Portable Storage - Which One?

Hi all,

Looking at portable storage devices (as I'm not a big fan of taking my laptop with me on trips). I was looking at the Canon M80 (as it's currently on sale), but from reviews on here, also checked out the Epson P-5000. Both look to be around the same price. Is one better than the other? Pros? Cons?

As usual, many thanks for any and all advice!

Ryan.

With the price of CF what it is today, I see no reason to bring a hard drive with you on the boat. Copying files to to a hard drive so you can reuse your CF cards, is slow, expensive and risky. CF is way more durable and reliable than a hard drive. Especially in the harsh environment of a boat. There is no way I would go back to hard drives for on-site storage.

Those portable hard drives were a necessity when a 512 MB CF cards costs more than $200. But now a days, 8 gig cards can be had for ~$50 and if you really need lots of space you can get yourself 100gigs in 1 CF card. Unless your trips lasts a year, a couple big CF cards will be sufficient for the whole trip.

Hi all,

 

Looking at portable storage devices (as I'm not a big fan of taking my laptop with me on trips). I was looking at the Canon M80 (as it's currently on sale), but from reviews on here, also checked out the Epson P-5000. Both look to be around the same price. Is one better than the other? Pros? Cons?

 

As usual, many thanks for any and all advice!

 

Ryan.

I know you did not ask about other models, but soeone here (got to find the thread) recommended the Hyperdrive http://www.hyperdrive.com/.

Picked one up and love it. Very solid and well thought out with alot of good features. You can get a empty one and throw pretty much any size hard drive in. http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperDrive-COLORSPACE-O-s/42.htm and you can get small drives real cheap.

And they recently announced an updated moel in the last couple of weeks and looks interesting, looks like the had a semi iPodish touch wheel. Right now it takes a couple of clicks, but as mentioned, well designed in that it seemes to prevent errors because you need to pause for a second or two before making a decision and has great options for transfer speed/verification etc. I am thinking of getting a second one (or more cards) to make sure I have a couple of back-ups before working on things on the computer.

Ryan, I have the P-5000. I love it! I have 20GB of music on it, loads of RAW formatted pictures, and I'm planning on putting a couple of movies on it for my upcoming trip. I'm heading to Cozumel in a couple of weeks and then turning right around and hitting St. Maarten for a business meeting. You bet I'm taking my dive gear and camera. With all of this gear, I don't want to duplicate things like an iPod, laptop, hard drive, or card readers. I have it all in one package!

Yes, buying memory cards may be cheaper these days, but I can review my picts in RAW and connect it to a TV to see them where ever I am to review/cull/ show off. Plus,if I don't erase the files after download, I automatically have a duplicate backup.

It has a crystal clear screen with zoom capabilities. Also,it has card ports to accept all currently manufactures cards including SDHC. Off the top of my head, it will play all formats of pictures, music, and movies (except MOVIES downloaded from Apple.com iTunes) Not sure why this is. Maybe I'll figure it out someday. Apple probably just wants you to buy the iPhone to watch their movies.

Another vote here for the HyperDrive Colorspace. I have one with a 250GB HD. Extremely fast transfer from card to Hyperdrive (less than 1 second per file for my Canon 40D raw files). I then hook up the Hyperdrive to my laptop, where it mounts as an external HD. I then import the files from the Hyperdrive to Aperture. I now have two copies of the file, one in Aperture and one on the Hyperdrive.

With the price of CF what it is today, I see no reason to bring a hard drive with you on the boat. Copying files to to a hard drive so you can reuse your CF cards, is slow, expensive and risky. CF is way more durable and reliable than a hard drive. Especially in the harsh environment of a boat. There is no way I would go back to hard drives for on-site storage.

 

Those portable hard drives were a necessity when a 512 MB CF cards costs more than $200. But now a days, 8 gig cards can be had for ~$50 and if you really need lots of space you can get yourself 100gigs in 1 CF card. Unless your trips lasts a year, a couple big CF cards will be sufficient for the whole trip.

Damn, that's good advice! Makes a hell of a lot more sense to buy a heap of CF cards, and spend more money on glass

Damn, that's good advice! Makes a hell of a lot more sense to buy a heap of CF cards, and spend more money on glass

Maybe, if your comfortable with only one copy of the image until you get home, it's a possible solution. I'm much happier with a nice safe copy tucked away in my carry on with the originals in a seperate bag. I don't trust CF cards not to fail or go missing. Sometimes a little paranoia is a good thing.

