Year Long Trip Storage for RAW Files

<p>Normally my trips last about six weeks and I keep my 16GB SD cards in my money belt with the 300 or so RAW files. I travel light and have never taken a laptop with me and may spend days or weeks off the wire. I have been doing this for years without incident. However, my spouse and I are planning to wander the globe for a year and this method would not be practical. I plan on getting a very small laptop (windows based) ,mainly for writing. But, am starting to think about using that as a conduit for uploading images to iCloud or some similar service. I have test uploaded RAW images to iCloud with no problem. I would feel better not having to worry about lost or stolen SD cards. I would likely need 60 SD cards to get me through a year of travel. I don't want to take that many and would think I would have less to worry about if each card was uploaded to the cloud when full, format the card and move on. I know there is still an element of risk here. Comments or suggestions about cloud storage and/or options for traveling this long would be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.</p>

<p>Cloud storage obviously depends on having a decently fast internet connection. Can you depend on having such on a regular basis?<br>

I've traveled much of the western US lately and did not have cell service many places, much less an internet connection. <br>

If I were planning to be on the road for that long, I would give some thought to portable hard drives, and/or DVDs you could mail home.<br>

<Chas><br /><br /></p>

<p>Thanks Charles. If I were on the road in the USA I would have lots of alternatives for managing my images for a year and space wouldn't be much of an issue. I would likely be in my camper and be backing up to an external hard drive or I might even take 60 SD cards. I will, however, be out of the country, visiting parts unknown. Even in parts unknown, you can periodically get a descent WiFi connection at a hotel in the middle of nowhere. I'm starting to think I should bring a solid state external back up drive (1Ter) and back up to that and to the cloud when possible. I don't think it would kill me to carry the external drive. The thing that worries me about not using the cloud is losing the external drive or having it stolen. Not comfortable mailing SD cards home from the edge of the earth. Thanks for the quick response.</p>

<p>You may want to browse through this recent thread: <a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00e2zs">http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00e2zs</a><br /> and this one here too: <a href="/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00e4T2?unified_p=1">http://www.photo.net/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00e4T2?unified_p=1</a><br /> Naturally, the solution depends on how much you actually shoot and how often you could upload to the Cloud - but in general I would consider this option unreliable and quite likely too slow for any significant number of images.<br /> Any backup solution that you carry with you would at least need to provide duplicate backup. One option would be to purchase a set of larger SD cards and use your camera's (Nikon D610?) second SD card slot for backing up. Since you mention 60 16GB(?) SD cards (not exactly cheap), you could use 8 128GB cards for primary backup (obviously a more expensive proposition if your primary 60 cards are larger than 16GB). You could use then at least one (better two) hard drives (or Solid-state drives) to create more backups.</p>

<p>Maybe this is an option too? <a href="https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/accessory-review-wd-my-passport-wireless">https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/accessory-review-wd-my-passport-wireless</a></p>

<p>Thanks Dieter and thanks for the attached threads. I will check them out. I get nervous when I get too many images in my camera. The camera is the most likely thing to be stolen when I'm out and about, although I use a stainless steel lined neck strap, but still, one careless moment and its gone. I can live with a stolen camera and 300 or less images going with it, but I can't live with the potential of over 2000 image lost with larger SD cards. I look forward to reading the threads you attached.</p>

i have a laptop and two usb 3 flash drives for backup. I always carry 1 of the usb drives with me. This works fine for me as

I don't store that many images (2800 over 4 years), not sure if it would work for you.

<p>Since you will have a laptop, you can use it to copy images from your 16G cards to a large capacity SD card, USB flash drive, or an external SSD drive. When Crucial came out with a 900GB SSD, I bought a USB 3.0 portable enclosure for it and have been using it for 2+ years. Having a high-speed external SSD is much less expensive that buying large disk capacity built-in the laptop. I now see a variety of portable SSD drives up to TB capacity available and you may find a form factor that is suitable for your security belt. You can also use high capacity SD cards as backup storage. High capacity USB sticks are also suitable but considerably slower in write speed.</p>

<p>What you said in the original post would leave you without any back-up at all as soon as you formatted and re-used the cards. I would not find that remotely satisfactory . Neither would I choose to rely on finding good internet connection, fast upload speeds, and cloud storage as the only copy of my images. I would want at least one and preferably two copies of each image with me, whether that's on cards, duplicated on cards from two card slots, on a computers hard drive, on a portable HDD via a computer, on a dedicated storage device, on memory sticks or whatever. If I had the photographs with me in two forms I might take advantage of any decently quick internet upload facility I could find to make a third online. But I wouldn't settle personally for one with me and one on the cloud, producing a situation where if my primary source went missing/broke then I'd be wandering round hoping that my cloud storage was OK since it was all I had.</p>

