Storage solution needed for 4 week trip - please help!

[maftei_mihail]

you can buy one of this http://www.hyperdrive.com/

you can buy without hdd (only the case) and you'll buy the hdd after, because is much cheaper like this.

is a very stable device and the batery is enough for 100gb of download.

[richard daniels photograph]

Hi ,

 

I am a photographer based in Thailand. If you need any info drop me a line.

 

I would recommend taking a small laptop and then buying an external enclosure plus a 2.5 inch notebook drive. These things are tiny and very reliable. I have 3 of varying sizes. I think they even go up to 300gb now. i would buy a smartdrive enclosure that can be bought at pantip plaza in bangkok for approx 10 pounds and the hard drive would be about 50 pounds.

 

Alternatively , you could just take the external drive and load the pictures up in an internet cafe. They are all over thailand so you should be able to find one very easily.

 

otherwise take 1 x 4gb card and edit like crazy. That would really help with the selection process and If you have 250 keepers after 4 weeks you could end up as the next Steve McCurry.:)

 

richard daniels

photographer

Bangkok Thailand

 

www.richarddaniels.com

[StuartMoxham]

Take as many CF cards that you can afford and only shoot what is worth shooting. Concentrating on worth while shots will save you a lot of editing time also.

[waltflanagan]

I copy everything to my laptop and take an external drive as backup. I think you should buy an EEE or a different netbook. The Acer Aspire One series has up to 160GB hard drives for $400. I'm thinking about buying one of those for travel. I would not trust burning a DVD unless you verify it after burning.

[matejkap]

I have been on the one month trip and I bought two 16GB CF cards (one for me and one for friend and promiss him that I will test it for him during the month) and then I took two USB sticks each 8G (you always find some internet coffee). You can take also you USB harddrive. You will know pretty soon you are running out of space and you will be forced to find any photolab, internet coffee, or any kind of shop where they can have PC and ask them if you can copy it, probably they will want some money....

Good luck.

Pavel

[theo_dibbits]

I can suggest 2 options

1) buy 10 Sandisk Extreme III 4 GB disks from amazon.co.uk at £ 13.24 each (throw in a fiver for the overnight) which would give you about 3000 RAWs or 6000 JPEGs

2) Go to tesco and buy one of their small laptops at £ 299. Not the fastest but acceptable.

 

Oh, and enjoy the trip. Most of us here are very, very jealous.

 

Theo

[rgeorge911]

Here's what I use (as you mention as an option above):

 

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0293528

 

That's 120 gigs of storage, plus all the features of a laptop. Very small, light, and cheap. I'm quite pleased with mine.

 

Reed

[nhut-nguyen]

Shoot film! :) :) j/k

 

Laptop and portable hardrive. You can use your laptop to delete and edit your pictures on down time then back up everything to the portable hardrive. With the laptop you can also burn DVD/CD, burn every week worth of images and send those DVD/CDs home.

[mattb1]

My vote is for a few CF cards. They are rugged and dependable. A laptop can be a target for thieves. CD/DVD's I don't ever store photos on them and don't suggest to anyone to do it either, they are way too fragile and prone to errors.

 

Good luck and hope the trip goes well.

Matt

[pete_su]

laptop and an external firewire disk drive. or two.

 

burn DVDs for extra insurance if you want.

[nhut-nguyen]

CF cards are durable, no doubt. Recently I left one of my cards in the washer/dryer and it still worked. The thing about keeping all your images in CF cards is that you only have 1 copy. If your bag is stolent you will lose everything. A laptop will...

 

1. allow you to store your images in its own hardrive.

 

2. lets you edit your work on nonshooting time

 

3. back up to an external harddrive

 

4. burn DVD/CDs

 

Your spouse carries the laptop, you keep the external harddrive..now you always have two seperate copies in two seperate locations. If you feel that two copies are not enough, this is where DVD/CDs come in, just burn your week/day worth of images to those dics and leave them in your hotel room. Someone I know actually burns another copy and sends that one to his house in the States.

[josheudowe]

Lindsey,

 

I use, constantly, the Epson P-5000 and LOVE it. It's been unbelievably reliable. It's an 80GB HD with a large LCD screen

for viewing pictures. Rechargeable and makes redundant backups of your pictures. Personally, I would bring multiple 8-

16GB cards and back them up each night on the P-5000 (which is what I do when I travel).

 

Best of luck....

[lindsey holland]

After all of this, you'll probably find this both amusing and unbelievable.

 

I'd been almost at the point of clicking the buy button for a 160GB Hyperdrive Colorspace - I'd filled all my delivery and payment details out, and then left the page open while I went to talk to my husband and have second thoughts about it all. After that, and reading a few more of your posts, I came back to the laptop idea, particularly since the Colorspace really does seem to be overkill, and the non-display ones (like the HD80) wouldn't get to me in time from. So, I closed the Hyperdrive order page and started looking at laptops again.

 

I just checked my business email account and found a delivery update from the Hyperdrive stockist telling me that it'being processed for next day delivery! Apparently I somehow processed the order instead of closing the window. How ridiculously stupid is that?! I've never had anything like that happen before. I think it's probably too late to cancel the order now.

 

Given my apparent inability to use a computer, maybe it's just as well I won't be buying that laptop:)

 

I'm still nervous about the single unit though. I think I'll be backing up to an external (which I already have) at any available PC as well.

[bruce_margolis]

Lindsey, there is nothing wrong with two backups. I do that with my laptop and external drive and keep both of them until after all my processing of the photos is done on my desktop computer. Then I backup to another drive.

