I'm edging that way Pete, but still nervous. Not about cost or reliability, but something else I'll call "losability." They're so blooming small that it's easy to misplace them.
My wife and I probably carry 50gb between us, but one of the first chores on returning to civilization is to download to our laptops. And copy to portable drives. And copy to DVDs. And mail the DVDs to ourselves back home. And I don't reformat the cards till I've quick-scanned all the backups.
And yes, you WILL lose a few cards while having no failures.
I think one back up is essential, and two better. I go so far as to make a DVD and mail it to myself when I am on the road, in case all my stuff is lost in transit. Paranoid? Probably.
Glenn, I used to make redundant back up copies when I used 512k cards...one card fit nicely on a single CD. Like you, I mailed one copy to my home and kept the other with me. Now I'm using 1 GB and larger cards, and they won't fit on a single CDR (my primative stand alone burner doesn't span disks). I haven't taken a trip off the grid since I've started using this larger cards, but I'm scratching my head about how to deal with it when I do......
Before switching to DVDs I had to split the files from my 1Gb cards onto two CDs. Just a fact of life (and careful disc labeling!) Now burning DVDs, I have to split the files from my 8GB cards. Good thing I got so much practice with CDs and 1GB cards!
Posted by Jim DeWitt on February 19, 2009 at 12:10 PM
Western Digital makes a slick USB-bus powered 250 GB drive. You can get it for $130 or so. I back up all of my shots to the drive as well as to my laptop, and pack them separately. For the really intense photographer, there's a 500 GB model.
Posted by Wim Reyns on February 21, 2009 at 1:56 PM
I'm on the same boat as Jim, i use a usb powered drive and a copy on the laptop, backup on both laptop and the hddrive. I do have a third option on which i download my cards and that is a hyperdrive space. but i only use that one when i'm doing 2+ day hikes.
Wim
Posted by Austin Booth on February 22, 2009 at 4:19 PM
I would check out www.newegg.com and www.mydigitaldiscount.com (and no I'm not in any way affiliated with these sites in any way, just a satisfied customer). They offer some very cheap backup solutions for the budget crunched photographer. The simplest cheapest solution would be to get an external dvd burner and newegg.com has several in the $60-$100 range which are very portable because they are USB powered and small in size.
Another option would be a portable storage unit which have slots for many different card types including a CF slot. They start at about $200 at mydigitaldiscount.com for a basic 120GB model with no screen for viewing pics. For an extra $40 you can get one with a screen for viewing your photos after you've backed them up which supports raw file playback and as long as the firmware is up to date chances are it supports your cameras raw files. You can also get these viewers such as the vosonic vp5700 barebones without a hard drive so you can pair it with a hard drive from newegg.com such as their $99 500gb laptop drive. That would be a 500gb portable backup and image viewer for $300. The vosonic viewers also take fuji film np-100 rechargable batteries which you can get for $13 on mydigitaldiscount.com if you wanted extra storage.
There is one other possibility and that would be to get one of the netbook laptops on newegg.com for $300 most of which come with a 120gb hard drive. They are ultra portable with their little 9" screens and can get 6-8 hours battery life with the optional high capacity battery. I wouldn't suggest it as your main photo editing computer even if you plugged it into an external monitor because of limited processing power. However, it sounds like your current computer may be at least 5 of 6 years old if it does not have a built in dvd burner so this little computer may in fact be an upgrade and a faster computer. You could also pair a portable external harddrive with the netbook. newegg.com has a western digital portable usb powered 400gb hard drive for $80.
I should have said from the start that I don't have and don't really want to get a laptop. That was the beauty of the old stand-alone CD burner. I made redundant copies then re-used a small set of CF cards over and over again.
There were some stand-alone DVD burners, but it looks like there wasn't enough demand to keep them on the market. I guess many people have laptops for other reasons, so it is no big deal to haul one along on a photo trip.
It looks like the best solution for me is the last one described by Austin: get a netbook and an external backup device, either another HD or a DVD burner. I tend toward the DVD burner because I wouldn't have to put so many files on a single device. I guess I'm remembering the days when we used to "ship disk" before even moving a computer. Hauling one around on a multi-day photo trip sounds risky to this old dinosaur.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Pete D.
Posted by Austin Booth on February 23, 2009 at 12:57 PM
Sounds like a good plan. You could mail dvds back home as well as store them on the netbook hard drive in case the dvd gets lost in the mail. Also if you want a third backup you could also stock up on cards so you don't have to erase them until you get home and know that your dvds arrived safely.
Discussion
9 repliesPete D.
My wife and I probably carry 50gb between us, but one of the first chores on returning to civilization is to download to our laptops. And copy to portable drives. And copy to DVDs. And mail the DVDs to ourselves back home. And I don't reformat the cards till I've quick-scanned all the backups.
And yes, you WILL lose a few cards while having no failures.
Pete
Before switching to DVDs I had to split the files from my 1Gb cards onto two CDs. Just a fact of life (and careful disc labeling!) Now burning DVDs, I have to split the files from my 8GB cards. Good thing I got so much practice with CDs and 1GB cards!
Wim
Another option would be a portable storage unit which have slots for many different card types including a CF slot. They start at about $200 at mydigitaldiscount.com for a basic 120GB model with no screen for viewing pics. For an extra $40 you can get one with a screen for viewing your photos after you've backed them up which supports raw file playback and as long as the firmware is up to date chances are it supports your cameras raw files. You can also get these viewers such as the vosonic vp5700 barebones without a hard drive so you can pair it with a hard drive from newegg.com such as their $99 500gb laptop drive. That would be a 500gb portable backup and image viewer for $300. The vosonic viewers also take fuji film np-100 rechargable batteries which you can get for $13 on mydigitaldiscount.com if you wanted extra storage.
There is one other possibility and that would be to get one of the netbook laptops on newegg.com for $300 most of which come with a 120gb hard drive. They are ultra portable with their little 9" screens and can get 6-8 hours battery life with the optional high capacity battery. I wouldn't suggest it as your main photo editing computer even if you plugged it into an external monitor because of limited processing power. However, it sounds like your current computer may be at least 5 of 6 years old if it does not have a built in dvd burner so this little computer may in fact be an upgrade and a faster computer. You could also pair a portable external harddrive with the netbook. newegg.com has a western digital portable usb powered 400gb hard drive for $80.
There were some stand-alone DVD burners, but it looks like there wasn't enough demand to keep them on the market. I guess many people have laptops for other reasons, so it is no big deal to haul one along on a photo trip.
It looks like the best solution for me is the last one described by Austin: get a netbook and an external backup device, either another HD or a DVD burner. I tend toward the DVD burner because I wouldn't have to put so many files on a single device. I guess I'm remembering the days when we used to "ship disk" before even moving a computer. Hauling one around on a multi-day photo trip sounds risky to this old dinosaur.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Pete D.