<p>I agree with you on relying totally on very big capacity cards. I don't believe its increasing the chances of this going wrong, but it sure increases the consequences if they do. </p>

<p>Another thought: Use the laptop to copy each card to another card (unless you're lugging a camera that writes simultaneously to two) and then mail one card to a friend or colleague who can verify its contents. If it didn't arrive or is bad, make another copy and mail that.</p>

<p>Just a thought. How long would it take to upload one 64 GB card to the cloud at 2-15 Mb/s?</p>

<p>About 9.4 hours at the higher rate. Most hot sites, including hotels and my U-Verse, are much slower. An USB3 hard drive is 60-100 times faster.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>How long would it take to upload one 64 GB card...About 9.4 hours</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Doesn't matter, he's taking 16GB cards and says he will fill about 60, which is one every six days. If that's evenly spread, it's only a couple GB a day, very easy to upload each night.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> <br>

Most hot sites, including hotels and my U-Verse, are much slower.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Not true in Europe. </p>

<p>The thread in the beginner's forum was the first thing I saw this morning, and I commented on there about the difficulty of uploading quantities of large RAW files in National Parks, and I suspect this is true in a lot of the world as well. I have carried the lightest laptop I can find, and keep the original cards loaded and separated for security reasons for several years now.</p>

<p>One thing I used to do in the days before RAW became a great idea was to copy the JPGs to dvd's and snail-mail them home from where ever I was. I hadn't thought of this until now, but that might work for camera cards as well. Something to think about.</p>

<p>Thank you all so much for the great info. This is all 21st century stuff, like me just getting my first smartphone. I like the idea of the SSD drive and am amazed at how small they are. These or storing on a large capacity SD card seems to be the way to go. I think I will experiment with the cloud as well. A number of friends that travel to places like I go have lost everything to theft. I have been lucky so far, but being gone a year will definitely increase the odds. So one SSD drive for my spouse, one for me in separate bags and the cloud. Perhaps a large capacity SD card in my money belt as well and should be covered pretty well. I think I will take the laptop out to the edge of my wireless connection at home and see how it does uploading a 16GB SD card with a couple of hundred RAW images on it.</p>

<p>60 x 16 GB or 15 x 64 GB, what's the point. I admit that 2.7 GB a day is not much load, but that's still about an hour of connect time. Would you trust something as ephemeral as "THE CLOUD" as the sole record of things which cannot be replaced?</p>

<p>I figured 15 Mb/s. According to Wikipedia, the average hard-wired internet speed in Europe is 16-20 Mb/s. The Left Coast of the U.S. seems to have 2-3x the connection speeds in the Midwest - good but no cigar.</p>

<p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I've just returned from a month in Italy touring from top to bottom. I purchased a Samsung tablet at Costco from a savvy salesman to handle my upload needs... I soon learned that I'd made a mistake. I'd never used a tablet before and thought I'd be saving weight and space leaving the laptop at home. Of course, now I know all about its limitations in that regard. I ended up buying CF, SD and even Micro-SD cards all along the way at ridiculous prices for very old stock. I was using a 36mb sensor and making very large RAW files so came home with quite a selection of cards I now have no use for. Nothing was stolen fortunately, but 30 or 40 Euros did disappear mysteriously from my pocket on a crowded commuter train into Naples...<br>

As for the internet connections... we stayed at 7 B&Bs, two hotels, two farms and an overnight ferry and never once encountered a fast connection anywhere. We had dropped connections all the time and substandard service at best, most of the time. I was able to create 'hotspots' with my Blackberry on the trains to send messages on the tablet but it would never have sufficed for cloud uploads and was lost altogether in the dozens of tunnels we constantly encountered. <br>

I do like the solution offered through that link to Dpreview that Dieter provided above. I will be investigating that for sure before travelling abroad again.</p>

<p>Gup. Thanks. Why was the tablet a mistake ? Just curious. Just that it has little storage space or something else ? Thanks</p>

<p>Paul, your two SSD drive + big SD card solution should serve you well. In my travels up and down the Rocky Mt. States camping in parks, I find reliable and fast upload Internet connections rare and considering the time it takes for a multi-gig upload vs. getting out and enjoying the locale, having at least two backup drives is my preference to cloud backup. </p>

