Have been looking at totaly portable storage such as Wolverine Picpac II or Digital Foci photo safe for on the road photo storage . Anyone have experience with either or any other suggestions ?
Jul 22, 2012 at 12:04 PM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
I use a Nexto 2700 with a 1 tb drive. Not sure if you can buy the shells any more, but I have found Nexto to be quite sturdy and reliable. No picture preview, but love that it does incremental copy if you have already downloaded part of card. Decent battery and download times. I never had much luck with the hyperdrives personally, but other seem to like them too. Adorama used to have a flashpoint portable storage that was pretty inexpensive that I think might have been a rebadged wolverine so might want to check them out also.
since they are really the last "quality" one in an almost non existant market* now the price is hefty and limited in its scope for future formats that will replace the current.
see lars' statement which at the moment is true but one route i personally i stayed away from. the advent of XQD is going to creep in rather rapidly and the traditional CF model is going to subside into the past over the next few years. long enough for some to sell off their vast supplies to the second tier owners.
Yes, storage cards are cheap. But...for me, having an external storage vice is not about having enough capacity but instead a field-backup when I am not carrying a computer to be able to create traditional backups.
I have a nexto as well as an Epson device. The Epson is nice ith the screen, but it's dog slow. The nexto is great. Fat and easy with solid battery life.
Jul 24, 2012 at 10:52 AM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
Michael H wrote:
Yes, storage cards are cheap. But...for me, having an external storage vice is not about having enough capacity but instead a field-backup when I am not carrying a computer to be able to create traditional backups.
I have a nexto as well as an Epson device. The Epson is nice ith the screen, but it's dog slow. The nexto is great. Fat and easy with solid battery life.
I make my field backups on the memory cards. It's much faster, safer and more easy. I make the backup at the same time I'm shooting. And I don't have to carry any extra device.
If I had dual CF slots, I'd be more comfortable with that. My primary bodies are 1d3 and 1ds3...one CF, one SDHC. For reasons I can't quite explain I don't feel 100% comfortable with the SDHC as backup approach.
Maybe I should trust the cards more...who knows. The SD cards just feel so fragile (for lack of a better word) to me. I've washed and dried a couple CF cards and they keep on working. I'm not sure the SD can handle the potential abuse I toss at them :-)
Jul 24, 2012 at 04:03 PM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
It's safer to do your backup in the camera on a SD or SDHC card, than just shoot with one card. And then later copy that to your Epson or Nexto.
Your SD cards can take a lot more abuse that your hard-drives in your Epson and Nexto.
You are probably right about that Lars. And with the current low price for in-camera media, it is a compelling case. I have thought about the overall reliability of HDD in the portable devices, and one thing I have considered is replacing the traditional drive with a solid-state. It may however find me using the devices as a third-level backup. Hmm....
I use both, primary file storage is the card it was captured on, Secondary file storage is a portable storage device which i copy all my cards to at the end of the days shooting, in my case a Sanho Album with a 500 GB drive. The cards never get written over in the field so buy lots of cards, the HD is just a back up should a card get corrupted, lost of damaged.
Two copies of every file is the belt and suspenders I like.
