I've been looking at stand-alone photo storage drives for a while for taking on trips and I wanted to get people's thoughts on an idea. The problem is that I've got some extended trips coming up this year (5+ days) and I'd rather not drag my laptop along to download photos onto. My though is to use Something like this and mate it with a 32GB SSD drive, which can be had on eBay for about $110. The result would be an entirely solid-state device which should be pretty durable and have good battery life. Just curious what people think? TIA
& how much is an extra 32Gb in Compact Flash or whatever going to run you? btw 32Gb SSD for $110 sounds cheap to me?
I borrowed one of these from a friend when I went to NZ a couple of years back and it worked perfectly fine. Backed up my shots every couple of days and about managed to fill the whole HDD. It was pretty slow at transferring but time wasn't really an issue, can just chuck it in a bag and leave it going if you've got something better to do. The only problem of course being that you back up your photos then format your camera's card but if something goes wrong with the transfer then you're pretty much screwed. The one I took only had a monochrome screen with space for a couple of lines of text so it showed which files were on there but that's about as much info as it gave. If I were to get another one nowadays, I'd definitely go for one with a proper screen you can actually view the photos on.
Like BUFF I think I'd just get a couple SSDs in stead. Of course I have no idea how much you shoot or how large the files are but for me 3x4GB would be pretty sufficient for 5 days.
Looks pretty sketchy to me, I'd much rather go with something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Foci-...8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208623904&sr=8-8 or http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Visi...9?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208623904&sr=8-9 or http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Foci-...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208623904&sr=8-3 And a back-up CF to boot.
There is more than just storage to be considered, you also need to think about backup of the images you shoot. So take enough flash cards for your needs, but also get an OTG device to copy those cards too as well. Then if you still run out of space, you can always reuse a card but knowing you have no backup for it. In the UK, the cheapest OTG device is probably the Thecus YES nano N1050 from scan for £15 which also makes a nice 2.5 inch hard drive caddy http://www.scan.co.uk/products/productinfo.asp?WebProductID=804648
imo better to get 1 with a built-in card reader though as you can continue shooting on another card whilst backing up the 1 that you just filled. I have a Digimate which at the time ( a year ago or so) cost me £30 for the chassis from Aria. the newer model is about £20 from HK via eBay. simply add a 2.5" HDD of your choice.
How do the file structures on these work? Does it just copy the whole DCIM folder from the CF card and name it something else? Does it get confused when you copy additional folders to the drive?
I got a syncbox years ago and it just plugs on to my (iriver h120) mp3 player. Copies the contents of the flash card in full to a sequentially named folder. Not sure where you could still get one though. Excellent purchase though even just as a back up device, you don't really need to look at the pictures just make sure the free space has reduced by approx ~1gb or what ever you've just transferred.
The one I had just copied each reading to a folder in root called CFx where x incremented on each copy.