Steve

I'm with Steve on this, the more copies the better. I've had CF cards and hard drives fail and I make multiple copies of all shots on a trip. I use a Jobo Giga Vu Evolution (I don't like to carry laptops on trips either) to download, view and cull my pictures. The Giga Vu has a USB host port and I use this to back up everything to a portable hard drive. I can hold both these devices in one hand. I have just purchased an 80GB iPod which I can also plug into the Giga Vu to make another backup. That gives me three copies of everything. One travels with me, one with my wife and the third in the camera bag.

Hmm, good points, and this was one of my first worries.

Gudge, what portable hard drive are you using? And where in AU is good to buy both that and the Giga Vu?

I don't think my 4gb ipod Nano will do the trick though. It's already very full

The Giga Vu Pro Evolution has been replaced by the Giga Vu Extreme now:

http://www.jobo.com/web/GIGA-Vu-extreme.137.0.html

When I got the Giga Vu back in 2006 I got it from either Adorama or B&H (I can't remember which) as the Australian suppliers couldn't get them in stock and they were much more expensive here too. The reason I went for the Giga Vu at that time over the Epson P4000 was the fact that I could back the Giga Vu up to another drive, the Giga Vu could read just about all the RAW formats on the market and updates for new cameras are available as downloads (along with software updates and enhancements) from the Jobo web site.

The hard drive I use is a 100GB USB La Cie mobile hard drive. I think I ordered it online from Software Warehouse or Techbuy here in Australia. The important thing is to get a mobile hard drive that can be powered by an external power source as the USB host port on the Giga Vu doesn't supply enough power for the hard drive. This won't be a problem with the 80GB iPod Classic as it has its own battery.

This is probably the closest to my hard drive in La Cie's current range:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10982

Copying files to to a hard drive so you can reuse your CF cards, is slow, expensive and risky.

i would not agree too much with this statement, it may be slower, but hey your on a nice livaboard and it can be done whilst you are having some chill out time, why is it expensive? once you have the portable HD you have it, I paid £40 GBP for a 60GB freecom portable HD and £75 GBP for a 160 GB HD. and why is it risky? there are risks involved in all forms of data storage/transfer and storing for short duration i would not say that a portable HD is that much of a risk.

CF is way more durable and reliable than a hard drive.

storage for long periods of time may be, i would be interested to know how many people have had serious issues with portable HD

Especially in the harsh environment of a boat.

what kind of liveaboards do you go on. the ones i go on have nice cabins, clean and dry. Not harsh at all.

There is no way I would go back to hard drives for on-site storage.

obviously you have had A problem with a portable HD

the cheapest option for you i feel would be too take a few blank dvd's with you and get one of the guys on the boat to write them too disc for you. I have done this for people on liveaboard loads of times. i have used a portable HD for over 7000 photos and for over 50 hours of video and i have not had any issues.

I have the P-2000 which only has a 40 gig drive. But its a great viewer with a terrific screen and has been a reliable storage device since it first came out. However 40 gigs is starting to feel a nad tight now that I'm shooting RAW so a few extra CF's for off disk storeage will be useful. For this purpose cheaper, slower CF's will be fine. There's no need for expensive Sandisk Extreme III's...

BTW. The Epson P-2000 (and also the P-5000) will only handle SDHC cards up to 2 gig in the SD card slot. Using a SD to CF adapter the CF card slot will read 4 gig SDHCs. I would be very interested to know how just how large a CF card the CF slot can handle. Anyone tried an 8 or 16 gig CF card in the Epson?

Epson support where no use when asked and confined their reply to certifying the P-2000 and P-5000 for SD and CF cards up to 2 gig only...

i would not agree too much with this statement, it may be slower, but hey your on a nice livaboard and it can be done whilst you are having some chill out time, why is it expensive? once you have the portable HD you have it, I paid £40 GBP for a 60GB freecom portable HD and £75 GBP for a 160 GB HD. and why is it risky? there are risks involved in all forms of data storage/transfer and storing for short duration i would not say that a portable HD is that much of a risk.

 

storage for long periods of time may be, i would be interested to know how many people have had serious issues with portable HD

 

what kind of liveaboards do you go on. the ones i go on have nice cabins, clean and dry. Not harsh at all.

