Portable Photo Storage

[bp_968]

The readers/storage devices with displays are pretty useless for a professional anyway. No way in your right mind would you use it to pick or reject an image. Better to just wait until you get to the color calibrated laptop or home.

Ben

 

[dbeedle]

I've been using an older X-Drive. Works well for me. I did find a site with quite a lot of information on portable storage that folks might be intrested in:

http://fhoude34.free.fr/PortableHD.htm

 

[Moodiejeff]

Thought I'd share my experience, i originally thought that the ipod photo was the answer to all my prayers. Now I'm not so sure.

Bought an ipod photo (60gig), took it to Coz a few weeks ago. Was great listening to MY music on the plane.

Downloaded about 3 days worth of pics (under & above water) to it, everything went smooth. Next day tried to download more pics to it and the thing stopped working... no display, nothing. Great! 300ish pics gone! Luckily I had a few CF cards with me so I could keep shooting.

The day before we left I tried to fiddle with it and it miraculously started working again! I shut it right off, didn't touch it 'til I got home and transferred the pics to my computer. Thing seems to be working fine now. Weird!

Problem is, I'm taking another trip next month... do I use it again for storage? Probably not. It's definitely going in for a visit to The Apple Store. It's a b!+ch not being able to trust it. They're not cheap!

Unrelated: My girlfriends camera flooded on the same trip. I guess we were cursed this trip. I did get to retrieve all her pics from her card though.

 

[alcina]

Sorry to hear of your problems with the Ipod and the dreaded F word!! Glad you were able to get all the photos saved!

I was thinking there are really two kinds of needs (basically)
1) those of us who want to also take our music along and probably show our friends/family some jpegs and or video...this is the domain of the Ipod, the Archos units etc

2) those who simply want to download their photos for storage...this would be your burners, X drives etc

So the first question that one should ask might be...what exactly do I want it to do...and then what are the extra features that might be nice.

The Epson is still the only one that might be useable for people who are shooting and want to review on the go without a laptop (I'm thinking long hikes shooting nature etc maybe?)...it's a bit big for my taste to use as a music box.

For me 95% of the use is day to day music so size was an issue.

 

[TX101]

I use the iRiver H340 (40gb). When I bought it, the iPod couldn't do usb host (the ipod photo hadn't been released). I've had no problems and have been happy with it.

Another solution I have is if you have a little more space to buy one of the sony PCG laptops and replace the HD. They are getting a little old now, but I picked one up on ebay for £230 (p2-400, 64mb RAM). They only weigh 1kg and can easily fit into carry on luggage. I use it to run v-planner and look at the photos I've shot that day.

 

[bp_968]

Now *that* is an excellent idea. I would probably need something with more like 256/512 MB ram and a PIII-600/800, still a small laptop would be so much more useful.

Ben

I use the iRiver H340 (40gb). When I bought it, the iPod couldn't do usb host (the ipod photo hadn't been released). I've had no problems and have been happy with it.

Another solution I have is if you have a little more space to buy one of the sony PCG laptops and replace the HD. They are getting a little old now, but I picked one up on ebay for £230 (p2-400, 64mb RAM). They only weigh 1kg and can easily fit into carry on luggage. I use it to run v-planner and look at the photos I've shot that day.

 

[Moodiejeff]

Another solution I have is if you have a little more space to buy one of the sony PCG laptops and replace the HD. They are getting a little old now, but I picked one up on ebay for £230 (p2-400, 64mb RAM). They only weigh 1kg and can easily fit into carry on luggage. I use it to run v-planner and look at the photos I've shot that day.

I was gonna buy a small Ibook (i'm a Mac user) to bring along but thought the Ipod was a cheaper solution. I wanted an Ipod for music anyway. Now i'm not so sure I shouldn't have just bought the Ibook. If it weren't for the fact that in the last 3 months I bought a powerbook (for work) and a new Imac I probably would have.

 

[ssra30]

What's the battery life on Ipod Photo like? I have the older iPod with 40gb but found that the battery life is not long, probably not long enough for me to download a 4GB card if it is not plugged in.

 

[Moodiejeff]

What's the battery life on Ipod Photo like? I have the older iPod with 40gb but found that the battery life is not long, probably not long enough for me to download a 4GB card if it is not plugged in.

I think it's about long enough to download a little over 2 gig... that's what i've read anyway. Seems about right.

 

[OE2X]

SSra - Here is what I know about these PSD's (Portable scanning device) - most are slow including the Ipod. It will take anywhere between 14 - 30 minutes to download a 1 gig card. Obviously that gets into battery power issues.

After much reading I came to the conclusion that there are two types of card readers for my purposes. I believe that I have said it before, but on a typical day of shooting, I'll burn through up to 40 gigs. Fast, long battery life or the ability to plug into an alternate battery source is very important.

From all the reading that I've done there are two PSD's that fill this criteria. The one that I ordered - the Nexto CF and the one one I didn't - the PD70X. Both will read a 1gig card in under 4 minutes. With both you should be able to get about 60 gigs downloaded per charge! The PD70X uses rechargable AA bateries. The Nexto has it's own battery. My Nexto should be arriving tomorrow and I'll be using it on a week long shoot starting next week. I'll review it after that.

One thing to keep in mind that if you go this route is to get a hard drive that is 16 bit. This will give you faster download rates. I believe that Toshiba is the only one making one. I chose the 100 gig drive.