Travel storage/memory

I have a 20 Gig portable hard drive with card reader and two 1 Gig cards. The portable hard drive is actually quite robust except when it's actually reading/writing. Take the hard drive to an Internet Cafe once in a while and burn a couple of DVD's as backup, if you want, but I've used it for over a year now, and no problems.

 

LGH

I personally just use CD burning services as they fairly widespread. I use two 256mb CF for actual picture taking. I normally don't end up filling both these cards before getting them burnt though, which means there is always quite a bit of redundant space on each CD. But I would prefer that than having a huge card that could swiped by one opps, or get a weird magnetic force around it for a few seconds, or get dunked in salt water for whatever reason. etc etc.

 

I'm just saying I would prefect to have my photos on several CDs, rather than packed than all on a single electronical device.

 

That said, I do first make sure the CD has been correctly burnt at a nearby internet cafe, before wiping the cards for good.

Lucy probably has the right idea. I agree it's better to have the data stored permanently on optical media than on magnetic media. One could lug along a small laptop with a CD/DVD burner but that is another kind of hassle and theft-risk.

 

The conundum is that if you're not able to get to a CD/DVD burning store, you need to put the data onto the iPod/HD and there's no easy way to get it out again (unless you are able to stick it into a Mac/PC at the store) until you get home.

 

Which reminds me: Eric you need to check if the Belkin media reader works with Windows. I think it does, if you just enable the DISK MODE option and plug it into a Windows PC. It should mount as an IDE hard disk and show the photos under the DCIM directory. But I haven't done it in a while and primarily use my Mac at home with iPhoto.

>do you really want to shlep it on a Hawaiian vacation?<

 

Yes! I try to take my laptop with me when I travel. I also take my iPod and transfer photos from my laptop onto my iPod (very fast, unlike camera to iPod transfers).

 

I love digital but I don't trust CF cards - I've had to resort to the Photo Rescue recovery program too many times (admittedly I make a lot of photos so the CF card error rate is going to be higher for me than for someone not as obsesses as I am tripping the shutter).

 

And I don't trust my laptop, either - hard drives can crash, hence my use of my iPod. And I'm not a fan of CDs - they are too fragile for my tastes, and they tend to multiply exponentially.

 

However, memory prices have dropped - it's more affordable now to purchase enough CF cards to hold all the photos made, say, over the course of a week, and thus only have to back them up on one storage device. So I personally am not so concerned about memory space, rather I'm interested in backing up my photos as soon as possible.<div></div>

Usually I would bring along my notebook for longer trips, or I would borrow it from several good friends. At least that's how we overcome this problem. Also, you might want to consider in shooting at a lesser resolution, or do lots of housekeeping of the photos back in the hotel at night. = )