Portable digital storage vs More CF cards

[sue jarrett]

Traveling to Africa on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Can't take my laptop with me (too big 17") and have been debating with friends between buying a ton more CF cards or getting a portable storage device to download and clear the cards. In the US on car travel I carry the laptop and a WD portable backup.

I am looking at the Digital Foci Photosafe II 160gig with no viewer for $120 or the 250gig version at $160 from Adorama or Amazon.com. Price is a concern. I don't really want to buy a notebook even though you can get them really cheap now.

Opinions, please?

[Cal Walters]

I leave for Ecuador on Friday and had the same question. I bought the Colorspace Hyperdrive, but see there is a new UDMA version - I hope it is a bit more elegant. The older model works fine in my testing of it, but it is just a bit clunky in its ops and feel. I returned one because there was a rattling inside, but the next had the same sound - so I figured it was a designed flaw! Anyway it works. The operations are a little old school too - but again - it works. I am just used to the elegance of Mac products. I do really liked the idea of being able to see that I did get my images off the cards - and a little peek at the quality as the screen is a little bigger. one strange thing is that the scanner will "see" deleted images on a card until it is reformatted - it confused me at first (again one of those clunky bits) but once I realized what it was showing (and that it was not copying them) I learned to live with it. So like you I opted for a portable storage rather than a notebook or just multiple cards. As notebooks are really designed to work on the web they are not much help in Africa unless you have a global satalite card - plus the drives are small and the internet is very slow.

If you get one - practice with it - so you know how to operate it - it was not as straight forward as I would have wished.

Have a great trip!

[John Chardine]

Hi Sue- Just a thought about capacity. Depending on the camera you have and whether you are shooting RAW or JPEG, you may need more than 160 or 250 gigs for the whole trip. Do a quick calculation of your file size times a "guesstamate" of the number of images you expect to shoot per day times the number of days, then gauge your requirements on this. You could reduce your requirements by culling in the camera but this is a dangerous activity as it is so easy to delete an image that you should have kept.

Personally, I do not have the willpower to wait until I return home to look at images and so I bring my MacBook with me on all my photo trips away. I find the evening review of images on a good screen so valuable (and so much fun!) to provide feedback of how you are doing with exposure, focus and general techs. "Netbooks" are small and pretty cheap these days.

[Rocky Sharwell]

Traveling to Africa on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Can't take my laptop with me (too big 17") and have been debating with friends between buying a ton more CF cards or getting a portable storage device to download and clear the cards. In the US on car travel I carry the laptop and a WD portable backup.

I am looking at the Digital Foci Photosafe II 160gig with no viewer for $120 or the 250gig version at $160 from Adorama or Amazon.com. Price is a concern. I don't really want to buy a notebook even though you can get them really cheap now.

Opinions, please?

Sue,

I think you are in a dangerous position of whatever device you buy stops working--I would not feel comfortable with just one of the devices--if the device is the way for you to go get 2. I just got back from the Galapagos with my 17 inch MacBook pro and two firewire drives. I also brought a USB drive just in case I needed to use someone else's non-firewire lapttp for downloading purposes.

One of the participants, David Kennedy (a moderator here), had a $300 netbook with an external drive. I thought about one before the trip but decided to lug around my 17inch MacBook Pro.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

I have to carry my notebook on a motorcycle so vibration is an issue so I have been using one of these for a while now and swear by it.

http://www.dealhack.com/archives/200...bg_ssd_ne.html

Mine does every thing my large notebook does (faster) and has a 16 Gig solid state hard drive which does not suffer from heavy duty use.

For storage I carry two 500 Gig Free agent drives, each fits into the top pocket of my shirt and are very reliable but I double back up all the same.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...nal/freeagent/

Hope that helped

[Jay Gould]

For our trip to South America, at the recommendation of Phillip Colla, I have purchased the Sanho HyperDrive ColorSpace UDMA 500gb from Adorama, that way if the my Dell 13" goes down I can still download from my CF card to the Sanho. I am also carrying a 500gb LaCie Rugged, and a Western Digital 250gb as well for multiple backups.

