Portable Storage Devices

You've reviewed portable storage devices in the past (I think most recently in

early 2006), and wanted to get an updated recommendation to what's on the

market. I'm planning two 2-week trips this year and need something to store

photos from memory cards. Can you recommend? I've heard the Epson 3000 is

excellent and now has a $150 rebate.

 

I must admit, though, I really don't know much about storage devices and need

your advice. Many thanks.

You can read Peter Thompson's "big thumbs up" review near the end here: http://tinyurl.com/yt7mpn<div></div>

Buy more cards and a portable computer. Do not erase anything until you are home and everyhing is in two places. Maybe burn some DVD on the way.

 

A computer has far more utility for not much more money. It need not be a $2000 20" screen portable. I got a $1100 Macbook with 13" screen and put my second copy of CS3 on it. BTW, CS3 runs fine on it.

 

If you are a windows guy, a $500 Dell will be fine. Guarantee nothing about Vista and Photoshop.

I'd get a Hyperdrive Space or Colorspace, based on my experience with their earlier model: http://hyperdrive.com/

I bought a OTG hard drive enclosure and laptop hard drive and made my own. Total cost, $50 for 60GB of storage. Camera plugs into the drive directly (this is the "OTG" or On-The-Go protocol) and sucks the pictures off the flash card. Works great.

I'd buy as many memory cards as you need. And then some.

 

You can get the Epson 3000 for $410 - 150 rebate = $260 for 40 gig. $6.50 per gig.

 

You can buy 8g Sandisk cards for $100. Buy three, and get $160 rebate. $140 for 24 gig = $5.80 per gig.

 

Even if the memory cards were slightly more expensive, I'd still go with the cards because of the added hassle of carrying something extra that also needs its own cables and batteries.

 

 

Eric

Hyperdrive Space - very fast and reliable with bit-for-bit verify.

 

If you want image playback (histogram etc.), buy a Hyperdrive Colorspace.

If it's a two-week trip, I would definitely bring a laptop. That way, I can check the shots at the hotel, in detail, and make sure I got what I wanted. If not, it's not a big deal to go back and reshoot. But, if you put them on a storage device and then bring them home only to find you didn't get the shot, you'll be sorely disappointed. True, some of them have LCDs, but they are small, and inflexible.

Creative makes a media player with a CF slot. Also Canon is coming out with a storage unit

M80 and M30. 30 and 80 gigs.

 

 

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0609/06093002canonm30m80.asp

Uh, the Canon announcement is from September 2006. Did they change their mind?

There is no need to buy several memory cards or carry heavy laptops. I took 2500 raw photos on my one week trip to disney and stored all of them on a portable drive from Digital Foci. You can get them from B&H and if you don't need to view your photos on the storage device they are as little as $119 for a 40 gig. I had no problems with mine and use it to back up photos whenever I run out of memory card space.

Matt,

 

No, but I think they're difficult to find in the US and more easily found in Europe.

Gotta say the small laptop is the way to go.

 

I travel this way, and it works well. In the past, I have ALWAYS insured the images were in two places: Hard Drive and CD's. Later, Hard Drive and DVD's. Next trip: Hard Drive and external hard drive.

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00LxjX

 

I wrote my thoughts on one I brought, I think originally a Vivitar, that I got for peanuts. Its

great for working on the go. I just pop a card in once I have finished shooting and carry on

shooting to the next card.

 

However for a multi night trip away I would strongly lean towards a laptop such as the new

little macbooks. An alternative is the Asus eeepc with an external harddrive, but I feel that

this is emerging technology and you may as well wait for one with a bigger internal flash

hard drive and cheap price that can run some useful programs.

 

As for the Epsom and Canon storage devices, I cant help feeling that this is a good chunk

of cash towards a small laptop that has so many other benefits.

So unless you can get one cheap, head for the macbook route as it will give you email

skype and editing facilities. You could even string together a slide show in imovie, post it

to facebook and have your images criticised by friends and family before you get home.

 

My former business partner (photography) swore by the burn to DVD direct devices

 

Cheers G

I have an Epson P3000 and love it. It has a very good 4" screen to review my shots. I also got an adapter for other cards (the P3000 has CF and SD slots) so companions on the trip could review their shots too. It was such a hit that others said they would get one upon their return home.

 

I do not erase my cards so that I have backup copies of everything I shot.

 

Jim

I forgot to mention that I've carried a laptop on other trips and it is NOT worth the hassel of lugging it around and trying to find room and energy to use it in route. I have tried a couple of cheaper brands and found them wanting. In my research of the subject I would only recommend Epson or Jobo.

 

Jim

I too have the Epson, and have to echo the sentiment that if you are on trip with others who you are likely to want to share a view of your shots with, the Epson is wonderful.