 

Nevertheless, you might want to try to call the company if you want to cancel that order. Alternatively, if they have a decent return policy, you could consider just sending it back to them when it arrives at your door.

 

No right or wrong here, just different ways of doing it.

[stevenseelig]

I would take a laptop and get two Western Digital passport drives (one for original files and the second as a backup). Make

an estimate of the number of images the two of might take and multiple it by 2 or 3..you will have a safe estimate of how

much space you will need. I would also take a backup of my internal drive on my laptop.

 

Steven

[jim_winters]

<img src="http://www.bulldogneon.com/memorykick.jpg">

[lindsey holland]

The saga continues...

 

It turns out that I'm not a computer-illiterate imbecile after all. The colorspace hasn't been ordered. The website I'd nearly ordered it from apparently stores everything you write into its forms, even if you don't tell them to process the order. Hence it sent me any email about the order status. I've now received another email asking me when I intend to pay for it. If every online store worked like this, what a confusing world we'd live in (have I bought it, haven't I bought it? Do I have early-onset dementia? etc).

 

Which brings me back to: I now only have tomorrow and Friday for something to be delivered to me. I'd come around to being happy with the colorspace and two externals. But I could get that laptop now.

 

How can this possibly have been such a complicated task?!

[lindsey holland]

Jim - thanks. Memory Kick doesn't seem to be available in the UK though.

[aaron l]

I've used the Wolverine with great success. I've since converted to using only CF cards when I can, though 4 weeks would probably exceed my CF stock and I'd be using the Wolverine as backup.

[alberto greco]

Please consider that if you store all the pictures in one sole device, if you lose\break\drop\ it, all your pictures will be

gone forever (the same applies if it's stolen).

Having two of them won't help that much because probably you will pack both of them in the same bag, and if you

lose that bag...Please also consider the weight of the drives and the attention you have to pay in carrying them.

 

CFs are the best solution (the hardrive will be usefull only as a back up without erasing the images from the CFs).

I have been travelling in that part of the world too (Vietnam, Lao and Cambodia - www.pbase.com\albertogreco) and

found CFs very easy to carry on and basically undestructible. Buy more of them.

 

Enjoy your trip

Alberto

[babette_ross]

I just had my formerly trusty wolverine flash pac die. i was not using it as a backup to the cf cards, i was offloading the images and reusing the cf cards. Poof entire trip gone (well i was able to get 90% back by paying a data recovery place a tidy sum.)

 

Lesson learned.

 

IF all your eggs are going to be in one basket, make it the CF cards as you have to trust them to be the sole source for a little while anyway. Plus if something goes wrong, you'll only lose what was on the card. Go buy the cards. If you can afford some sort of backup to offload and not erase the cards you are covered.

[oguzsevim]

Last year, I've spent 45 days in Thailand ( basicly Bangkok, Damnuen Saduak, Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Golden triangle, Phuket, Kho Samui, Phi Phi, Hua Hin, Phang Nga ) . I've taken my laptop and usb powered WD 250gb with me. During the daytime, my laptop was locked in my suitcase in the hotel rooms and luckily I didnt face any problem. During the night time I was loading my RAW photos to usb device even though I have several CF cards.

In summary I had 32gb of Thailand photos with me when I was back home. Add 18 gb for dummies, sums up to 50GB per person. You need your PERSONAL laptop during the trip anyhow for personal transactions such as bank transfers etc. mostly for security reasons so try to carry one of yours with you and secure it in the room or reception during the daytime. Internet cafes are not the safest places for personal transactions.

Enjoy your visit, Oguz<div></div>

[lindsey holland]

Thanks to everyone. I now have my gear all ordered. In the end I've chosen:

 

An Asus EEE PC 701

A 250GB WD My Passport Essential USB 2.0 portable external drive.

My current trusty Freecom 160GB Toughdrive.

 

The plan is to back up onto both drives each night, so we'll have two copies of everything. I'll then carry one drive while my husband carries the other.

 

We'll also only wipe the CF cards if absolutely necessary. I'm happy to have plenty of external drive space, as we'll be able to back up our horribly amateur but nonetheless fun camcorder footage as well!

 

The EEE PC and the 250GB WD drive came to a total of £239 with next day delivery, from two different stockists. Going by the current conversion rate (which is currently fluctuating more than normal, of course) that would be $378.

 

Ogus - that must have been a fantastic trip. Which of the Northern areas of Thailand do you most recommend? So far, we only have two of our four weeks planned: 4 days in Bangkok (one mostly flying), 6 days on Koh Phra Thong island, and 4 days in Kao Sok National park. After that we'll probably go to Chiang Mai and then disappear East in search of authentic culture, or maybe go to Cambodia, Vietnam or Laos. We're really not sure about that part of the trip - open to any ideas for good photographic material out there!

 

Thanks to everyone for all of your help with this question - you've been fantastic.

[alberto greco]

May sugget southern Lao? It is close to Thailand and probably one of the most beautiful place on earth for nature, people and culture. You will find a lot of stuff to shoot there.

I have been in northern Lao (which I also strongly recommend): Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng and Ventiane. Skip the last one if you dont have plenty of time but do not miss Luang Prabang (which is the mystical and buddist toen of Lao) and a day trip navigation on the Mekong.

Have a good trip

 

Alberto

[lindsey holland]

Alberto - Thanks. I'd thought that southern Laos wasn't particularly interesting scenically (all the images I've seen have shown a rather barren, flat landscape). After reading your post, I'll look into it further.