Any user looking for huge, fixed backup storage for their desktop or notebook Win PC. Why I like it: Direct, straightforward and simple—just plug it into an available USB 3.0 port and use the drag-and-drop method to backup your files. Very low cost per GB. Price: $139 Buy it on Amazon here. #4 G-Technology 4TB ArmorATD All-Terrain Rugged Portable. A Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD that is our runner-up for portable storage can be had for $125 in a 500GB capacity. IDG/Gordon Mah Ung The top drive uses the older, slower Mini-USB interface.
- Best Photo Storage Device
- Photo Storage Devices
- Best Portable Storage For Photos
- Portable Storage Device For Photos
- Best Photo Storage Drive
Taking photos while traveling can be a lot of fun and a great way to bring home very special and personal souvenirs. As digital cameras shoot larger and larger files — especially for those of us who like to shoot RAW — finding a way to store all of our photography can be challenging.
Best Photo Storage Device
There are a few options to choose from and none of them are quite perfect for every situation. Over time, I'm sure the solutions will get smaller and faster. Until then, here are what I think are the best portable photo storage devices to use while on the road.
Laptop computer
The fastest and simplest way to store photos is to bring a laptop computer with you. Newer laptops usually have large enough hard drives to store all of your photos and some even have card readers built in. Another advantage to a laptop is being able to edit photos right away and potentially upload them to a storage site or social media. The downsides to using a laptop while traveling are the size, weight and the potential of a thief targeting your computer.
Photo Storage Devices
Cloud storage
If you have a device that can connect to a reliable and fast internet connection, like a laptop, netbook or tablet, you can upload your image files to the cloud. Os x sierra app download. Services like iCloud or Dropbox let you store lots of data pretty affordably. Also, photo proofing sites like Smugmug allow you to upload JPEG files for storage. If you don't use the cloud for file storage, you can also use it as a backup in the event your physical storage gets lost or stolen while traveling.
Hotel computer
0ffice 365 app. If you know that you will be in a place where you have access to a computer, you can slim down your luggage by bringing only a card reader and a portable hard drive or USB drive. For a few days of photo storage, a USB flash drive should be enough. For a week or more, a 500 GB G-Drive should be more than enough and still affordable.
Backup storage device
Best Portable Storage For Photos
Several companies make card-reading backup storage devices. These machines allow you to take your CF or SD cards and dump them onto the device. Some of them allow you to preview the files—even RAW files. Unfortunately, most of these devices have mixed reviews. Some people have great luck with them and others have terrible luck. I hope that a reliable and affordable device comes to market soon.
Lots of memory cards
Memory cards, in particular SD cards, continue to get cheaper. Because of this, they are quickly becoming a viable option for photo storage. It may be less expensive to buy a handful of 32 GB cards for your month-long vacation than to get a laptop, an external hard drive, or another storage device. Even if you shoot on CF cards, it may be more affordable to transfer photos to SD cards than to an external hard drive, depending on the space you need. Another option is the Eye-Fi card that wirelessly transfers photos, if you have a device that can store them all.
iPad or tablet
Using an iPad can be a good, lightweight option for photo storage, but it does have limitations. You can buy a card reader specifically for the iPad to dump photos, which can then be uploaded to the cloud or edited via the Adobe Lightroom app. The big limitation is the relatively small hard drive space of the iPad. Typically, the 5 – 8 GB I have free on my iPad is not enough to download more than a day's worth of photos from a trip. Ideally, there will be a solution that allows you to quickly transfer photos to an external hard drive, through your iPad. Or tablets will increased their storage space while remaining small.
For now, I'll keep hauling a laptop around while traveling until a smaller, faster and more convenient solution pops up.
Portable Storage Device For Photos
How do you store your photos while traveling? Anyone have a new way of doing things?
Best Photo Storage Drive
Portable Photo Storage Choices For Travellers
We take a look at the storage options available for snappers on the move.
(by Mike Slocombe for Digital Lifestyles, 19th October, 2007)
Although digital cameras and cheap memory cards are conspiring to make us take more and more photos, backing up those precious snaps when you're away from home can be a bit of a fiddly task, especially if you're shooting in the memory hungry RAW format.
For short trips, a couple of spare memory cards should be more than enough, but for longer jaunts, more versatile back up solutions are often needed.
We take a look at some of the storage options available.
Uploading from an Internet cafe
Perhaps the easiest method is to pop into the nearest web cafe, grab yourself a gallon jug of sangria and sit back while you back up your files online.
If you've got your own server space or are using services like the BT Digital vault, you could slap the card in the PC and FTP the files directly into a password protected directory (and hope that no one's keylogging the computer).
If you want to share the photos with faraway chums, the images could be uploaded straight to photo sharing sites like Flickr (you'll need a paid account if you're uploading tons of files), or emailed home or elsewhere. Smaller sets of images can also be uploaded to free file storage sites - see a useful listing here.
You're likely to come unstuck if your webcafe is in the back end of beyond with a 14k modem for a connection, or if you've got a bulging bag of full memory cards.
Back up to a laptop
So long as you don't mind lugging the thing around on your happy hols, a laptop makes it easy to safely transfer your images at the end of the day.