 

This past summer my family was on a cruise with 13 other family members, the idea of passing my laptop around on the lido deck seemed just a tad bit risky :) I do wish the canon was available so that the battery issue was eliminated, but in the end carrying the small adapter was not an issue.

 

Good luck.

I have the Hyperdrive HD80.

 

It's very slow - 5 hours to transfer a full load via USB from a 40GB drive. It does have a problem with corrupting images. I plugged my CF card in and transferred my images. Then I found some corrupted images that could not be used on the Hyperdrive. Fortunately I had not formatted my card so I was able to recover the corrupted images. Since that day I have not used the hyperdrive as I regard it as too risky. It's OK for holiday photos but for work - forget it!

 

I like the idea of the Asus EEEPC very much. I love the solid-state hard drive. That seems ideal for laptops which get slung around a good bit. At the moment according to NewEgg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=636&N=2013240636) the prices of SSHDs are a bit on the high side. I'd happily put a 32GB in my current laptop or a 64GB even. The problem is that they're very expensive at $700 and $1000 respectively. When that price falls as it surely will by next January they might be worth buying.

 

Regarding the Asus EEEPC I gather somebody else is doing something similar for a similar price. That might be worth looking at too. As far as the Asus is concerned, as long as you replaced the hard drive with something bigger or used one of the external hard drives with it, it might be quite useful. I am toying with the idea of buying one but I have a feeling that I probably won't.

Two years ago I bought a PD70X 40 gig for $169-179 if I remeber correctly. That's just about what the 40 gig hyperdrive is going for no. The 80 gig is $250. From the spec sheets and photos that I've looked at it looks like the exact same device. The case, lcd display controls, size everything.

 

I've been very pleased with my device. It's small and fast. Me and partner both use 1 gig cards and it really does download them in less than 2 minutes.

 

The last trip I didn't bother bring ang chargers/converters. She did and never used them. Charged up the PD70X and two batteries for the 20D my partner charged up two batteries for her Rebel XT and we were all set. Granted it was only one week but there were two shooters and we didn't come close to the capacity of the PD70X.

 

The PD70x uses laptop drives so I susspect that the hyperdrive does as well. So, you can always take a second drive and pop it in. Getting used 40 gig laptop drives should be cheap and easy. The litho batteries are also very affordable now so, you could bring a spare set or the charger if you are planning on 80 gig or more. Also, since it uses standard AA batteries in an emergency you can use OTC batteries.

the PD70X and the Hyperdrive HD80 are the exact same thing. They use standard PATA laptop drives (so far, no PSDs use the newer SATA hard drives which are starting to be more plentiful in very large sizes and will eventually completely replace PATA). The HD80 runs very poorly on alkaline batteries - can drain them flat on 4GB of transfer. NiMH rechargeables can source more current and last much, much longer. If you buy an HD80 to be able to use alkaline AAs, be aware that it's an uphill battle.

 

The newer Space/Colorspace use an internal rechargeable cell which can be charged from AAs at a slower rate that the AAs can better support. That's probably a better solution.

sorry, I realize I should be more clear. When running the HD80 on alkalines, the drive motor draws more current than the batteries can comfortably supply for long. Very quickly (about 2-4 gb in my experience, with fresh brand new Duracells) this will cause the battery voltage to drop below the threshold needed to keep the HD80 on and the whole thing will shut down. the alkalines will be extremely hot when you take them out. They may well have a great deal of power left for other lower-current devices.

 

Alkaline cells may well have more total energy content (something like 2900 mAh) than NiMH rechargeables (2000-2700 mAh) but NiMHs can supply the current needed by the HD80 without a voltage drop. So the device will last much longer on them - 8gb has never been a problem for me and I'm sure 32gb isn't either.

Rhys: If you're taking 5 hours to transfer 40GB, that can only mean one thing: you are using USB 1.1. I transfer the same quantity as fast as my HD can take it (minutes, not hours).

 

My old HD80 came with 2000mAh NiMH (?) batteries included.

It's very strange because my laptop is USB 2.0 and the HD80 is supposed to be USB 2.0 also. It's just very slow.

Just because a device supports a particular standard, doesn't mean it's using it efficiently. Transferring images using a Canon EOS body, for instance, is almost universally slower than taking the card out and using a card reader -- even if both use the same bus, such as USB 2.0.

That's pretty much what I figured about the HD80. It was not one of my smarter purchases. I get more use out of my external hard drive. In fact, I could still use the HD80 as an external hard drive for an Asus EEEPC. I'm not quite sure that I want to blow the money on an Asus EEEPC though. I think they're a bit bulky still and when the price of SSDHs come down, the Macbook Air will simply blow the EEEPC out of the water.