on the go photo storage

[warhammer]

hey all..
i am heading over to usa and canada for a month and a half and will be tacking a billion photo's as one could imagine, i am looking for some sort of storage device to load my photo's on to and was interested to see what every one is using, i have done a little research and have my eye on the Epson p-700 multimedia storage unit,
is this a good unit to buy and will my canon 7D be compatible with it....?
any help would be good.
thanx warhammer.

[hursty]

My wife and I did 4 weeks in the US, January this year and took over a thousand stills and hours of HD video. The stills we took were jpeg's for smaller file size. I would think the file size will determine what storage you will need. I took a HP notebook with 350G hard drive and 350G external drive. I downloaded daily to the notebook and did a backup to the external drive. At the end of the trip I had well over to two thirds of the drives un-used. I would imagine a different story if I was shooting in RAW file format. If you are doing a lot of tripping around and going to be flying a lot the seciruty at airports can become a drag so travel light as far as your electronic gear is concerned. Have a great time. Look forward to seeing some photos.

[junqbox]

On a recent trip to Japan, we took a netbook and external HDD. System worked well and meant we could do any computer stuff as well, email, web-surfing, etc.

[Michaela]

Another vote for the netbook - I took mine with me for 6 weeks in the US and it worked a treat!

[Analog6]

I have a Vosonic VP 8870 with 250Gb HDD. You just put the memory card in and it downloads. Views canon RAW and H2TIFF files just fine but does bot shwo an image for my Lumix RW@ files, but it saves them OK, I can see them when I hook up to the PC.

When I went to NZ I took this and my laptop. When I had no power (I was camping) I could still download to it, good for about 5 big downloads (each 2 x 8Gb cards about 3/4 full) on one charge

[warhammer]

would love to take my computer, but its a desktop.
i have considered getting a laptop, but with all my snowboarding gear i am trying to cut down on luggage.
shooting in raw is going to take some serious space, i need to find a solution.
thanx all..

[warhammer]

hey analog6.
that vosonic vp 8870 looks good too and cost less than the epson one.
i think i might have to go shopping and take a good look.
thanx warhammer.

[ricktas]

The Vosonic range have a great reputation.

[Longshots]

I've had the Vosonic and the Epson, and have been using the digital albums for many years. Both are good. The Epson is my current fave, although my model has been outdated by two further upgraded models by Epson. The compact size of it, is worth a great deal. Switching on is fairly instant and it takes a number of different style of cards etc (as do all of them). The only thing is that now days, the cost of the albums when compared with the drive capacity, they are more expensive than a notebook. But then again their compact size makes up for the notebook having to be unfolded, and the time it takes for any computer to boot up.

[kiwi]

maybe you could also consider taking a few decent size CF cards and one every while pop into a camera booth type shop and burn the cards to a CD disk

[ameerat42]

I use a netbook with raw converter and CS2 to use while on the go (usu @ night). Am.

[reaction]

dont.

I had one before, it died.

rather go a netbook

[Othrelos]

I use a colorspace hyperdrive, user replaceable hard drive and battery being a principal requirement that the hyperdrive fulfils. Transfer speeds are quick especially on the SATA equipped UDMA version. It can also be used as a external hard drive and used to transport images from work/home computers (they are MAC compatible too). The screen on the basic hyperdrive is useful for image preview, though if you're really determined to get a better screen the colorspace album, features an IPS 4.8 inch WUXGA display and incorporates the same backup capabilities of the original hyperdrive.

though for some purposes a laptop may serve your needs but don't expect to be able to do heavy editing of your files on a laptop without spending upwards of 3.5K on one with decent amounts memory and processor power.

[Kerro]

I have a HP netbook and a couple of 500gb USB drives.
Never run out of space and are light to carry.
The drives even fit in a shirt pocket.

[warhammer]

thanx all..
i ended up ordering the vosonic 500gb.
should be in my hands next week.... i hope..

[Patagonia]

An Ipod can be useful too as you will probably take it to the trip anyways , I have the 160 GB version and with an adapter you can download directly from the Camera. Just have pending to check if you can tranfer the RAW file direclty or if apple does its "magic" as usual and converts it to an Ipod friendly file.
In the past I used to have an Archos Gmini player w/hdd that had a bay for conecting a CF card and work very well until it was stolen , maybe there is something like that in the market today

The netbook is also a good idea but I use it only for my 4WD trips where I have a securte spot where I can hide it in ma 4x4 keeping it away from sight.

regards

[Dylan & Marianne]

will you be doing any editing on the fly?
how long will you be without access to backup?
what will you be shooting mainly? what format?

On our recent 3 month trip, there were times that we were without access to backup for 2 weeks at a time , so we brought 80GB worth of CF cards between the 2 of us.
Also brought along 1 2.5" 500gB HD
And back in storage at hotels, a 16" dell notebook which could do some editing.

All up , 3months , 10000 RAW files (7d&5d), and alot of movies , we used up 350GB worth of space.
the 2.5" external drive was great and small, lightweight if you're bringing a notebook.
I've had experience with the older epson (80GB version) and found it very good as well - able to shove CF cards straight in to it and do some very basic cataloguing.

[warhammer]

yo dtoh
i just got a new imac so will only be editing when im back home..
will mainly be shooting landscape and snowboarding.. cant wait.
i should have the 500gb vosonic soon, so lets hope it does the trick, and gets here before i leave...

[MrJorge]

Was just about to post a similar question myself. Heading to Europe in a few weeks and was thinking of just getting a USB drive and popping into internet cafes, or use hotel PCs, to quickly rip down photos from memory cards to USB hard drive.

But something that works without PCs, like some of the suggestions here, sounds awesome... albeit probably out of my price range.

Just wondering how the OP went with the Vosonic or if any others had further input to this thread.

[J.davis]

Bought an asus netbook for $340 and took that to europe last year, worked a treat and you can do your banking and emails as well. I used Elements 7 as my editor and filing system.