portable storage...other than a laptop

AUZambo · Apr 21, 2007

I'm heading to Italy for 2 weeks in a couple of months and need something to dump pictures on. I have a 4 gb card, and know I can always simply buy more, but I'm wondering if it'd be cheaper to buy some sort of storage thing for them.

I was going to take my laptop and dump the pictures on it, but I don't want to have to lug it around. Do they make external hard drives that you can dump on without having the computer around...or anything similar?

Thanks!

Alex_B · Apr 21, 2007

yes, these exist made by various companies. some come with displays to actually look at the images, some don't. they are basically external battery driven hard drives with a CF and sd card slot .

canon will launch one soon (I tried one of the prototypes last year, really nice display)

haven't got links though.

pricesy will vary from 200 to 500 USD I guess. for 20 to 80 GByte and various features.

I'm thinking of getting one myself, but then 4 GB CF cads became so cheap these days that I might rethink and just buy a couple of those instead.

RVsForFun · Apr 21, 2007

...if you're considering taking images off a solid-state device and moving them to a moving disk drive, I would have to think the reliablility goes lower. Just dropping a hard disk with enough force can damage it. And your batteries have to last during the entire write operation or you can lose the entire contents of the disk.

I'd vote getting lots of CF cards and just keeping track of them.

smyth · Apr 29, 2007

Nikon used to make one, called the Coolwalker MSV-01. The hard drive was shock mounted, to resist damage from bumps and drops, and had decent battery life.

midget patrol · Apr 29, 2007

http://hypershop.com/

If all you want is storage, these can't be beat in my opinion.

RacePhoto · May 7, 2007

RVsForFun said:
I'd vote getting lots of CF cards and just keeping track of them.

These Hyperdrives and backups cost $200-$300, which means someone could buy a stack of memory cards and a tiny case to carry them, which is more useful, more reliable, and doesn't involve three transfers to get them into the computer.

My vote too. I have 7 or 8 cards now.

But I carry a laptop everywhere anyway, back up to that and save the cards until I get back to the office. Just in case.

For a trip, if I was forced to have no laptop, I'd still carry a stack of cards instead of a $300 special purpose backup drive that's expensive!