 

obviously you have had A problem with a portable HD

 

the cheapest option for you i feel would be too take a few blank dvd's with you and get one of the guys on the boat to write them too disc for you. I have done this for people on liveaboard loads of times. i have used a portable HD for over 7000 photos and for over 50 hours of video and i have not had any issues.

I loved my portable hard drive and it worked flawlessly for me until I sold it. Long term failure rates may be similar, but when it comes to short term failure (failure from abuse) it is just an undeniable truth that solid state drives are more durable. For the most part CF cards are indestructible. They will handle a trip to the bottom of the sea naked and keep on chugging. You can juggle them, and drop it off a 10 story building and it will be good as new. Contrast that with a hard drive. A single drop of water gets in side the unit, its toast. Knock it off the desk on to a hardwood floor, it's toast.

Now of course, it is great to have duplicates of your data. And for that purpose, they are great. Of course any backup is better than no backup. My argument was against a portable HD based storage device, not against a portable hard drive based backup device. (of course the device is physically the same, it is how you use it)

But I would still rather have my backup on a solid state drive than on a hard drive or on optical media. If can borrow a fellow passengers computers for a few minutes, I wouldn't copy to a DVD, I would copy to a spare CF card.

but i did say " the cheapest option for you " would be write to dvd

I have the P-2000 which only has a 40 gig drive. But its a great viewer with a terrific screen and has been a reliable storage device since it first came out. However 40 gigs is starting to feel a nad tight now that I'm shooting RAW so a few extra CF's for off disk storeage will be useful. For this purpose cheaper, slower CF's will be fine. There's no need for expensive Sandisk Extreme III's...

 

BTW. The Epson P-2000 (and also the P-5000) will only handle SDHC cards up to 2 gig in the SD card slot. Using a SD to CF adapter the CF card slot will read 4 gig SDHCs. I would be very interested to know how just how large a CF card the CF slot can handle. Anyone tried an 8 or 16 gig CF card in the Epson?

 

Epson support where no use when asked and confined their reply to certifying the P-2000 and P-5000 for SD and CF cards up to 2 gig only...

I humbly disagree with this. My P-5000 will easily read my 8GB SDHC cards in the SD slot. Maybe it is a firmware issue? I recently purchased mine in Dec. '07.

I humbly disagree with this. My P-5000 will easily read my 8GB SDHC cards in the SD slot. Maybe it is a firmware issue? I recently purchased mine in Dec. '07.

I'll correct myself! Epson advise the P-2000 (and also, IIRC, the P-5000 ) will not support SD or CF cards larger than 2 gig. However, with the latest firmware (02.51) my P-2000 will read 4 gig Sandisk Extreme III SDHC cards via the CF card slot using a SD to CF adapter. The P-2000's SD slot will not recognise cards of greater capacity than 2 gig.

It seems as though the capability of the P-2000 and P-5000 differs in respect of the size of SD cards they can handle.

I'd sure like to know if anyone has tried using either 8 gig SDHC cards in a SD to CF adapter or Type II CF cards in the P-2000.

I am presently upgrading my P-2000's 40 gig drive to an 80 gig drive and I posted a link to the video tutorial earlier in this thread. 5400 rpm 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar drives do the trick and at less than £40.00 that's a whole lot cheaper than buying a new 80 gig P-5000! Larger drives are available of course but these operate at 7200 rpm. I am advised that using these higher spijn speed drives would significantly shorten the battery life and the generated heat may have implications.

Another vote for the Epson. I've had mine about 3 years and its been excellent. Tim's tip about upgrading the 40GB hard disk of the P-2000 sounds good and I may well give that a go. The screen-equipped storage devices, like the Epson, do allow you to check before you delete anything off the cards that you have an image!

It seems as though the capability of the P-2000 and P-5000 differs in respect of the size of SD cards they can handle.

 

I'd sure like to know if anyone has tried using either 8 gig SDHC cards in a SD to CF adapter or Type II CF cards in the P-2000.

I just picked up a second hand P-2000 and tested it with my Sandisk 8 gig card. I shot a handful of Raw+Jpeg images with my 40D and it transfered them just fine. In fact I had about 2 gigs worth of other stuff on the card I forgot about and it transfered all just fine. Can't rotate or zoom on the RAW images but I expected that.

I have nothing negative to say about the aforementioned devices. I have, however, been completely satisfied with my Vosonic. I've been using it for about two years and their prices are competitive.