Storage Question

oblivion · 15 Oct 2011

Hi all,

I own a Canon 550d with 16Gb SDHC memory. My laptop is a little on the ancient side and requires upgrading. I have been looking into a portable hard drive in the meantime..... around 1TB as they are not that expensive. From my understanding, the difference between a portable and external is that external requires being plugged into a mains socket whereas a portable I can travel with it.

My question is, can you get a portable hard drive to store photos that has an SDHC slot built into it? I cannot find one other than SD slots. I am unsure what they are called and Google is not being friendly today.

If they do exist, what are your thoughts on the above?

markmullen · 15 Oct 2011

Epson do a device called a P6000 which will do what you want to do, though I've never used one.

modchild · 15 Oct 2011

There are various devices available, probably the best being the Epson P6000 as Mark says, but they are fairly expensive if they have a card reader built in. The easiest way to do it is get a large capacity USB powered portable hard drive and a USB card reader to plug in your laptop. It'll work out a lot cheaper than the £250 for the Epson P6000.

Jackwow · 15 Oct 2011

oblivion said:
...From my understanding, the difference between a portable and external is that external requires being plugged into a mains socket whereas a portable I can travel with it...

Aren't all external hard drives portable? Some run of the computers power and some require to be plugged into the mains.

weybourne · 15 Oct 2011

Don't know if there's any truth in it, but I was once told that hard drives described as external but not portable don't have to be as sturdy on account of not having to withstand regular transit to be fit for purpose - makes sense in respect of Sales of Goods Act.

oblivion · 15 Oct 2011

Jackwow said:
Aren't all external hard drives portable? Some run of the computers power and some require to be plugged into the mains.

I see what you're saying, External is in a way portable but requires its power from an AC-DC adaptor but portable is powered by the device it's plugged into which is more useful in my opinion.

Thanks for the replies. Looking at the prices it seems a little crazy. I think I may be better off purchasing a 1Tb portable HD with USB and use my existing USB card reader slot.

On the above points being mentioned then (and of course my consideration in purchasing one) how do you all store your images?

weybourne · 15 Oct 2011

oblivion said:
On the above points being mentioned then (and of course my consideration in purchasing one) how do you all store your images?

If I'm going to be away from home and don't think I'll have enough card-space (and cards are very reliable storage devices), then I'll take a laptop and possibly a portable USB hard-drive if I'm concerned about laptop HDD space. I prefer to travel without my laptop and usually only take it if I have a specific reason to.

I have considered portable card reader/storage devices like the epson but I've always thought their cost & capacity prohibitive in some way. Cheaper to buy spare cards - and easier to pack/carry too.

At home I always try to back up my images on to two portable USB HDDs - and keep one at home, the other at a relative's house (swap them around every week to keep them up to date) - trouble is, I'm really bad at keeping to such regimes!

tijuana taxi · 15 Oct 2011

How about a netbook? best of both worlds with wi-fi and quite probably an SD slot too

markmullen · 15 Oct 2011

I carry boat loads of cards, I just checked, I've got over 100Gb of cards, mostly in 2-4Gb capacities so that if one corrupted I wouldn't lose everything.

modchild · 15 Oct 2011

External hard drives are normally 3.5 inch computer drives in a case and usually need a mains power adapter. Portable hard drives are normally 2.5 inch laptop drives in a lot smaller case and are powered by the USB connection when plugged into a device. A 1tb portable drive should set you back £60-70.
As for storing my images I have them on my desktop, laptop or netbook, portable hard drive (750gb) and lots of dvd discs that are stored in a metal case. Im not paranoid, or at least I dont think I am.

JSER · 15 Oct 2011

oblivion said:
Hi all,

I own a Canon 550d with 16Gb SDHC memory. My laptop is a little on the ancient side and requires upgrading. I have been looking into a portable hard drive in the meantime..... around 1TB as they are not that expensive. From my understanding, the difference between a portable and external is that external requires being plugged into a mains socket whereas a portable I can travel with it.

