storage devices, including card readers and your camera's USB port)

There are other similar products by Nexto-DI, just pick your desired features. Some come with hardware-based bit-for-bit verification after the copy. All Nexto-DI boast very fast backup speeds.

There are other brands of PSD (Portable Storage Devices), popular ones include Epson ($$$) and Hyperdrive.

I haven't thought about that, I didn't know you could do that... If that question is not too personal, how much, about, does it cost to build that kind of system? By budget would be ideally under 150$. Also, is there an internet site where I can check out the combinations, prices, etc? Thanks.

[Michael Meissner]

I wanted to know what kind of hard drives you photographers use when on vacation. I am going to Europe for a few days but only have 5 gb of CF and XD space. I would like to shoot RAW but I am going to be limited with my 5 gb. That's why I am looking for a portable hard drive in which I can store about 20 gb of photos. Which ones do you use? I want somethings not too big (don't need more than 100 gb) and something that's not too expensive.... Thanks for the advice!

For only 20GB of space, if you don't need to have redundant backups of your pictures, just get a few CF cards. Depending on how you feel about larger cards, get some 16GB cards:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SPD...1200514765.jsp

or some 8GB cards:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SPD...1189017657.jsp

or some 4GB cards:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SPD...1189017510.jsp

Presently, I tend to use a mixture of 1, 2, and 4GB cards. One advantage of 4GB cards is they can be dumped to a DVD if you have access to an internet cafe or a friend with a computer.

I do have a Vosonic 6230 unit that I bought some time ago, and one of the features is it was the last unit that still supported smart media cards (I still have an Olympus C-2100UZ I use from time to time), but unfortunately, it does not support the newest type-M xd cards, and I need to use my E-510 to copy from the xd to CF card to back up my SP-550UZ camera which only uses xd. It is slower than the newer units at copying cards, but it does have a screen, which I never use:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Cat...Vosonic+VP6230

If I was buying a new unit, and did not need the screen, I would go for the Nexto 2325 unit. I usually buy these without the drive, and buy my own drive elsewhere.
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Cat...iewers:ND-2325

Another unit without the flashy screen is the Hyperdrive Space:
http://www.hyperdrive.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1

If you want the screen, there is the Hyperdrive Colorspace, and the new Colorspace O:
http://www.hyperdrive.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=23
http://www.hyperdrive.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=42

[atlasman]

I own the HyperDrive and highly recommend it for downloading from your memory cards.

Last fall I used for a 5-day hockey tournament--and downloaded over 60 gigabytes worth during the event.

[bavanor]

Get the Hyperdrive. I have the Space version, it is reliable, fast and the battery lasts. If you want to see some of the photos you download from your compact flash card then get the Hyperdrive Colorspace.

You can get them with our without hard drives. Giving you the choice to put your own hard drive in or not.

Aaron

[Derek Wright]

Take a laptop and a 80GB iPod and keep a copy of the images on the iPod just in case the laptop has a glitch.

The laptop can also be used for laptoppy type things when you are traveling a well, eg EXIF updating with location information, and web activity.

[wigpro]

I use a USB drive made by Fantom - This is my "portable drive", it holds 70Gig and since it is fully powered through the USB port it can work without power in the field plugged in to my laptop.

http://www.fantomdrives.com/drivedetails.asp?id=100

I also have another USB drive that I use when I am at home for backups and permanent storage - it is an external powered 200 Gig Maxtor drive in an enclosure.

For transportability and ease of use the Fantom Titanium Mini USB is the way to go, you can literally put it in your shirt pocket!

Enjoy,

Jim

[wigpro]

By the way - I just did a quick "Pricegrabber" search and found that NewEgg has the 160 Gig version on sale for $79.00!


I just ordered one...can't go wrong for that price!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...VES-_-22204075

[Viperman500]

I use a USB drive made by Fantom - This is my "portable drive", it holds 70Gig and since it is fully powered through the USB port it can work without power in the field plugged in to my laptop.

http://www.fantomdrives.com/drivedetails.asp?id=100

I also have another USB drive that I use when I am at home for backups and permanent storage - it is an external powered 200 Gig Maxtor drive in an enclosure.

For transportability and ease of use the Fantom Titanium Mini USB is the way to go, you can literally put it in your shirt pocket!

Enjoy,

Jim

I like the idea of using a hard drive with usb cable... but is there a way I can upload my photos on the CF card directly to the hard disk without a laptop (I don't want to bring my laptop during my trip)?

[Michael Meissner]

I like the idea of using a hard drive with usb cable... but is there a way I can upload my photos on the CF card directly to the hard disk without a laptop (I don't want to bring my laptop during my trip)?

There are devices that do the copy, but they tend to be pretty slow and fiddly.