Taking a laptop on the road means you can organise, tag and trim your images as needed, making it easy to remember what was taken where, although the extra bulk, battery life and 'nickability' are all factors to consider. Taking along a compact USB portable hard drive is also a handy way to add another, fairly cheap back up option.
Portable storage devices ('digital wallets')
Many serious photographers use dedicated portable storage devices, in the shape of flash drives, larger capacity hard drive based units or dedicated DVD photo burners.
A couple of budget models
Once leg-crossingly expensive, prices have come down recently and there's loads of cheap, capable devices out - although you can expect a pretty basic performance with no frills. Be sure to check out the battery life on some of the cheaper models too.
Offering simpleton-proof, two-button operation (power on/off; copy), the Vosonic XS-Drive 2 Smart is a stylish, cheapo 40GB-160GB storage device with a fast USB 2.0 connection and a snazzy OLED panel. This displays the drive's working status, file transfer and battery power level (although you can't view the images or browse any folders).
Supporting CF, MicroDrive, MSDuo, MSPro, SD, miniSD, microSD, SDHC, MMC, MMC, xD - and a host of more obscure flash card formats - the Vosonic offers two hours of battery life, and usefully lets you delete copied files off the card before slapping it back into your digital camera.
Prices vary according to the GB storage, but the 60GB version can be found for around £80. Not bad.
Set to launch next month is the budget JoBo Giga One Ultra storage device. Coming in four hard disk capacities (40, 80, 120 and 200 GB) and boasting a claimed transfer rate of 1 GB per 3 mins, the USB 2.0 unit is wedged into a chunky aluminum case, has a 2? LCD screen for status updates (but not for viewing images, sadly) and retails for around £105, £140, £160, and £230 respectively.
In the next instalment, we'll look at some mid-price and upmarket storage solutions, explain how you might be able to use your iPod for photo back up duties and give you our belt'n'braces approach.
Mid priced viewers
Deep pocketed photographers looking for more professional features may be impressed by the EPSON P-3000 Multimedia Storage Viewer, offering movie and photo playback on a large 4?, 640×480 pixels, Photo Fine Ultra LCD, backed by 40GB internal memory, built-in CF and SD memory card slots, long battery life and a built-in audio player.
There's support for RAW file thumbnails from around 40 dSLR models and images can be handled right up to a wall-filling 30 million pixels. The cost is equally massive, with the P-3000 retailing for around £300, and the bigger 80GB version, the Epson P-5000 hitting you to the tune of £430.
The Pro's choice
A particularly impressive high end choice is the Jobo Giga Vu Pro:evolution, a portable media player developed for pros offering histogram values, dust and blown highlights detection and a crosshair readout for RGB values.
The 145×107x38mm, 420g unit comes with a 3.7-inch TFT LCD, 640×480px resolution screen plus support for MP3, MPEG-4, USB 2 and USB 2 OTG, with the CF card slots (type I/II) capable of hurtling files across at a whizzy 13mb/second.
The Giga Vu Pro can display JPEG, RAW, and TIFF photos, backed by the ability to zoom in and rotate images. There's also a built-in FTP server for connecting with Wi-Fi enabled cameras via an optional 802.11b CF card.
Naturally, something as good as this has a price tag that feels like being hit around the mush with a cold herring, with the 40Gb model priced at £369, the 80Gb £429 and the extra-tasty 120GB model delivering a £589 punch.
Personal Media Players/iPods
If you don't fancy the expense of a dedicated photo wallet, you may be able to upload the images to your portable media player, although not all support photo transfer functions.
iPod users can grab the optional iPod Camera Connector for transferring photos to the iPod photo (30 GB and 60 GB) and iPod 5G (with Video) models but the EveryMac site notes that 'all iPod models starting with the iPod classic (6G) and iPod touch do not support importing photos from cameras at all.'
Our solution
The site also warns that, 'You cannot import photos to any iPod mini, iPod classic, iPod touch, or iPod shuffle models from a digital camera. You also cannot directly import photos to any iPod nano models using the Apple iPod Camera Connector or a third-party solution..'
Users of most Archos and SanDisk personal media players should have no such problem though.
Being bereft of iPods and deficient in the portable media player department, we've found ourselves using a variety of back up methods, adopting something of a belts'n'braces methodology, mainly out of fear of losing our sacred shots.
Our current three pronged back up system involves:
1. Taking loads of SD cards on our trips and using a fresh one after each one is filled up. The 'used' SD card then is then stored safely and acts as our first back up
2. Copying all the images to our laptop, and using a card reader for image transfers to save the camera's battery life
3. Taking along a compact 100GB USB drive and backing up on to that. For some trips we burn DVDs of the files and either carrying them separately (so we'll still have the photos if our bag gets half-inched) or post them home via ye olde snailmail.
It's worth noting that whatever system you employ, don't forget to take along an ample supply of chargers, power supplies, batteries, solar chargers or hamster powered transformers if that's what you need to keep your gear going.
Pack your cameras carefully, take a cleaning kit and be sure to take out insurance for your cameras and equipment, and keep a record of the serial numbers, make, model and descriptions.
Related link:Proporta Mobile Survival Kit - emergency charger
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