Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Digital Cameras & Shooting Techniques => Topic started by: CharlesC on September 19, 2007, 09:00:03 am
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Greetings:
Question 1: What sort of storage devices do you bring with you when you know you will be taking serious "gigage" on a trip, as in 200+ GB of images?
Question topic 2: We all know about bringing enough hard drives to ensure that you have two copies of every image. But what is your solution in case your *laptop* dies during travel and there isn't anyone you can "buddy breath" with for the rest of the 200+ GB shoot? How do you keep two copies of every image and keep on shooting? Assume you are in a location where you have power, but don't have access to another computer you can plug your external drives into every day...
Thanks,
Charles
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Not 200GB+ of images, but I shot 50GB+ in 3 weeks over summer without touching a laptop.
I bought a very cheap 120GB battery-driven imagewallet type harddrive (the one that doesn't even show the image on screen), for which I paid approx. $180. I also bought an adapter for my 80GB iPod that sucks the images from my D80.
I had 3x 4GB SDHC cards and at the end of each day I would first copy everything from the camera onto the iPod and then stick the same card in the wallet. Repeat this for any additional cards. From cold nights in Yosemite through 120 degrees in Death Valley everything continued to work fine and I got back home with two identical sets of images. Risky to a certain extent, yes, but good enough for my purpose, and this workflow also saved me from carrying (and therefore potentially destroying) the MacBook Pro, which was a huge benefit.
On hindsight the 120GB drive was overkill, but the additional GB's didn't cost much extra. And using the additional 20GB or so storage space the iPod continued to work wonders for the kids in the plane and in the car, although the iPod screen wouldn't show the Nikon raw images.
Hope this at least was of some help.
Mark
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I use HyperDrive Space, and will get a 2nd identical one for my long trip next summer. No laptop necessary, can use batteries if necessary.
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Hello Charles,
After doing some research I'm planning on getting a Giga Vu Pro fom Jobo for a trip in October. The max capacity is 120GB but you can plug an external USB2 drive in to the GIGA VuPro to expand that capacity to 200GB+
With this set up you can use the Giga Vu Pro as an external hard drive with the laptop or you can use it to directly download the photographs from the memory cards should the laptop fail.
My regular external drive is the LaCie Rugged All Terrain hard drive. It has FW400, FW800 and USB 2 interfaces. That flexability has proven to be very handy, especially if you have a Mac.
If you buy a GIGA VuPro then you can use USB2 between the LaCie drive and the GigaVu. If your laptop has Firewire then you can can use the higher bandwidth of Firewire when the LaCie drive is connected to the laptop.
Hope that helps! Richard
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you should be able to find the best solution at http://www.hypershop.com (http://www.hypershop.com)
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P3000 with initial evening review and coarse selection of keepers. HyperDrive 80 backup. I find that my initial selection of keepers is no better than 25% so for me 40G suffices. A P5000 will give you 80G. If you are handy, you can swap out the drives from either with a 120G. Until recently I always traveled w laptop and used laptop drive and lots of DVDs (I anyways archive to DVD coarse selection so doing it on site only required hull a bunch of DVDs).
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Hyperdrive in addition to a lap top should cover most situations. I took this combo to Africa last year and it worked out great.
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I use a very compact 120GB Western Digital Passport USB drive with my Thinkpad, and it works great if you just want the storage. I also have my Thinkpad system backup recovery there. They have a 250GB model, about $180 from Newegg.
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200GB????? Man...you will be traveling for a long time or you do shoot everything in your way
Anyway, I usually take a Giga Vu Pro Evolution for immediate backup of my CF Cards as soon as they're full and also take my laptop that stays in the hotel and where I copy my pictures to every evening. I do like to carry a laptop not only for storage purposes but specially because I like to review my daily work.
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I now have two Hyperdrives, each with 160 GB. One is the Space and the other is the older model, which has worked flawlessly for me. I don't bother with a laptop on trips, so I do dual backups on the Hyperdrives. Works great, and their batteries recharge quickly in amotel room or from an adapter while driving.
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Hyperdrive space with laptop.
Although I think the next time I will take 2 hyperdrive space. Maybe I'll add the new color one.
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Hyperdrive space with laptop.
Although I think the next time I will take 2 hyperdrive space. Maybe I'll add the new color one.
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I suspect ten HD Spaces would weigh less than a laptop.
I recommend taking two Spaces and leaving the laptop at home. I personally don't like making quality decisions in the field based on a screen that is less color-managed than my home desktop.
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I like to take the laptop and park next to any place with wifi.
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I use a old 80gb laptop with a 120gb Seagate Freeagent go (USB), and an 80gb
PD70 (aka Hyperdrive) with spare 80gb 2.5drive.
I don’t know if this would fall into your trips schedule – you could go to an internet café and upload to an on-line data storage facility.
Willow
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I don’t know if this would fall into your trips schedule – you could go to an internet café and upload to an on-line data storage facility.
Willow
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Probably not an option. Uploading any significant amount of files (10+ gigs) takes forever unless you're in a cybercafe with a fat broadband - which is usually only the case in big cities in rich western countries. Even in those the bandwidth is often choked enough to make such a transfer take an hour or so.