Regarding the netbook, we too will be carrying an Asus netbook - just a bit larger with some more bell & whistles as Jackie refuses - can't really blame her - to share a computer with me as I always am using it to review images.

[Jim Neiger]

I would get a small laptop and at least two portable hard drives with 500GB capacity each. If the laptop fails you may be able to use someone elses laptop or replace the laptop while traveling. If a hard drive fails, you have at least one more. I used 4 portable drives when I went to Auistralia and I brought my laptop. The people I traveled with also had laptops. I had 1 of my 4 hard drives fail, but I did not lose any images. I would also suggest downloading twice as opposed to download and then copy from one drive to the other. I did the download once and copy method for the first week of my trip. My drive got corrupted and then I copied the corruption to the other drive. Luckily I set one of the corrupt drives aside and just saved it until I returned home. I used my other drives for the rest of the trip. When I got home I used a recovery program to recover all my images from the corrupt drive. Now I always download twice as opposed to download and copy.

[Mark Perry]

I recently purchased the Vosonic VP8870 250GB for the field and I really like it. Less expensive than the Epson viewer/storage and just as useful.

http://www.vosonic.com/product.php?P...kind=1&id_1=16

[Rocky Sharwell]

One other thing I usually do is to make sure I have at least one spare for each wire or charger that is critical for my photography.

[Roger Clark]

Sue,
I'll mirror what others have said. I go a bit further than some. I carry a lot of compact flash, enough the cover a complete trip. And I generally carry a small laptop and an epson P5000. The P5000 can view images and can write to a usb hard drive.

For my Africa trip in January, I took about 120 GBytes of compact flash. small laptop, epson P5000, and three 500 GByte usb hard drives. I shot about 110 gbytes (I think I'm remembering the amount correctly).
I returned home with all images on CF cards, all images on the 3 500 gbyte drives, and most images on the Epson (80 GBytes). I also had most images on my laptop hard drive (80 gbytes),
and all as jpegs. So I had 4 complete backups and 2 partial backups.

If you don't have backups and something goes wrong, you lose. If you have plenty of backups, Murphy's law says there will be no problems, and, conversely, if you don't have backups, something will go wrong. ;)

Roger

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Sue

One important point to consider besides storage is being able to see what you are doing. The LCD in camera is not the same and being able to improve as you go form feedback is priceless !!!

Would buy a small laptop and redundant HDs !!!

[sue jarrett]

Great info, ya'll!

Looks like I will be picking up a small laptop or netbook and maybe buying another portable harddrive to go with the one I have. That will give me three drives to back everything up on. I just hope there is enough electricity when I need it.

I haven't traveled outside the US in many years, so I have gotten used to my current laptop and portable drive and no problems -- knock on wood.

I especially liked your Murphy's Law comment, Roger!

[Jay Gould]

Hi Sue, if you are going to get another hard drive, take a look at

http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperDrive...-UDMA-s/64.htm

If your computer dies you can still download into the Colorspace directly from your CF card.

Also, if you do obtain this item (I bought the 500gb), buy the COLORSPACE UDMA OTG Sync Adapter & Hard Case which allows you to transfer from the Colorspace to and external USB harddrive.

I also obtained the COLORSPACE/SPACE External AA Battery Pack.

[Richard Stern]

Hmmm.., all very necessary, but how do you safely transport a laptop, several spare hard drives, spare wires and chargers etc, to say nothing of the camera(s) and long lens(es), in small planes with minimal, if any, room for hand luggage, in remote parts of the world, with the minimum chance of losing it at the other end?

Richard

[John Chardine]

Richard brings up some good points. The practicality of all this has to balance the insurance element. On my annual trip to Antarctica, I'm away for 6 weeks. I'll have a MacBook, which has a DVD burner, and a 500 gig Western Digital Passport USB 2 external drive. I manage images every night (have to because I shoot a "live" CD of each cruise) which includes fairly heavy culling and copying to hard drive of computer. I erase images on Compact Flashes only when I need to so there are often two copies of each image existing on two media at any one time. I then burn 4.5 gig DVDs when I need to, and keep doing this so that I have a hard disk copy and DVD copy to take home. This system has not failed me in the years I have been going south with digital equipment (n = 5, three other years with film- a nightmare!). This brings up a point about Netbooks- they do not come with DVD burners (stand to be corrected if any do) so they do require another form of backup such as an external hard drive or external DVD burner.

