Could you ?

John Young

John Young

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Just wondering if you could plug an external hard drive into a DSLR (D90 in this case) and back up your photos on the move. Would the camera power the hard drive ? I assume not :shrug:

I was thinking of something small like THIS

Or am I just being silly :nuts:
 
Not a stupid question, and something that would be handy if it could work, but as far as I'm aware, no. You'd need some way of instigating a transfer and neither the camera or the HD have that.
 
I don't know...

But you can certainly take the memory card out of your camera and plug it into a backup device. I have a Flashtrax which does the job and is basically just a hard disk in a box with a screen and a few buttons added.

There are similar things available from other makers (Epson springs to mind) and I believe Canon make one (at least) too?
 
woof woof said:
I don't know...

But you can certainly take the memory card out of your camera and plug it into a backup device. I have a Flashtrax which does the job and is basically just a hard disk in a box with a screen and a few buttons added.

There are similar things available from other makers (Epson springs to mind) and I believe Canon make one (at least) too?
Click to expand...

Those devices have an OS which gives the option to download, or automatically downloads, when a memory card is connected. And maybe you could plug your camera into one of those devices and it may initiate the download from the camera, but I don't think just plugging a camera into a dumb external HD would work. :shrug:
 
Well, no, you'd need an operating system... and an interface to connect camera or card to HDD.

I just thought I'd mention these little devices as they're probably the nearest thing to an "external hard disk" although as the price of cards has fallen so much maybe these devices are only required for machine gun shooters or those away from a pc for a very long time.

Out of interest, I remember my first digital camera had a micro drive and that was just a physically very small HDD.
 
There was on the market at one time not too many years ago a little device which interfaced between two USB drives and would allow transfer between the two. And that's as far as my memory serves me.
 
Have a look at the back of the photo mags...


I use an Archos 250gb (I woulodn't recommend them as Archos have gotten a lot worse over the years) which has a 30ukp plug-in which allows the camera to be linked via usb.

Very handy if you've shot a town/city all morning and are having lunch to off load all the pics to the HD, wipe the card and continue shooting :)

No laptop required neither.

The back of the mags there were alternatives for doing literally just this.


The reason I got an Archos 500 (with all the free kit) was this, plus it can play back movies. The 504 (my 500 kept shocking me) upgrade had no accessories (they followed apples ideas of money making) continued, but the build quality suffered. This one crashed/froze/died and I upgraded to the Archos 5.

I won't be upgrading to Archos again, their customer service is pretty much non-existant.
 
Yup, as mentioned, I have an epson backup device. Its very rarely used, but is useful for viewing pics slightly larger than camera LCD and if going away for a few days with the idea of lots of shooting. I have plenty of memory to cover such occasions, but acts as a double back up system.
 
The USB interfaces in DSLRs can only act as a "client", not a "host", so you'd effectively be connecting two clients together which just wouldn't work.

I use a netbook to backup/offload pics when I'm away from home - neat and relatively inexpensive solution plus you have all the benefits of an actual computer whilst away too.
 
Vertigo1 said:
The USB interfaces in DSLRs can only act as a "client", not a "host", so you'd effectively be connecting two clients together which just wouldn't work.
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Spot on :thumbs:

I've been using a Cowon Q5W for backups on the move, it's a fairly obscure personal media player which is capable of acting as a usb host, has a lovely bright screen, 80gb hard drive and 15 hour battery life, similar device to the Archos mentioned above.

I bought it for its media playing capabilities after being disgusted by the utter rubbishness of my fifth gen ipod, but it has morphed into my backup device, with the added bonus of being able to watch movies and listen to music on a high quality video/audiophile device :) even its eyewatering new price of around £300 was cheaper than any of the Epson photo storage devices of the time.
 
Cowon are great! Such an under-rated brand of media players.

I didn't relise some of them could act as usb hosts though, that's a great idea.
 
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ronnus said:
...even its eyewatering new price of around £300 was cheaper than any of the Epson photo storage devices of the time.
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My Flashtrax cost £99. I love it. It's so simple and unlike a notebook pc fits in a coat pocket. My CF card is only large enough for a couple of hundred shots so when away I take the flashtrax and back up my card each night.
 
incapete said:
Cowon are great! Such an under-rated brand of media players.

I didn't relise some of them could act as usb hosts though, that's a great idea.
Click to expand...

+1 for them being underrated.

I used to live just down the street from the COWON offices, and used to do some work for them occasionally.

The COWON devices you can get in Korea are even better though. They have some cool stuff happening.

But likewise, I'd never heard of them being used for backups like that. I knew they could act as hosts, but never thought of it for a camera backup.
 
ND2700 from Nexto. 500GB of storage for £200. Stick your CF or SD card in or use USB on-the-go.
 
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