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Thank you all for your advice.
Cheers,
Charles
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An alternative to the Hyperdrive is the Nexto CF 2525. I travel with two 160GB versions, no laptop required. Will copy over 2GB card in approx 90 secs and can verify content in another 10 secs or so. With the external bettery it is good for 80GB of downloads before recharging. I'm a very satisfied customer.
http://www.nextodi.com/en/product/ (http://www.nextodi.com/en/product/)
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An alternative to the Hyperdrive is the Nexto CF 2525. I travel with two 160GB versions, no laptop required. Will copy over 2GB card in approx 90 secs and can verify content in another 10 secs or so. With the external bettery it is good for 80GB of downloads before recharging. I'm a very satisfied customer.
http://www.nextodi.com/en/product/ (http://www.nextodi.com/en/product/)
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That copying speed is only achievable with fastest CF cards. And verify in 10 secs? That's only partial verification, as verifying 2 gigs bit-for-bit takes an order of a magnitude longer. Sounds like a comparable product to HyperDrive, though.
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I use the older Nexto ND-2500 (currently with an 80GB drive, but can go up to 120GB). It has a CF slot, and is very fast with current cards. I carry a CFII-sized SD adapter when my wife's along, as her camera uses SD. Her UltraII SD cards read at a decent rate with this. The ND-2500 has FW400 and USB2 interfaces, and the external battery is 7.4V LiIon: I have a simple adapter so I can power it with BP-511 batteries if required (unfortunately for this the newer ND-2525 runs on 3.7V). It can be charged via 12V or via Firewire, so that's simple.
Currently I'm still travelling with a 12" PowerBook. I also travel with one or two external hard drives (still 60GB units, but I'll upgrade them in time). Both of them are FW400+USB2. And a USB2 CF/SD card reader...
I have the ND-2500 with me in the field, and when a card is filled it gets copied to that and then put back into my card-carrier flipped over (to indicate that it's full, but has been backed up once). I try to carry enough cards to get me through a whole day, but when shooting wildlife the giggage can mount up quickly. I have sometimes had to start re-using cards, and at that point at least I had one copy on disk of those images.
At the end of the day the rest of the images on cards get backed up, then the new files on the ND-2500 get synced over to one of the external drives so we have two copies of everything. We usually pack the backup drives in my travelling-companion's luggage (or at least put it in a different part of the vehicle if we're driving/boating).
If the Nexto died (or the CF/SD adapter died) I would still be able to back up cards via the laptop. If the laptop died it would be harder to make duplicate copies but at least I could use the Nexto, and when it filled up I could swap in one of the other drives (I normally have a screwdriver in the toolkit, and like most of these devices the Nexto just uses FAT32-formatted drives).
If I had to go on multi-day trips without a laptop I'd just go with two PSDs (at this point it would probably be the ND-2500 for in-field backups, and either an ND-2525 or something slower with a display screen for evening backups) and back everything up to both devices. But the laptop serves lots of other purposes (e.g. intermittent email, downloading GPS logs, sorting images with LR) so I prefer not to have to do that.
There are lots of ways of sorting something like this out, and unfortunately each decision you make will have a trade-off. FWIW, the above system worked well for me last year in Africa.
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That copying speed is only achievable with fastest CF cards. And verify in 10 secs? That's only partial verification, as verifying 2 gigs bit-for-bit takes an order of a magnitude longer. Sounds like a comparable product to HyperDrive, though.
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I get those speeds using my 2GB Sandisk Extreme III cards - the display indicated the copy time at the end. Around 90 secs is normal. Yes, the 10 sec verify is the quick verify....it compares the first 4kb or so of each file. A full verify is about 180 secs I think but I never use it.
I not familiar with the Hyperdrive others have mentioned, and it may indeed be similar. My main point is that it is very convenient to travel either with one Nexto and a laptop or if you need to travel light, two Nextos and no laptop. Also, if you are going to be away from power for a while (e.g. hiking - I did everest base camp recently and had no power for 16 days) then the 80GB battery life is invaluable.
I have 4 2GB cards and these are almost always enough for a full day of shooting. At the end of each day I copy the cards onto each Nexto and then reformat the cards in the camera ready for the next day. Works very well for me.
Julian
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I get those speeds using my 2GB Sandisk Extreme III cards - the display indicated the copy time at the end. Around 90 secs is normal. Yes, the 10 sec verify is the quick verify....it compares the first 4kb or so of each file. A full verify is about 180 secs I think but I never use it.
I not familiar with the Hyperdrive others have mentioned, and it may indeed be similar. My main point is that it is very convenient to travel either with one Nexto and a laptop or if you need to travel light, two Nextos and no laptop. Also, if you are going to be away from power for a while (e.g. hiking - I did everest base camp recently and had no power for 16 days) then the 80GB battery life is invaluable.
I have 4 2GB cards and these are almost always enough for a full day of shooting. At the end of each day I copy the cards onto each Nexto and then reformat the cards in the camera ready for the next day. Works very well for me.
Julian
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Sounds exactly like the Hyperdrive. Probably come from the same plant