Travel backup recommendations

Amp34

Amp34

Amp34

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My parents are off round the world for a year and will be taking lots of snaps. They need some kind of backup solution and I'm thinking a combination of an external HDD and microSD cards. They can backup the photos on the HDD and then also back up the photos on microSD cards, which are easily small enough to send back to the UK when full.

The microSD cards would mean we could buy 5 16GB cards for £50 so it makes it pretty cheap.

Anyone had issue with this or got a better solution?
 
Would need to be 100+GB and trying to upload 16GB of files at once in somewhere like SE asia is probably going to take forever!
 
To mitigate failure, laptop + external HDD is definitely minimizing the risk a lot.

To be safe against theft and have additional redundancy - you will need to get the media home.

Assuming they are taking a laptop then absolutely external storage mailed (safely) home is a great solution, just look for the cheapest SD/microSD/memory stick cost per GB and go with that.

Don't rule out burning DVDs as well, cheap as chips so you could afford to send 2 copies home at a time via normal post.
Have someone home to confirm which ones have been received, are working and have been stored safely. A simple numbering strategy would ensure nothing has gone missing.

A combination of both could be an option too. At around £30-£40 for 500GB I would consider sending one of the backup HDDs home full of photos (maybe use this for RAWs) every 3 months. Would have to be well packaged and couriered. Again have someone at home confirm receipt and integrity.

Cloud is great if you can get a good connection and have plenty upload time like overnight in a hotel. Flickr will accept high resolution JPGs and you now get 1TB free. However it's unlikely they will get fast speed broadband everywhere. Even in fairly popular destinations like Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt I didn't get much more than 256KBits.
 
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Oh also consider getting more smaller SD cards for the camera rather than less larger ones in case they are individually lost or the camera gets nicked.
 
Netbook and two external drives backup memory card each night to one drive, then use synchtoy or similar to back up one drive to the other. When staying in a hotel drives can live in the safe when travelling one in each bag, mail home options always sound great but for me it's too much of a pain.

Personally I've never backed anything up on holiday I have a pile of small (8GB) memory cards that I swap to the safe every day or so minimises my loss from either a corrupt card or a theft.
 
Alex i'm with you on shorter trips, but the OP pointed out that they are travelling around the world for a year. That is a lot of photos to loose to data corruption or theft. If it was me, an offsite backup of some sort would be a must.
 
a1ex2001 said:
Netbook and two external drives backup memory card each night to one drive, then use synchtoy or similar to back up one drive to the other. When staying in a hotel drives can live in the safe when travelling one in each bag, mail home options always sound great but for me it's too much of a pain.

Personally I've never backed anything up on holiday I have a pile of small (8GB) memory cards that I swap to the safe every day or so minimises my loss from either a corrupt card or a theft.
Click to expand...

This is my parents, fairly technologially inept and away for a year. They don't want to end up with just one copy of everything and have it stolen/lost and will not be taking a laptop and dozens of dries etc!:p

Needs to be simple, lightweight, cheap and work even in third world countries without 100Mb internet!
 
Amp34 said:
This is my parents, fairly technologially inept and away for a year. They don't want to end up with just one copy of everything and have it stolen/lost and will not be taking a laptop and dozens of dries etc!:p

Needs to be simple, lightweight, cheap and work even in third world countries without 100Mb internet!
Click to expand...

a netbook, two drives using and a card reader using one click synchtoy shorcuts isn't complicated I've setup similar for my parents and inlaws to backup home PC's or heavy but admitedly it's not to everyones taste.

They might like something like the http://www.nextodi.com/product/en_nd2730.html this will allow them to regularly backup the memory cards from the camera to the external drive where ever they are what it doesn't give them is the redundancy of a second copy once the memory card is full but this could be covered off by simply swapping to a new memory card and poping the used one in the safe. The big advantage of this solution is ther is no reliance on a PC so they don't need to use hotel computers or internet cafes. Only downside is they will have both copies with them unless they decide to take a risk and mail home the memory cards once full.
 
Rather than a new thread, I will bring this back from the dead!

So, I am currently in the middle of planning for a backpacking trip next year and I am at the stage where I need to think about what tech I am going to take!

Now, I have two options (I think!);

1) Take a laptop/chromebook and a camera and use the laptop to make a backup, upload to Dropbox and put on an external hard drive etc.

2) Take my iPad mini (64gb) and a lightening - SD card reader, import all the videos and photos onto it and then use iCloud to back it all up as and when I have Wi-Fi.

2, would be my preferred option as it is a lot lighter and smaller to carry around but has anyone ever had any issues with doing it this method?

Thanks!
 
Well the hostel's I have chosen all get very good reviews for their wi-fi coverage, some noting they can even watch netflix etc with no problems.

I have just been looking at these wireless external hard drives that work with the iPad, this could potentially be another backup option. Anyone use one of these?
 
I use a Android phone/tablet, USB hub, card reader and portable drives (WD Elements).
I connect them all together and copy files from the reader, directly to the HDD.

WD Elements can be powered via the Android device, WD Passport drives can't (from my experience).
 
When travelling I tend to take an old mac air + external HDD.

3 copies at all times - on SD, Mac HDD and external hard drive.

If you are travelling for a long time maybe consider buying more SD cards, and after copying them to laptop or HDD, post them home. They are small and cheap enough to be able to make this happen + you could always buy more of them on the trip if needed.

When considering wifi, even if it's fast enough to watch Netflix, remember that this is download speed, not upload which you need to get the files up.

As a compromise you might want to upload JPGs rather than RAWs to keep file sizes down.
 
Some good advice, thanks.

Looking into these wireless hard drives, they seem to work well. I think I will go for one of them, keep a copy on the SD card, iPad and the external.

Very true, I am hoping that if the wi-fi is sufficient for that then it will have a reasonable upload.
 
Had a a similar dilemma recently. We're off on a bucket list holiday to central america for a few weeks soon and I wanted a reliable back up regime. After
much dicking around with an iphone 6 64gb it turned out that the Sony RX100 videos in MP4 backed up to a Samsung Galaxy S2 via an OTG cable and card reader was much better. Worked perfectly.

Big Yay for old technology.
 
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