If you are going to do it, it is better to use the portable storage drive with batteries and card slots that are made for this. You put the card in the slot, press a button, and it copies the card to the disk. Some units have the ability to verify the copy afterwards for peace of mind. One of the popular units that is fast at copying and has long battery life is the Nexto 2325 (which can also copy from your Olympus via the USB cable if you would prefer not to remove the CF card). You can buy it without a disk and put in your own, or buy it with several different sizes pre-installed:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Cat...iewers:ND-2325

A unit that is faster at copying and I think has better verification is the Nexto 2525. It loses the ability to copy from your camera via USB, but adds the ability to upload to your computer via firewire:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Cat...+Ultra+ND-2525

A competitor is the Hyperdrive Space:
http://www.hyperdrive.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1

There are various other portable storage drives (PSD). Some are really slow and have poor battery lifetimes (but hey, they are cheap if you don't mind spending an hour or so waiting for the transfer to finish). Many of the higher end units have support for viewing the pictures on an LCD screen if you want that, and a few enlighted companies even provide Olympus RAW support.


I should mention that you should be careful about inserting CF cards. One of the units (Vosonic) has the CF card being inserted upside down compared to other units, and the track is rather small, and if you force it, you can bend the pins.

[laingjd]

What is a vacation?

[DonR]

I can't do a lot of traveling but have talked to several outdoor photographers and almost all of them use archive quality DVD's or CD's to store their photos. They just don't trust hard drives with their photos. Most either have direct or indirect experience with the dreaded crash and lost of all their photos or at least a lot of time getting retreiving them.

[Michael Meissner]

I can't do a lot of traveling but have talked to several outdoor photographers and almost all of them use archive quality DVD's or CD's to store their photos. They just don't trust hard drives with their photos. Most either have direct or indirect experience with the dreaded crash and lost of all their photos or at least a lot of time getting retreiving them.

Anybody who trusts their precious data to only one copy will eventually lose it. I've had just as much problem with DVD/CDs as with disks, with DVDs not being readable less than a year after being burned. The only hope is to make multiple copies and to spread out the copies to avoid area wide problems.

I generally try to have enough memory cards to see me through an entire trip, but I will also copy the cards to my PSD and my laptop if I bring both on the trip.

If I thought the pictures were particularly important (i.e. they were related to my job), I would make at least 2 DVD copies, every night and mail one to myself in plastic protective covering. That way if the luggage gets stolen, you still have the pictures up to the point the stuff got stolen.

However, you do get to the point of how much do you want to carry? A laptop adds to the weight, and can be a thief magnet. There were stand-alone DVD burners like the stand-alone disk drives that would copy a card to a drive, but they didn't catch on, and are somewhat hard to find. If you go this route, you should keep your media to 4GB to make it easy to copy one card to one single sided DVD disk (or one 512MB card to a CD or 8GB to a double sided DVD). Another option is to plan on visiting an internet cafe every few days, and make DVD copies while keeping up with your buds on fourthidsphoto.com.

I did read about one person who did the whole mailing DVDs home, and got home, and found the post office destroyed the disks, fortunately his primary media were fine.

[Godfrey]

I wanted to know what kind of hard drives you photographers use when on vacation. I am going to Europe for a few days but only have 5 gb of CF and XD space. I would like to shoot RAW but I am going to be limited with my 5 gb. That's why I am looking for a portable hard drive in which I can store about 20 gb of photos. Which ones do you use? I want somethings not too big (don't need more than 100 gb) and something that's not too expensive.... Thanks for the advice!

If I'm not carrying the laptop, I use an Epson P-2000 which has a 40G drive and a nice, big display screen so I can review photos I've stored on it. It will display a good number of RAW files (via their embedded JPEG previews) but for those it won't I set the camera to capture RAW+JPEG, with the JPEG set to the minimum sizing, so that I can review what is on the drive. The Epson P3000 and P5000 are current models in this device line ... they're great but somewhat expensive.

If I'm carrying the laptop, I have a miniscule pocket drive enclosure that I recently fitted a new 5400rpm 120G hard drive into. It's a third the size of the Epson with a FireWire 400 interface so it's powered from the laptop and very fast. Cost me all up about $30 for the enclosure (6 years ago) and the new drive cost me $65. I back up the entire laptop onto it, including all the files I've downloaded from card to computer, which leaves enough space to carry at last 80G of image files after the usual OS+applications+other junk are accommodated.

BTW: You can buy 20G of reasonably fast, high quality CF cards these days for about $200. For many purposes, that would be sufficient to handle anything I need.

Godfrey

[travelfotografer]

Agree. That was why I picked the ND-2300. With its USB OTG function, I can create a second backup of selected files/folders from the ND-2300 onto another portable USB hard-drive. This way, I have 2 copies of my files on 2 separate hard-drives when traveling.

At home, I use an eSATA drive as my main photo storage. Another eSATA drive that backups the photos. And a complete set of DVD backups at an off-site location (my office)

Leon

I can't do a lot of traveling but have talked to several outdoor photographers and almost all of them use archive quality DVD's or CD's to store their photos. They just don't trust hard drives with their photos. Most either have direct or indirect experience with the dreaded crash and lost of all their photos or at least a lot of time getting retreiving them.

[evolt]

I've been using a Digital Foci PhotoSafe for about 6 months and it is fantastic. Nothing fancy, no bells and whistles but put the card in, push the button to copy and the screen will show you your progress. It can be connected to your computer (usb) and used as an external hard drive to copy the files to another location if you need to. I have the 120gb version and I think it cost about $175.