<p>When you get you laptop, install tools to help you move images from card to disk(s). Having a basic tool such as Irfanview or Faststone Image Viewer allows you to view and sort the images you want to upload to the cloud. I use Faststone as my intake tool (as opposed to Lightroom). Windows 10 has tools to sync files between drives which you may find preferable to using Explorer to copy files. Windows Sync also moves files to the cloud but you should also look at Google Photo Backup.</p>

<p>If your laptop is capable of running Lightroom - particularly the Library mode, consider installing a copy. Having the photo storage and LR catalogs on the external SSD works well for me, and when I'm on the road, LR serves to rate and tag photos so I can upload or email a select few. The tagging capability is invaluable when traveling.</p>

<p>You don't need special tools. It takes minimal brain power to create a new directory for each day's wok and use Windows Explorer (copy and past, etc) to copy files from a memory card. That way the directories and images are unique, and you know exactly where they are located, not buried in some Lightroom creation.</p>

<p>True synchronization would merely reproduce directories created by the camera, which are of little use outside of that environment. Besides, if you know where they are located, it is relatively easy to make copies for backup and restoration purposes, keeping the same data structure.</p>

<p>An external SSD, or better, two, would be better than a hard drive with regard to the hard knocks encountered in travel. Hard drives are relatively fragile. It'd be heartbreaking to lose your photos on a hard drive. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>I figured 15 Mb/s. According to Wikipedia, the average hard-wired internet speed in Europe is 16-20 Mb/s. The Left Coast of the U.S. seems to have 2-3x the connection speeds in the Midwest - good but no cigar.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

First of all, Wikipedia is a lousy source of data. Here's a much better source - I figured 15 Mb/s. According to Wikipedia, the average hard-wired internet speed in Europe is 16-20 Mb/s. The Left Coast of the U.S. seems to have 2-3x the connection speeds in the Midwest - good but no cigar.<br>

<br>

Second, as you said, "hotels," and there is a big difference between US hotels and European hotels.</p>

<p>Paul, I was under the impression I could upload a day's shooting to the tablet and then upload that later to the cloud as needed thereby utilizing the CF and SD cards I already owned. The young salesperson told me this was absolutely possible and being done all the time. The Samsung has 16GB internally and a slot for a micro SD card up to 80 GB. Only ever having a Windows machine I didn't yet understand the Android system. He said there was also a USB port in the base to connect my camera. Well, the USB port is actually a smaller jack and is the same as that found on the Blackberry. It isn't compatible with my Nikon. Secondly, RAW files can't be read or displayed on the tablet, of course, so uploading them even if I had enough speed wasn't possible. In the end we used the tablet for GPS navigation and emailing home. I asked P.netters for their opinions regarding what equipment I should carry but not about storage solutions and I learned the hard way.</p>

<p>When I travel to do photography, I carry a laptop, and two 2TB hard drives that are each the size of a pack of cards. I do not trust "the cloud" and do not like the idea of relying on internet connections in unusual places. Each night I download the day's images and back them up. Even with large 36MP RAW files and high volume of images, it did not take long at hard disk speeds.<br>

Fortunately, I have not lost data... nor have I lost or had stolen the laptop or the drives. I have my wife carry one of the drives and keep the other drive separate from the laptop. All these solutions proposed here have their merits but there's nothing like having your own data on your own terms. Good luck to you Paul, have a wonderful and safe trip, and make memories as well as photographs.</p>

<p>Hard drives are cheap now. Just go with a couple. Maybe send some files home periodically on thumbdrives as well, there are some huge ones available. </p>

<p>Can't quite follow why people seem to use a laptop or similar to get a back-up stored on a portable HDD. Why not just keep it on the laptop's drive and do without HDD or reduce the HDD by one? </p>

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>Can't quite follow why people seem to use a laptop or similar to get a back-up stored on a portable HDD. Why not just keep it on the laptop's drive and do without HDD or reduce the HDD by one?</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

 

 

<p>Most laptop drives are fairly small, particularly if a solid state drive (SSD) is used. There's nothing wrong with putting them on the laptop in an emergency or for convenience as long as you <strong>move</strong> them to long-term storage on a regular basis. However the tendency for most of us is to keep them where first stored and <strong>copy</strong> them to other locations. Furthermore if the laptop is used for other tasks, there usually isn't a lot of space left for photos. You should keep at least 10% of the drive free for buffer space, and even that takes constant vigilance after a year or two.</p>

<p>A portable hard drive solves the space problem. If you need more space, clean up the portable drive or (recommended) simply buy a new one and keep the old drive intact for long term backup.</p>