What backing up equipment do you use when travelling

Mystery57

Mystery57

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I'm trying to minimise weight when travelling abroad, and dont want the hassle of carrying laptops, tablets etc and then transferring data to the cloud. I would rather keep the data on a portable drive

Is there any equipment that I can connect to wirelessly or by usb and store the data on it easily as a backup ? - obviously I would be keeping original memory cards, but want something else incase a card is corrupted
 
Mystery57 said:
Is there any equipment that I can connect to wirelessly or by usb and store the data on it easily as a backup ?
Click to expand...
There was but the two I tried, several years ago, weren't very reliable.

I'd be interested to see if anyone's found a good one.
 
There is, and they used to be quite popular. But as memory cards are so cheap now it hardly seems worth it.
 
I still take a laptop with me, I have used one of those "external hard drives with a card reader" devices, on big trips in the past, but these days I prefer to have the laptop anyway.

Phil V said:
There is, and they used to be quite popular. But as memory cards are so cheap now it hardly seems worth it.
Click to expand...
I think the question is aimed more about backing up, and having a second copy, rather than freeing up space to re-use cards.
 
Given my cameras have dual card slots I would use both and use other cars during the trip and store the two sets of cards in different places, so that if one set gets lost, the others are present.

Would I back up to a laptop as well - possibly, and then you can duplicate to a ext. hdd.
 
Craikeybaby said:
I think the question is aimed more about backing up, and having a second copy, rather than freeing up space to re-use cards.
Click to expand...
I get that - but keeping a few cards 'safe' isn't a big deal when travelling - the OP has twin card slots, if he was paranoid he could easily keep his used cards in separate safe places, in fact backing up to another device just creates a further device that needs to be taken care of. All opinions are valid, but it strikes me that a portable backup device is the wrong answer to the quandary.

If I was backing up to a portable drive, it'd either live in my camera bag (only as safe as the camera) or in the safe in a hotel room. Spare cards can be kept in either of those places, plus other secure places too (as per Andrew's answer).

The best answer to paranoia is to take a laptop and backup to the cloud, anything else carries more risk - and if we're accepting that risk, then the portable HDD is no more secure than additional cards.
 
It depends on your camera and phone or tablet.
My Sony A7iv for example, can connect to a FTP site via WiFi, and transfer images that way. I can create a mobile hotspot using my phone, then send the images to the 1Tb SD card in my tablet, and from there back them up to one of my cloud based accounts (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc).
If you don't have FTP capability, then you may be able to use a USB cable to connect physically to a phone or tablet via USB OTG.
 
I bought one of these recently, it’s a bit of a faff to use (the instructions aren’t great) but it seems to do the trick. You plug a card reader into it and then transfer via an app - it’s far from perfect but there’s not much else out there unless you buy second hand.

 
Mystery57 said:
Its been suggested I consider one of these, apparently they can power external SSD / HD drives and transfer files without being attached to a laptop etc.

UGREEN Revodok USB C Hub, 7 in 1 USB C Adapter with 4K HDMI, 100W PD, USB-C and 2 USB-A Data Ports 5Gbps, SD/microSD Card Slot,​

Click to expand...
I think you would need some from of 'host' device to plug it into (this could be a phone or tablet, instead of a laptop), and if you wanted it to power external drives you would probably need to plug in a usb-c charger to it to supply power - but you may well be carrying such a charger when travelling to charge your phone/tablet anyway.
 
After looking at various options I personally decided the "lightest" and least hassle option was to just buy a body with dual card slots :ROFLMAO:
Technically/strictly speaking this is more redundancy than "backup" but based on what you are describing in OP I felt you are more after redundancy while travelling than a proper backup.
 
I have a 10.5" tablet/laptop that slips into the back of my camera bag plus a USB-C hub with card reader so I copy from SD card each evening and can even work on the images a little. I also back up to an external SSD (and also a large thumb drive if I'm feeling particularly paranoid).
 
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Snapsh0t said:
I have a 10.5" tablet/laptop that slips into the back of my camera bag plus a USB-C hub with card reader so I copy from SD card each evening and can even work on the images a little. I also back up to an external SSD (and also a large thumb drive if I'm feeling particularly paranoid).
Click to expand...

what tablet are you using out of interest - cheers
 
These days most hotels/Airbnbs provide decent WiFi. In fact in some I stayed recently in Europe it's was faster than the connection at home!

I'm wondering if you can get cameras to upload directly to your phone. Then have something like amazon photos automatically back up images on your phone (which it already does anyway on my phone).
You can clear the phone once upload is completed.
Once set up I imagine it'll mostly "just work" while you sleep or eat or something.
The only manual step would be clearing your phone later.
 
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Mystery57 said:
what tablet are you using out of interest - cheers
Click to expand...
I've done the same in the past.
For an Android tablet (or phone) you need it to have a micro SD card slot (or a lot of free internal storage) and the usb socket needs to support USB OTG (I think most do).
My Samsung Tab A was fine for this (and also worked fine using FTP to transfer the images wirelessly, when I upgraded to a camera with that capability).
 
I used to use a small storage device by Epsom but as file sizes were getting much larger, I just bought more memory cards. I have only ever bought good quality cards and never had a failure. A survey at my camera club revealed that those who had suffered card failures were using cheap brands.

Dave
 
Mystery57 said:
Its been suggested I consider one of these, apparently they can power external SSD / HD drives and transfer files without being attached to a laptop etc.

UGREEN Revodok USB C Hub, 7 in 1 USB C Adapter with 4K HDMI, 100W PD, USB-C and 2 USB-A Data Ports 5Gbps, SD/microSD Card Slot,​

Click to expand...
I use one of these with a tablet and an old 1TB drive and works great, a little redundant when I upgraded to an A7IV, dual 128GB cards can hold a lot of images.
 
