Copying from SD card to Hard Drive/SSD in "light" way

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GeordieStew

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Hi all

I'm going to be away for a while and want a quick/easy way to dump images from my camera (Sony)/SD UHS-II to a hard drive or SSD.

Are there any devices (non laptop) to do this? Or do I need to boot up the laptop? It's not a huge hassle, but would be nice to have an alternative.

Can it be done with an iPad?

Cheers
 
I have seen devices which resemble a power bank but have a drive inside - and you put the card in and it automagically downloads whats on the card.
You have to just trust what is there unless you have a laptop to check - in which case you might as well just take the laptop and normal portable external drive to duplicate stuff.
It might be almost as good an option to just buy 2 or 3 more cards.
 
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There is a solution aimed at photographers/videographers called the Gnarbox.
But at £500+ it's rather pricey.
However, I've found this video on how to use a USB-C hub/cardreader to copy your files from an SD card to a USB hard drive using your phone.
Looks like a pretty decent way to do it. However, the tutorial uses an Android phone and I'm not sure how it would work with an iPhone.
I might try this myself as I've got almost all the bits needed, just my USB-C hub that's gone missing.
Check it out here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWKWI8R5XBE


The benefit of using your phone is that you can browse the images later and edit using your phone.
 
There have been various attempts to produce a portable storage device for digital images but none have been very successful.

I've tried a couple and their biggest problem was a lack of reliability. I find it easier to use a small laptop. I used a MacBook Air for several years but now have the small MacBook Pro. Both fit into a medium sized camera bag and don't add too much weight. I use external drives for flexibility and find that 1TB is more than enough for my needs.

Orange disk drive and MacBook pro TZ70 P1030632.JPG
 
I’d use a laptop to be certain the copying has worked successfully.
 
Ravpower do something called a file hub

It's an excellent device working as a backup, a 5g network extender and a power hub, amongst other things. I've got one and used it as a backup device on a trip to Australia. You put the SD card in and connect a USB stick or portable storage and then kick off the backup on your phone.

It's excellent if you don't want to take a laptop, which I don't, however you said, quick and easy. It's slow to backup and it doesn't do incremental backups, it just takes a fresh image everytime you back the card up. It's also slightly complicated and a tadge temperamental connecting to your phone. I took the little instruction book with me as it does so much I couldn't remember everything. However, get past all that and familiarise yourself with it before you use it and it's excellent, cheap too.
 
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GeordieStew said:
Not at £200 for a 256Gb card. Not really.
Click to expand...
Or £54 for a pair of 128s. That's for extreme pro, obviously you can buy cheaper. There's a 256Gb extreme on amazon, used for £36.43.
I've never seen anything I'd trust a much as putting the original cards in a sturdy case.
 
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Snapsh0t said:
I've fixed that for you. Ravpower is now an ex-company.
Click to expand...
It looks like they've been suspended from Amazon, so despite a functioning website, I'm not sure how you get their stuff anymore. That's a shame, I don't know anyone else who does a similar product.
 
GeordieStew said:
Hi all

I'm going to be away for a while and want a quick/easy way to dump images from my camera (Sony)/SD UHS-II to a hard drive or SSD.

Are there any devices (non laptop) to do this? Or do I need to boot up the laptop? It's not a huge hassle, but would be nice to have an alternative.

Can it be done with an iPad?

Cheers
Click to expand...
Yes it can be done with an iPad. As of iPadOS 13 (I think), iPads support external drives. This will be much, much easier if you have a recent iPad Pro or Air with a USB-C port. I don't think the Lightning port has the required power deliver to use most external hard drives.

But if you have a USB-C iPad, get yourself a USB C hub with an SD Card slot and a couple of USB-A ports. Plug that in, plug your card and your drive in and they should all show up in the Files app as external storage. Copy from the card to the HDD. Job done.
 
andrewc said:
something like this? Not available from Amazon, but probably from other retailers.

Western Digital WD 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive - WIFI USB 3.0 - WDBP2P0020BBK-NESN: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Free delivery and returns on eligible orders. Buy Western Digital WD 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive - WIFI USB 3.0 - WDBP2P0020BBK-NESN at Amazon UK.
www.amazon.co.uk
Click to expand...
I have one of these and it worked well. Used to backup mid wedding, just stick the card in, press a button and off it went.

I don’t use it now I’m on cfx-b cards.
 
Snapsh0t said:
I've fixed that for you. Ravpower is now an ex-company.
Click to expand...
A quick bit or research shows they are still an active company, but it seems their habit of putting cards in their packaging which offered product discounts for those who left 5* reviews upset Amazon, who banned them.
 
gremlin16 said:
I have one of these and it worked well. Used to backup mid wedding, just stick the card in, press a button and off it went.

I don’t use it now I’m on cfx-b cards.
Click to expand...
Me too I’ve got an older version that I bought cheap secondhand on eBay works well
 
RichardC27 said:
Yes it can be done with an iPad. As of iPadOS 13 (I think), iPads support external drives. This will be much, much easier if you have a recent iPad Pro or Air with a USB-C port. I don't think the Lightning port has the required power deliver to use most external hard drives.

But if you have a USB-C iPad, get yourself a USB C hub with an SD Card slot and a couple of USB-A ports. Plug that in, plug your card and your drive in and they should all show up in the Files app as external storage. Copy from the card to the HDD. Job done.
Click to expand...