[Roger Clark]

Richard,
I agree. When you have to travel light, all the computer gear really adds to the weight. When I've flown into remote areas of Alaska by float plane, I had to leave the computer behind. That is a case when having enough compact flash cards is the lightest way to go. I take the epson P5000 which has a screen for viewing images in those cases. although it's not much better than the LCD on the camera.

When I was in Tanzania, there was a pro photographer from Europe there who was staying at Ndutu for 6 weeks. He had no computer and no lcd/hard drive backup. He did everything on his cameras, including deleting images to keep his cards from filling too fast. So it can be done. I do like seeing images on a larger screen, however.

Roger

[Ed Cordes]

Gail and I are going to Africa in February and we plan to take one small laptop with 320 Gig drive and not much software on it along with 2 Hyperdrive ColorSpace units - one 120 Gig and one 320 Gig capacity. We each have 2-3 cards for each of our cameras so when one card gets full we upload it to the Hyperdrive while shooting with the other. When the second card is full the first is reformatted and used again while the second card is uploaded. This process is repeated as necessary.

Once back at camp the Hyperdrives are uploaded to the laptop so at least 2 copies of each image are carried home.

BTW the laptop weighs just about 5 pounds.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Another vote for the Hyperspace. If the laptop goes......the hyperdrive can still read the cards and it's small and has a great battery (rechargeble).

[Jay Gould]

For those of you considering the Sanho ColorSpace there are two accessories that are invaluable:

1. An interface that goes between the ColorSpace and a USB external drive that allows you to transfer the files from the CS to the external drive! If your computer goes kaput you can still download from a CF card reader to the CS and from there to one or more USB drives.

http://www.hyperdrive.com/COLORSPACE.../hdcsu-acs.htm

2. If you do not have access to 120/240, there is a AA battery pack to power the Sanho.

http://www.hyperdrive.com/COLORSPACE...k-p/hds-aa.htm

[fabiobernardino]

I owuld go with a small netbook (if weight/size is a factor, they're around 1 KG) and portable HDs (Seagate FreeAgent, WD My Passport ). And I would have backups of the HDs.

For storage I would have cards that keep me shooting for the whole time before I was able to download the pictures to the computer. Usually onde day, downloading at night at the hotel when I'm taking a shower.
Time is money. :)

[Keith Kennedy]

Sue,

As Rocky mentioned above, my son David took an MSI Wind netbook on our recent Galapagos trip rather than lug a 5-6 lb laptop. He copied the images from from a Hyperdrive Space (120GB) to his netbook (160GB HD) and to an external HD. The bottom line is that he ended up with 3 copies with minimal weight (the netbook weighs ca. 2.3 lb). He used Breezebrowser (it seemed to run just fine on the netbook) to review the images and delete the most obvious rejects. If editing (Photoshop or Lightroom) images is not essential, the netbook is a excellent alternative.

I also use a Hyperdrive Space (120 GB) to download my cards. However, I use Breezebrowser to delete only the obvious losers (out of focus, etc) before transferring to my laptop and to a second HD. This reduces the number of files that you have to transfer/backup. On a safari or any trip where you are photographing action (especially BIF), there will be a good percentage of those images that are destined for the trash bin (depending on your technique and your camera system!). I don't make backup copies of the losers. However, I don't permanently delete them from my Hyperdrive but instead, using Breezebrower, move them to a subfolder named 'deleted.

Given my experience in Africa and the recent Galapagos trip, I plan to pick up a netbook for reviewing and transferring images on future trips. On both these trips, I found that I did not have much time for editing images--I was too busy downloading, making backup copies, cleaning sensors and equipment, and most importantly, charging batteries and washing some quick-dry underwear (a must have on these types of trips). Plus you need to have some time to simply enjoy being there.

