Portable storage ideas?
- This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated Jul 12, 2007 at 3:48 pm by
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I am curious to what others may use and what may work best in the category of storage and hard drives. I have a lot of portable 2.5 hardrives that I use for photography storage and it has now become very frustrating for me. I have master back up drives, 3.5’s, that are also nearly full but they are to bulky for me to carry at all times so, I left them back in the states. I suffer from hard drive paranoia as I have had not one, not even 2 and yes; it didn’t stop at 3. That’s right, 4 hard drives crash on me with 1 leaving irretrievability of data so, I have incorporated a redundant backup habit. I don’t carry a boat load of DVDR’s with me and cannot purchase and use them here in Europe anymore as my country/region code, in my laptop, has maxed out. I can now only use the US country codes but refuse on carrying 100 DVD’s around Europe, that would drive me crazy.
The cases that I store the mobile hardrives on are also battery operated so that it allows me to perform data transfer on location. I did use the GigaOne, for temp housing and then moved the data into that appropriate folders on the appropriate master 2.5 but Murphy showed me how his laws apply to that sort of thing as well and hit the GigaOne. Good thing is that I can still transfer the cards onto these other harddrives, I just can’t see the folders and verify that the data has all transferred until I plug into the laptop. I have to wait until I get back into the states to get the GigaOne serviced as I called a “so-called” authorized service center in London and they said: “WOW! That sounds like a really nice storage device but we only do analog”. Needless to say, I will get it serviced stateside lol.
So, this is my current situation: I have roughly 6 GB of total storage capability left and shot about 300 GB in the past 5 weeks> I am due to be back stateside, with a few days of work in Philadelphia, in a couple of weeks but I know that I will have no choice, other than to go out and purchase another, way over priced (add at least $100.00 to the US prices), hardrive over here again. I am interested to know if anyone has a better method of LIGHT, reliable, protable and battery operated data storage method and/or system. Thanks for any suggestions and/or advice…
Ben:
Check out:
http://www.digitalfoci.com/photo_safe.html.Their “picture porter elite” has a screen but costs a lot more.
If you want MP3 function also, look at their “media buddy.” Also slightly cheaper than the photo safe.
Scott
Wow you have quite a storage need. Small, high capacity, fully reliable (is redundant) is difficult to find.
I know this is less than real small and is not battery powered but here’s an option.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509&sec=1
This is a two drive enclosure. It does Raid 1 (mirroring) on it’s own. You’ll have to look at the specs to determine if you can take it with you. It’s designed to sit attached to a network switch. But you could connect it directly to a laptop with a Cross-Over ethernet cable. A lot of techs as Best Buy and other retail outlets won’t know what a cross-over cable is, but I carry one with me and they come in handy. If you need more info on that, I an elaborate. This type of device is again harddrive based, however it’s mirrored. If you take care of it and monitor the drives’ health. You should be able to catch a single drive failure and fix it before the 2nd going out. It’s not the most portable solution but in the capacities your are talking about, there are not a lot of things on the market.
Put a couple 500 GB drive in there, and you would have 500GB of mirrored storage in a reasonable sized “box”.
-wayne
Carter, I have the media buddy on my wish list for later this summer. I just bought some other accessories so I’m trying to spread my spending spree out. But they seem to be the most affordable of those that read many different types of cards and are battery powered. Battery life may not hold up to extended MP3 use however. But it’s rechargable.
Ben your needs are definitely in the high end range! We expect to see more photos from you ;D.
In view of what Wayne posted I noticed Office Depot and Amazon now have 500gb western digital my book drives for under $200 and 1tb for under $400. Not mirrored sata drives but you can always use software to sync two of them.
Thanks Wayne and Scott! Wayne, that system will be perfect for setting up as the master backup, when I get back to the states. I may have some questions on setting it up though and hope you don’t mind if I ask your advice on it. I think that I will probably go with the 1TB, as Scott mentioned, and mirror that. . It would be to bulky for carrying around in my backpack and I really do not have room in there for it but it will be perfect for what I described, back in the states.
Scott, the GigOne is just like the storage/card reader device that you mentioned. With a 40GB harddrive, it is the exact same price and does have the card reader built in as well. The method that I have been using was: Dump the cards into the GigaOne, during a shoot, while loading and using another one in the camera. Once the GigaOne got close to full, I would then migrate all of the data onto another storage device (In this case it was most often a 100 GB battery operated 2.5 Thecus). Once that was full, I would then dump that into my other hardrives and then migrate everything into my master drives back in the states, this allowed me to reformat these harddrives and reuse them again. The GigaOne worked perfect but I accidentally reformatted it incorrectly as I tried to suck more space from it. It has to be formatted in fat32 and I of course did not do that, an oversight lol. I tried to reformat it correctly and it failed so, now I have to get it serviced. The reason that I stay at 40GB and then 100GB, is so that the batteries will last longer and not expire due to a larger amount of memory. (If I am wrong on this logic, please let me know as it would be better to have larger memory, if I can). Once I get back to electric power I then migrate all of the data onto the other 2.5 hardrives.
Once I lost the GigaOne, I did go to the Thecus hardrive and plugged my card reader into that, it should of then worked just like the GigaOne but with no confirmation window and just a flashing light. I have used the Thecus as a support to the GigaOne and it worked perfectly. However, when I tried a direct card data transfer, the Thecus indicated that all files were transferred, I did feel good about this solution but past experience told me to not get to confident. I decided to save the card and just use more cards and save all of data on them as well, I did not want to reformat until I had solid confirmation. After the shoot, I looked at the contents of the Thecus on my laptop and discovered that over 700 shots did not transfer. Needless to say, I will never count on that as a viable method again.
I appreciate the advice and suggestions and was really hoping that there was a better solution than having to add more weight to my back. Nonetheless, the suggestions and help was GREAT and very much appreciated. I really like the mirrored backup system a lot! Those prices are extremely low to what it is here in Europe Scott and thanks for that update. I have a friend that just went to a 3.3TB system but he has the luxury of living in Austria and is never to far away or gone 3 months at a time as I am. I think that my best solution may be to get a couple more 2.5’s and 2 GigaOne’s. incase of another failure or idiot mistake from me.
Scott, the needs may be high end but the photographs are not, there are many on this forum (including yourself) that are better photographers than I.
Thanks again!!!
Ben:
Wayne knows about the Raid1 system, and can correct this if I am wrong, but I think it is just a box that you have to put two drives in that you buy seperately. They have to be Serial ATA (SATA) drives.
The My Book drives are not (just ATA drives that I am aware). You would have to sync them using whatever software. Don’t think they would work in the Raid1 device.
I’ll have to check out the GigaOne also before I buy. Thanks for that info!
Scott
PS I think the media buddy is also fat32 format only. Sounds like an identical device.
The device I posted about is the shell and the smarts. You buy two drive to put in it. The device then will mirror the drives for you. It’s designed to be put on a local home network and then used as mass storage.
Another option, Assuming you have Internet access in your travels. You could set this mirrored thing up at home base attached to a home network and have a system running at home. Then using some software (mentioned below) you can set up a secure connection from your laptop to your home network. Go have coffee or something where they have high speed connections available and start transferring the pics home. You don’t have to do them all at once, just trickle them home as you stop at Internet access points. You’ll then have your local copy, and a copy back home over time.
Thanks again for all of the help. I don’t always have reliable access to the internet and when I do, it is for very short periods, The other suggestions will be great for when I get back stateside but for traveling, I think I will just have to add a couple more 2.5’s to my bag . I am due back to the states next week and I am very excited about that, been here for 3 months straight now. Running straight to my favorite river for some serious fly fishing.. :)…
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