Portable Storage - Which One?

I use an OTG disk device (cheap ebay thing) to which I copy first, then copy to a second harddrive. 4GB CF was large enough for me in the red sea to get through a days diving.

Other then that, those mini laptops like the ASUS EE pc look intriguing. A little less storage then those devices, but way more functionality. Anyone have experience with those ?

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.

Thanks for this information Andy. I think 8 gig media is the minimum I'd want to use in a high spec DSLR and its nice to know the P-2000 will handle it. Any advance on 8 gig? 16 gig??

The little mini-PC's use SSD's for their disks. Meaning they are basically just full of flash memory... Since they aren't what I'd want to use for editing photos (may be OK for viewing though) you may as well get more flash cards, right? :-)

I tried a mini PC - Sony Picturebook - back in the day and it was cool and a great machine, but not much use for browsing images.

Cheers

James

The little mini-PC's use SSD's for their disks. Meaning they are basically just full of flash memory... Since they aren't what I'd want to use for editing photos (may be OK for viewing though) you may as well get more flash cards, right? :-)

 

I tried a mini PC - Sony Picturebook - back in the day and it was cool and a great machine, but not much use for browsing images.

 

Cheers

James

The reason I find the Asus machine interesting is the durability of flash memory and the WiFi ability. I don't always need to edit in the field. But I do need to store images and check email. I'd love a standalone storage device that has wifi built in. This way you could back up your cards and surf the internet.

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 also use the Vosonic. The screen is not quite as nice as the Epson, but you can chunk any size HD you want in it and it is much faster when attached as a portable HD to a laptop than my Epson was. Prices are competitive and upgrading the size is is trivial.

I am with Steve on this one, on our trip to the Solomon's I used both a LaCie and the Vosonic as parallel backups for cards and imported to lightroom as I went.

Bill

Hi Bill, I must say the Vosonic looks very interesting. Is this this one you have? http://www.vosonic.com/product.php?PA=feat...nd=1&id_1=9

Hi Bill, I must say the Vosonic looks very interesting. Is this this one you have? http://www.vosonic.com/product.php?PA=feat...nd=1&id_1=9

Yes and it is quite nice

Bill

The Vosonic looks very cool. Great price too. I used the Epson P-2000 at the Michigan/Illinois football game today and have mixed feelings about it. I downloaded 3.5 gigs during halftime and it took the entire 20 minute half to do it. Battery life is good but download is so slow. It was nice after the game plugging it into my Mac and accessing the files with Photo Mechanic right on the Epson hard drive. That saved me time after the game. But it's painful to watch download. I got it used at a great price so I won't complain much as long as it works to back up images. I usually won't be in a hurry to download. I may have to look hard at the Vosonic though.

Unless your trips lasts a year, a couple big CF cards will be sufficient for the whole trip.

I shoot up to 6GB a day, after deleting the clunkers. So, an 8GB card foe every day's diving?

I want 2 copies of everything, as I've had failures.

I've used a Jobo GigaVu and liked it, but I need to upgrade. My leading candidates are the 160 GB Jobo GigaVu Extreme and the Epson P-7000. They both have good screens, and since I don't edit on the hoof should do the job of my laptop.

Tim

Check out the Wolverine products: http://www.wolverinedata.com/index.php/site/quicklinks/C13/

I have a 120 GB Wolverine and I am pleased with it.

I'm also looking for a new alternate backup solution at the moment. In the past I've used the CompactDrive PD70X - I went for this because it was a standalone device so I didn't need my laptop to be able to back up onto it, much like the Epson etc (although it's a lot more basic). It also ran on AA batteries, which I've always got with me for strobes etc. My worry with using standard external drives or DVD's was that if my laptop went down, I'd be stuffed: a real single point of failure.

However the Compact drive was not without it's problems: several times I corrupted the File Allocation table and had to reformat the drive (for which of course I needed my laptop). Most of these problems were to do with using batteries rather the power adapter, but the bottom line was that the device was not as reliable as I needed it to be: Certainly not enough to be a completely redundant solution if my laptop died on a trip.

I'm currently looking at the archos 5 http://www.archos.com/

With this device you can read directly off the camera via USB (providing you have the optional adapter). It displays JPEGS but being a multi function device it also plays movies and music (the screen is sweet, I used a friends earlier model a few weeks back). Admittedly these abilities are not a prime consideration, but damn handy when your laptop battery packs up 3 hours into a 12 hour flight.....

Anybody had any experience with these? Reviews on the net seem generally positive, although it certainly has a few niggles.

cheers

Steve

Here's another question - is it possible to transfer straight from a dSLR to an ipod, and use that for storage? Given that the classic ipod is now up to 120gb, and at a good price, I'm wondering if this is a posibility. I know my 4gb ipod nano is due for an update anyway...

Here's another question - is it possible to transfer straight from a dSLR to an ipod, and use that for storage? Given that the classic ipod is now up to 120gb, and at a good price, I'm wondering if this is a posibility. I know my 4gb ipod nano is due for an update anyway...

Yes it is possible. I haven't tried it but from what I've heard it drains the battery very fast. But there is a connection device to make this possible.

Amigos,

I used to use my "old" 30GB iPod to back up photos and it worked, but if you had more than like 200 pics it would take a LOOOONNNNGGGG time. And as Andy states you better have your battery charged up.

The Apple connector you need is USB 2.0, only will work with hard drive models (not flash base models to my knowledge) and these days I simply have multiple cards and keep shooting. But then I am also a banshee editor (read DELETE a LOT and keep the best!)

Personally, a small laptop is best if not taking a bunch of cards IMHO......

dhaas