Per Jim Poor's suggestion, you may want to look at the Hyperdrive ColorSpace since it has the special adapter that allows downloading from the Hyperdrive directly to an external HD (in case of a laptop failure). I found that 120 GB HD (HyperdriveSpace) was barely enough for a two week Africa trip so I would suggest you think about at least 250 GB.

Also, Jim Nieger brought up a good point (albeit scary) that in case your Hyperdrive (or whatever download device you are using) gets corrupted or stops working--you need to have an alternative i.e. a external or internal card reader for your laptop/netbook.

Best of luck.

Keith

[Jay Gould]

Hi,

Just bought the Toshiba NB200; 1.66 processor; 160gb harddrive. Also purchased a two year extended international warranty and a Toshiba external DVD reader/writer. Surprisingly light with a good 10" screen.

[Roger Clark]

For those considering a netbook, be sure the display has at least 1024 x 768 NATIVE pixels. Screens smaller than that and some software, like photoshop, bridge, will not install. I have a small netbook which has something like 600 x 800 native resolution and I have to increase the display to 1024 x 768 to install programs, and then the screen gets scrolled around. Works but annoying.

Roger

[sue jarrett]

Awright! This is a great forum to get so much info from experienced people. Thanks again!

At first I was considering a netbook because this weekend is tax free here on back to school, so I could save 7%. But since I don't travel outside the US on a regular basis, I don't really want to buy another laptop/netbook. I have a good one, it is just too big for my trip.

My main concer is size and weight for travel (re:Richard Stern's response). If I could I would carryon EVERYTHING. I worry about showing up in Nairobi sans suitcase that might be holding a netbook and extra drives, when with just a portable that transfers my cards, I could have that in my backpack camera bag.

I like Roger Clark's idea about the Epson P5000 allowing you to connect to a portable drive, which I already have WD Passport, but still that is pretty expensive.

Cost wise, I could chimp on the camera and then transfer to two Digital Foci PS IIs 250gig at $159 each from Adorama. I have already loaded up on more CF cards from Hunts. BTW, Sandisk has extended their rebate program that ended in July. That way I would not clear the cards and would have two backups.

[Roger Clark]

Sue,

Here is another alternative and probably more robust than a hard drive: USB memory sticks. They are getting very cheap. For example, 32 Gb and larger: very small and light.

I would be very careful about putting stuff in a checked suitcase. On returning from Tanzania in January, I had locks on the suitcases, and both mine and my son's suitcase had suspiciously broken zippers. When I got home I found 3 1D Mark II batteries and 2 5D Mark II batteries were missing (about $100 each). Fortunately, we didn't have any other gear in the suitcases except CF tripods, and mine was secured by a steel cable.

Roger

[Jay Gould]

I like Roger Clark's idea about the Epson P5000 allowing you to connect to a portable drive, which I already have WD Passport, but still that is pretty expensive.

Look carefully at the Sanho HyperDrive Colorspace. I believe even with the accessory it is less expensive and faster than the Epson.

[Rocky Sharwell]

I had an earlier version of the Hyperdrive and it worked well.....It had some rough edges but it worked as advertised. The battery life was decent too.

[Bob Miller]

Can a netbook run photoshop cs4 or lightroom?

[Bob Miller]

I am considering a Acer netbook with 1024X600 screen resolution. Does anyone know if it will run photoshop or lightroom?

[William Malacarne]

This is on Adobe site for System Requirements

CS4
1,024x768 display (1,280x800 recommended) with 16-bit video card

Lightroom 2
1,024x768 display

Bill

[Jamie Strickland]

I am considering a Acer netbook with 1024X600 screen resolution. Does anyone know if it will run photoshop or lightroom?

I purchased a dell mini 10V which has 1028 x 576 and with lightroom the only problem I have run into is importing pics, you cant see the whole screen, it chops the bottom part :( so I have to highlight one of the boxes then use tab a couple times and hit enter to import the pics

other than that I have not had any problems

I have not installed photoshop on it but I imagine it would work ok

I only purchased this to use when I travel so i can dump my pis to the HD