I tried doing this a couple of years ago with my iPad Pro copying from an sd card (card reader) to an external drive using a hub and it was really slow the copy ran for a long time and I had to abandon it
I then did the same thing but using my Mac book pro was really quick
A shame really as I was hoping to use the iPad for edits and backup while travelling
Maybe I was doing something wrong though :)
 
there are lots of ways to backup files only on iPhone or ipad

I was myself looking to buy a gnarbox also but at I found they are almost out of business I made a script to transform a Raspberry Pi into a backup machine (I need more post to share this but I will as soon as I can as it's free)
 
RAVPower file hub here - does the job.

Or WesternDigital MyPassport Wireless Pro.

Both essentially discontinued. Used to use the latter but I take issue with WDs complete lack of support for (for example) SMBv3... I can get crappy support from RAVPower for a fraction of the price (and the RAVPower device decouples the SD card copying from the storage, so if the RAVPower breaks the stuff is easily accessible on the USB attached storage)
 
hunnymonster said:
RAVPower file hub here - does the job.

Or WesternDigital MyPassport Wireless Pro.

Both essentially discontinued. Used to use the latter but I take issue with WDs complete lack of support for (for example) SMBv3... I can get crappy support from RAVPower for a fraction of the price (and the RAVPower device decouples the SD card copying from the storage, so if the RAVPower breaks the stuff is easily accessible on the USB attached storage)
Click to expand...
how about speed on the RAVPower file hub ?? is it really 10 -13MB/seg ?
 
JonathanRyan said:
Or £54 for a pair of 128s. That's for extreme pro, obviously you can buy cheaper. There's a 256Gb extreme on amazon, used for £36.43.
I've never seen anything I'd trust a much as putting the original cards in a sturdy case.
Click to expand...
It really depends on the card type you’re using. I’d love a pair of 128GB SD cards for £54 but for a UHS-II 300MB/s SD card the cheapest I can find is a ‘integral’ IHS-II SD card for £115 or a ‘Pro Grade’ UHS-II SD card for £150. Go for a SanDisk or Sony version and it’s closer to £200.

I picked up a 64GB card pro grade card when it was on sale at £51. I’ve paired it the SanDisk 64GB 300MB/s card I already had (£90 in 2018), but I wish I’d have picked up the 128GB at the same time as it was £80. I would then have had up to 128GB across USH-II cards. I have some older high capacity UHS-II cards I use for back up but don’t plan to use them unless I fill up all UHS-II cards due to the lower transfer write speeds.
 
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I bought an Epson device with storage and a small screen for reviewing images (it showed the embedded JPEG with the Raw files). However, this was about 15 years ago and I stopped using it long ago when image sizes made it non-viable. Instead I just took more memory cards. As I no longer go on long foreign holidays, I have no further need of such a device but I am sure that they must be available.

Dave
 
Years back I bought an external device that I put a 2.5 inch SSD in which backed up SD and CF cards to. To be honest I only kept it a few months as I wasn’t using it as much as I thought I would and most dual card cameras have the same function built in any way.

Personally I take a laptop with me as I can use it netflix etc whilst away. As it’s my photography editing computer my current photos (that years) are stored on it. I will upload photos directly the laptop and run a backup to my external backup drive whilst away.

If I didn’t have the space to take the laptop and still wanted to make another copy as I expect to fill up all my fast UHS-II cards I’d probably look at getting a cheap high capacity UHS-I SD card like a 256GB and use the camera (has dual card slots) to copy one card to the empty 256GB card. Once copied to the high capacity SD card I could format one of the fast UHS-II SD cards and use it again.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
There have been various attempts to produce a portable storage device for digital images but none have been very successful.
Click to expand...
Not strictly true, I use a Hyper Colorspace & it fulfils the above perfectly. I also carry spare SSD's to plug into it for extra storage.

shotkit.com

Colorspace UDMA Review - Real Life Usage Report

An impartial review of the Hyperdrive ColorSpace UDMA 2 – the perfect memory card backup solution for photographers on the go.
shotkit.com shotkit.com
 
JonathanRyan said:
Or £54 for a pair of 128s. That's for extreme pro, obviously you can buy cheaper. There's a 256Gb extreme on amazon, used for £36.43.
I've never seen anything I'd trust a much as putting the original cards in a sturdy case.
Click to expand...

I agree, and change the cards often and don't carry them with you.

Can't help wondering if it is essential to have such a fast card, or whether extra cards could be more affordable types.

I buy a cheap laptop, take the hard drive out and fit a reasonable size SSD, and take a couple of USB drives, copy everything as often as possible to the laptop and two USB drives (never take a card out with the camera that had not been backed up yet). When the holiday is over, put the original hard drive back in the laptop and give it to a family member :)

For us. with a door to door travel time of 24-48 hours, and the cost of air fares, the prices above for cards totally fades into insignificance.

I read somewhere that the Gnarbox is no more? I also saw a Pi based device I thought could be useful, though not as small would still be smaller than a laptop.
 
I use an old Lenovo Tablet along with a USB C hub. Copy and paste to the Tablet's micro SD Card.

Slow, but set it going and head out to dinner, all finished by the time you're back.
 
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