camera to hard drive

Bolerus · 15 May 2007 at 22:14

We are going on holiday soon, and I have been looking around for a cheap laptop to use purely as a back up device.

today i nipped in the commonly known most expensive shop for pcs in the world, and saw a little device, for conecting one usb device to another (eg camera to a usb external hard drive)

Came home and thought i woudl do a little research, to see if they are reliable.

But now I cant remember what it was called, does any body know what this technology is called so I can search for it on the net please (or I will have to try and remember to nip in again on my way home from work)

thank you

J1234 · 15 May 2007 at 22:27

They are portable storage devices, a few models which are good are:

Canon M30 and M80 (30GB,80GB) £400 & £500,
SmartDisk FireLite (40GB,60GB,80GB,100GB,120GB,160GB) £60-£150,
SmartDisk PhotoBank (40GB) £100,
Jobo Giga One (40GB,80GB) £100 & £160,
Epson P-3000 (40GB) £300,
Epson P-5000 (80GB) £450,

Hope that helps, some have screens, some support RAW some don't, some are USB others are firewire ect, so look into it a bit.

Also, you could use a camera to iPod cable to get all the photos of your camera.

Bolerus · 15 May 2007 at 22:34

the one i was looking at (i asked the same question on another forum)

was a belkin usb anywhere

basically has to usb conections, so you conect camera to one saide, and a usb caddy hard drive to the other. a very cheap option, but now to research how reliabel they are.

thank you for your response justin, much apreciated

J1234 · 15 May 2007 at 22:44

Ahh I see, I haven't seen one of them before. Pretty good idea though.

Aod · 24 May 2007 at 22:16

external hard drives require external power supplies don't they?

Bolerus · 24 May 2007 at 23:09

3.5" do 2.5" dont

in my case, 3.5 is fine because I will upload to hdd nightly, back at the caravan, dont think I will fill my memmory cards in one, or at least I hope not lol

Kol · 25 May 2007 at 00:52

Alternative option, if you have one, is the camera adaptor for the iPod. Old fella quickly popped into Asda the other day and they had reduced the price of them to £4.75 or something silly. He bought one and I've got it now (official Apple product too) and it works well. Just plug my camera usb into the adaptor and it flashes up on my 30gig iPod if I wish to transfer. Job done!

edit - http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=93FE3FF0&nplm=M9861 the compatibility list is a little out of date. Works with my 350D and form reports below a lot of people are successfully using it. Most newer cameras seem to support ptp or mass transfer.

boycee · 25 May 2007 at 09:23

Justin said:
They are portable storage devices, a few models which are good are:

Canon M30 and M80 (30GB,80GB) £400 & £500,
SmartDisk FireLite (40GB,60GB,80GB,100GB,120GB,160GB) £60-£150,
SmartDisk PhotoBank (40GB) £100,
Jobo Giga One (40GB,80GB) £100 & £160,
Epson P-3000 (40GB) £300,
Epson P-5000 (80GB) £450,

Hope that helps, some have screens, some support RAW some don't, some are USB others are firewire ect, so look into it a bit.

Also, you could use a camera to iPod cable to get all the photos of your camera.

A cheaper option

You could also buy an image dump for around £30, and a 80Gb hd for £30. Then you have a solution for £60 total. You can't view them on an image dump, but they work wonders for the money. There's one by digimate runs on battery, will copy around 3-5gb on a full charge. I've got more out of it myself but I guess it depends on speed of card etc.

Messiah Khan · 25 May 2007 at 09:29

Persaonlly I would consider using the cheap laptop methoed. That way you know if the files have copied, and you can also view them after being out for the day.

boycee · 25 May 2007 at 09:31

messiah khan said:
Persaonlly I would consider using the cheap laptop methoed. That way you know if the files have copied, and you can also view them after being out for the day.

I would agree there, it certainly get nervous after uploading the 20gb of pics on a 3 week trip. Not having the blindest clue whether they are on there or not. At least with a laptop you have piece of mind that they are defo there.

rpstewart · 25 May 2007 at 09:32

Before you go and buy any fancy devices have a think about how many photos your likely to take and how much space you'll need. Then go and take a look at the price of more flash cards, they're rediculously cheap these days.

sepulchre · 25 May 2007 at 11:11

rpstewart said:
Before you go and buy any fancy devices have a think about how many photos your likely to take and how much space you'll need. Then go and take a look at the price of more flash cards, they're rediculously cheap these days.

I would second that, I've been picking up Sandisk Extreme III 2GB cards for a while now at between 18 and 20 quid a pop, even shooing raw on a 400D I'm getting around 200 images each.

Bolerus · 25 May 2007 at 12:40

the solution was :-

belkin usb anywhere :- 14.99
3.5" hard drive caddy :- 12.99
12 gig hard drive i had sitting around doing nothing :- free

not having to worry about space on memmory card for a week :- priceless

the only flaw is that the hard drive has to be formatted to fat32 (so biggest usable partition is 32gig)

i also have a 40 gig hdd doing nothing that I am going to partition off and format to fat32

so for the price of £27.98 I now have 44gig of Space

I did consider the buying a load of memmory cards options.

but considering I am going to be away from a computer for a week, it wasnt a valid option, price wise.

your looking at £20 for 2 gig mem cards, so for enough to cover the 12gig HDD, it would have been £120 ish, and then you have th problem of using the right card at the right time and chance of losing one.

I would recomend the solution I have used to anyone, but with a small change, use a 2.5" caddy with a laptop hard drive if you can. They are much more compact than this 3.5" monster, And they dotn need their own power sources. But Laptop hard drives are a bit more expensive and prone to dying (i have a 2.5 caddy and it has burned through 3 hard drives, whihc is why i went for the 3.5 because full size hdds are easier to get

)

Oh my, I feel the need to say.

Chapter 2
lol

danrow_99 · 25 May 2007 at 22:33

I imagine those 2 HDD's are pretty ancient, I wouldn't risk putting 40GB of photo's on them with no back-up. This is especially risky since they will inevitably be exposed to bumps and vibration if you're travelling with them.
Personally I'd feel much safer with a very cheap laptop with a DVD writer. As long as you write the pics to DVD and verify them before you delete the memory card data then not much can go wrong.
Does anyone know of a cheap product that can burn memory card data directly to DVD (other than an old laptop)?
One other option would be to load all the pics onto flickr or some other web-site, although obviously this would require access to a pretty speedy connection to t'internet.

boycee · 26 May 2007 at 00:35

laptop is the way forward there, as you can preview and burn yourself.

Although most internet cafe's even in Albania as i found have dvd burners. So if you really wanna back up those memory cards you can find an internet cafe' and burn them. Worst case you pop into a kodak or fuji shop and get them burned to disc there, again available in most big(ish) cities.