I use a small HP laptop which is very light, but found myself limited recently by using an older SD card reader which was slow to transfer files from card to HDD. Now I have a newer SD card reader (suitable for UHS-II) speeds have shot up. I then use the laptop to cull some of the images which are then backed up. Laptop(s) have Pentax Photo Laboratory, NX Studio and Canon DPP installed to allow us to do this, only snag is the smallish screen.

That's if I am going somewhere for a week or more, but as I have >600Gb of XQD/CFEB and > 300Gb of SDXC that should take care of a few days at least.

amazing how far digital photography has become - the days of >£100 for a 512mB CF card and £300 20-40GB portable drives which still made me more inclined to buy stacks of films rather than buy a digi... and now a 128Gb card is less than a roll of slide film.

If something goes wrong then I just have to shrug my shoulders, I came back from one holiday and between dropping off my films and going to collect them the lab had gone out of business o_O but fortunately the year prior the dutch laws changed that if you had goods at the retailer you could reclaim it on payment for the product (in this case developed films), previously they would have belonged to the creditors and that would've been the last the customer saw of the films!).
 
Mystery57 said:
I'm trying to minimise weight when travelling abroad, and dont want the hassle of carrying laptops, tablets etc and then transferring data to the cloud. I would rather keep the data on a portable drive

Is there any equipment that I can connect to wirelessly or by usb and store the data on it easily as a backup ? - obviously I would be keeping original memory cards, but want something else incase a card is corrupted
Click to expand...
I don't need to anymore as my camera has dual card slots, however when I had a camera with a single card slot I used to use a verbatim storage device that accepted USB and SD, I cna't remember what it's called off the top of my head. However, if you've got enough storage on your phone you can just backup photos onto that using an SD card reader.
 
********* SOLUTION ************

I have found a solution which involves using the following items

Mobile Phone
2tb external SSD
OWC USB-C Travel Dock

The dock connects to the phone via its fixed cable
SD card into inbuilt card reader OR SD card into external card reader connected to the dock by USB
Use File Manager on phone to transfer files from the SD card to the SSD

It works !
 
Mystery57 said:
I have found a solution which involves using the following items

Mobile Phone
2tb external SSD
OWC USB-C Travel Dock
Click to expand...
I was quite interested in that OWC device, until I looked it up on Amazon and found it had 9% one star ratings.

Rather a pity, as it does seem to be a very useful idea.
 
Mystery57 said:
********* SOLUTION ************

I have found a solution which involves using the following items

Mobile Phone
2tb external SSD
OWC USB-C Travel Dock

The dock connects to the phone via its fixed cable
SD card into inbuilt card reader OR SD card into external card reader connected to the dock by USB
Use File Manager on phone to transfer files from the SD card to the SSD

It works !
Click to expand...

Make sure you are happy with the transfer speed for RAW files. I shoot with high res cameras so RAWs are huge.

So if you have a phone with lot of storage all you need is to copy your RAW files to your phone using a SD card reader. Most recent android phones will take USB-C card readers.
no need to faff about with all the gadgets above. Once you reach home just copy it from your phone to another external harddrive or computer etc if you want to.

my phone had 512GB storage. I have around 370GB free on it.
Even shooting with my A7RV with 61mp RAWs, I didn't fill up my 520GB cards after a weeks worth of shooting. I think they got about half full.
could have easily backed those files on to my phone.

Probably the easiest and cheapest of options.
 
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Mystery57 said:
********* SOLUTION ************

I have found a solution which involves using the following items

Mobile Phone
2tb external SSD
OWC USB-C Travel Dock

The dock connects to the phone via its fixed cable
SD card into inbuilt card reader OR SD card into external card reader connected to the dock by USB
Use File Manager on phone to transfer files from the SD card to the SSD

It works !
Click to expand...

That (or similar using a phone) has come up before, but it is quite slow when there is a lot to transfer.

A Pi solution is probably the best all round now there doesn't seem to be any current commercial solutions, there are quite a few around, here's one https://petapixel.com/2016/06/16/turn-raspberry-pi-auto-photo-backup-device/
 
As others have said, just use memory cards. Copy from one card to the other using the camera. It goes fast. Make extra copies and give one to a travelling partner for extra security. Or send them home by mail. You can make as many copies as you want. Cards are cheap.
 
Sangoma said:
That (or similar using a phone) has come up before, but it is quite slow when there is a lot to transfer.

A Pi solution is probably the best all round now there doesn't seem to be any current commercial solutions, there are quite a few around, here's one https://petapixel.com/2016/06/16/turn-raspberry-pi-auto-photo-backup-device/
Click to expand...

Its slow when saving to a phone, but in this instance the phone is only acting as a File Explorer to allow the content to be transferred from A to B, so does not affect the speed when I tried it at the weekend
 
Mystery57 said:
Its slow when saving to a phone, but in this instance the phone is only acting as a File Explorer to allow the content to be transferred from A to B, so does not affect the speed when I tried it at the weekend
Click to expand...
It still has to go through the USB channels on the phone :)
 
On holiday i tend to have a few memory cards and my iPad Pro 2TB model so i can store photos on there, upload them to various online storage options and even edit them when im just sat in my room later in the day.
 
Mystery57 said:
Not for transferring files into the hub one side and out to the other side
Click to expand...

Then you would have no error checking or correction,

Sorry, USB is just a two wire serial protocol, nothing more. Two storage devices can not communicate via USB without a host.
 
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