On the road storage

[marcmccalmont]

I have a desktop computer, a 10 lb laptop and an iPad so now when I travel what do I take with me? a portable storage device like a hyperdrive or a light weight laptop? any recommendations?
Thanks
Marc

[Ken Bennett]

Is this just for storage? For most jobs, I take enough compact flash cards for the entire trip -- they are cheap enough now to do this.

If you bring a small laptop, you can download to the internal or an external drive. If you want to be really paranoid, er, careful, bring two external hard drives and copy your cards to both drives, then keep them separate. One in your bag in the car, and one in your pocket, for example. For this use, even a cheap netbook will work just fine.

Of course, if you need to edit photos, you'll need a real laptop.

[John Camp]

You can buy a small Toshiba netbook for $299 on Amazon with a 250-gig hard drive and 1G of memory and a 10-inch screen with a built-in SD reader..good for browsing the internet and temporary storage; not so good for heavy writing chores, and so on.

[marcmccalmont]

I'm thinking a light weight laptop would allow me both storage and raw conversions on the road?
Still undecided!
Marc

[kevk]

When on the road I use a small laptop and two Western Digital Passport USB external 500GB drives. They are tiny and come in different colours so are easy to identify when used for different purposes.
I replaced the laptop's internal drive with a 7200 rpm 500GB drive (the 5400 rpm ones are sooo slow).

- Lightroom catalog, raw images and previews are on the laptop, as I found it too slow to run them from the USB drives.
- LR's copy-on-import raw images go to one external drive (blue).
- nightly when finished working, I copy the LR catalog and the day's new raw images from the laptop to the 2nd external drive (silver).

Kevin

[feppe]

I wouldn't travel without 2 copies of my photos. I use two identical HyperDrive SPACEs, but combination of other options proposed above would work: small laptop with Hyperdrive, SD cards with Hyperdrive, etc. If you're traveling with someone, keep the other copy with your partner, otherwise always keep one copy in your hotel room, or at least different bags/pockets.

For the paranoid: I seriously considered mailing the full SD cards to myself and keeping a Hyperdrive copy with me on my trip to Central America.

[stever]

i've also upgraded my laptop to 500 gb and take a 500 gb hyperdrive colorspace (expensive, but if something happens to the computer i can still download) plus a 500 gb Western Digital usb drive which is dirt cheap

taking enough cards for a trip is not totally out of the question, but a 32gb Transcend is now about $75 - not much different than a 500gb usb drive. i average about 20gb/day of serious shooting with a 5D2 and 7D

[OnyimBob]

13" McBookPro plus 2 usb 750 gig external drives plus Lightroom (or Aperture, Bridge or whatever)
Download images via LR (keywording, renaming etc) to each drive and the laptop hd, and reformat cards each night
Carry laptop and drives in separate luggage
result = three copies of every image safely stored and ready for the new day.
That's my routine and it works for me.
Cheers, Bob.
 

[marcmccalmont]

Since I'm a windows guy I ended up ordering a dell xps 15 with an i5 processor and 8Gig of ram plus 2 WD scorpion 750Gig 7200rpm drives and enclosures from newegg this way I can do some editing and storage on the road. 6 lbs not too bad
Marc