My question is, can you get a portable hard drive to store photos that has an SDHC slot built into it? I cannot find one other than SD slots. I am unsure what they are called and Google is not being friendly today.

If they do exist, what are your thoughts on the above?

I have the Premier DP-3520 bought from Jessops years ago, only takes the cards to 4Gb now though.

There are companies mainly in the USA who still do them but no one wants them now as they are a waste of space, sorry.

With cards so low cost now we simply carry half a dozen 16/32 Gb cards.

If we go away we just burn the content to a DVD in a laptop daily.

oblivion · 15 Oct 2011

It's all a lot to think about really. Back in the day I would have taken the camera to the local store to get the film developed and voila, pictures end up in a box under the bed or in the loft.

Now I have my lovely DSLR I don't know what's the best way to store the pics. If I buy extra cards then when they are full they could be stored for good, or a HDD to burn off the pics I want to print, or a USB stick for quick storage to prints.

I suppose what I'm concerned about is say 5 years from now having thousands of pics stored and not really knowing what to do with them all! I hate deleting pics as they each hold a valued memory of sorts. Maybe external HDD are the way to go for now and using the current SDHC card to make prints if required. It's nice to see others have different ways of storing

oblivion · 17 Oct 2011

Thanks to my lovely wife she has purchased the seagate go flex 1TB portable USB for my birthday next week! Yay! All sorted

a1ex2001 · 17 Oct 2011

oblivion said:
Thanks to my lovely wife she has purchased the seagate go flex 1TB portable USB for my birthday next week! Yay! All sorted

Now you just need another one so you can keep an duplicate copy of everything as a backup, hard disk failure is all to common and external drives by their very nature are more prone to damage.

oblivion · 22 Oct 2011

Thanks for the advice. It arrived and although it has pre installed software on it (to make things easier) it was easier for me to make a folder on the new drive and plonk all the pics into it. Very handy and damn quick I must say

modchild · 22 Oct 2011

I suppose you could always get a Bluray burner and some blank dual layer discs. You can get a hell of a lot of pics on a 50 gb disc, then store them in a fire proof metal case for peace of mind, away from any powerful magnetic source. Should keep em safe till doomsday. Happy birthday for the other day !!

weybourne · 22 Oct 2011

modchild said:
I suppose you could always get a Bluray burner and some blank dual layer discs. You can get a hell of a lot of pics on a 50 gb disc, then store them in a fire proof metal case for peace of mind, away from any powerful magnetic source. Should keep em safe till doomsday. Happy birthday for the other day !!

Blu-ray is optical not magnetic - so magnetic sources will not affect. Not too sure about blu-ray specifically, but optical writeable media are usually compromised by light, temperature and humidity fluctuations/extremes. My personal experience of using optical media for long-term storage has not been good and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Whatever method is used, keep at least two copies (preferably in different locations). Of all the writeable formats, I think that optical formats are most likely to become obsolescent - which would introduce a future problem of sourcing playback equipment - like we have with audio & video magnetic tape formats (on the other hand, flash or hard disk drives only need to interface)

hollis_f · 22 Oct 2011

oblivion said:
My question is, can you get a portable hard drive to store photos that has an SDHC slot built into it?

I see you've already found a solution. So this is for others who may be wanting an answer to this question.

Yes, such devices do exist. The best, without a shadow of a doubt, is the Hyperdrive Colorspace.

neil_g · 22 Oct 2011

weybourne said:
Blu-ray is optical not magnetic - so magnetic sources will not affect. Not too sure about blu-ray specifically, but optical writeable media are usually compromised by light, temperature and humidity fluctuations/extremes. My personal experience of using optical media for long-term storage has not been good and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Whatever method is used, keep at least two copies (preferably in different locations). Of all the writeable formats, I think that optical formats are most likely to become obsolescent - which would introduce a future problem of sourcing playback equipment - like we have with audio & video magnetic tape formats (on the other hand, flash or hard disk drives only need to interface)

Bluray is not vulnerable to the same environmental issues that DVD and cd is. Different construction is key whereas the other median were prone to delamination and rot.