portable hard drive?

Hi Chazbo,

I've got an iPod myself (got it not only as entertainment, but also as a convenient transfer drive to move data around), and I picked up the Apple camera connector a while ago. It's only for dire emergencies though, as the iPod is very very slow and can only copy a few cards before the battery runs out.

I had considered using the iPod as the second drive I need, but I often have to leave the Powerbook alone while it downloads cards. I've got a lock for the Powerbook, so I'm not too worried about it walking away, but an iPod is just too tempting of a target to leave alone.

It's a good suggestion though, thanks for making it.

Chas

Chazbo said:

I got one of the Belkin media card readers that connects to my
iPod. I have (on average) about 25gigs of freespace on my 30 gig
iPod. Small, portable, reliable.
--
'Work is for people who don't know how to surf'

Click to expand...

Hi J, thanks for contributing.

I actually do have an Epson p2000. Very nice unit, and it keeps up nicely when I'm doing some of my jobs (corporate events), but it really is quite slow to download cards (30 min for a 4GB card, in my experience).

I got it specifically to add to my workflow so as to have a redundant backup of all cards. It works great, until I have more full cards than it can keep up with, which is exactly what happened at the wedding I mentioned in my original post (I had a second photographer on site, and was dealing with his cards at the same time, and that was just too many cards for the p2000 to keep up with, unfortunately. Thus, when the laptop damaged the hundreds of files, they just happened to be ones that that weren't already on the p2000, of course!).

I'm seriously thinking of replacing the p2000 with the latest Jobo unit, as Jobo says it copies cards much faster than anything else (too bad the thing is so !@&!! expensive).

My upcoming trip is to Manhattan, and I'm really looking forward to visiting the legendary B&H! The only thing I really need these days is a Nikkor 105mm VR macro lens, but B&H doesn't have any at the moment (what a bummer).

Many thanks for helping out,

Chas

greengo said:

B&H photo should have everything you need look them up on the web
first for the address.

Have you looked into the Epson P2000 ? It has a pretty good size
hard drive & you can plug most types of media directly into it and
download directly. Not sure of the $$ amount.

J
--
If I wake up breathing it's going to be a great day.

Click to expand...

Hi Daniel,

I very much appreciate the suggestion. It's a very good one, and I had considered using my iPod as the second drive I'm looking for, but I'm afraid that I think it's too much of a theft magnet (I often need to leave my laptop alone, which is locked to a table or something, while it downloads cards, and the iPod would have to stay too).

As an onsite direct storage device (card to iPod), the problems are that it's very very slow and the battery life really isn't enough to deal with an entire day's shooting. It's a good emergency backup though, and I've got one of the tiny Apple camera connectors for just that reason.

fyi: I bought the iPod not only for entertainment, but I also use it as a nice, tiny, transfer drive to move data around from office to home and for client slideshows etc. Works great for that!

Chas

Daniel Soh said:

30GB Video iPod, with a camera adapter for transferring your files
from the camera to the iPod's internal HD

Click to expand...

Hi Chris,

I agree with you there. As I mentioned to Daniel, the theft issue is a real concern, unfortunately (I often have to leave my laptop while it deals with cards and, while it is locked, the iPod wouldn't be. Even though I could hide it, it's still a serious issue).

Thanks for posting,

Chas

chris3010 said:

Chris

Daniel Soh said:

30GB Video iPod, with a camera adapter for transferring your files
from the camera to the iPod's internal HD

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi J,

Yes, the iPod is amazingly slow when downloading images. I've not tried the Belkin reader, but I did get an Apple connector that lets me connect my camera, via USB, directly to the iPod. I can't remember how long it took, but I do remember going away and having a meal while it worked on a 1GB card, LOL!

The iPod will read and display jpegs very nicely, and it will store RAW files, but you can't look at them. As an image storage device, I consider it a last resort (e.g. when my laptop battery has died, there is no AC power near, my Epson p2000 with extra battery had died too and I'm in the jungle photographing supermodels ;-)

Cheers!

Chas

greengo said:

I read a review that said the iPod was dreadfully slow when
downloading photos into it.
How does the speed of download compare as to the average time
needed to download into a laptop?

Does it allow any type of file (jpeg or raw) to be downloaded into
it ?

I have never tried it but it does sound as if it would be a good
option to have handy.

J
--
If I wake up breathing it's going to be a great day.

Click to expand...

Been checkin' out the specs of the Jobo gear... 2.5MB/sec does not seem to be too fast to me.
--
Regards,
---------------------------
Daniel Kékesi
http://www.kekesi.com

Hi ricardo,

Many thanks for the suggestion. I do have several external drives that live attached to my desktop machine, but I carry so much equipment to and from jobs that something this large would literally be the (massive) straw that broke the camel's back! The AC power issue is a deal breaker too, as I'm usually short on AC when out and about on jobs (thus my need for a bus-powered external drive).

Thanks for the suggestion though, I do appreciate you taking the time.

Chas

Ricardo41 said:

On a recent field trip to Memphis, TN, and Mississippi I brought
along a Seagate 300Gigabyte harddrive. At the end of the day, in my
hotel room I downloaded the images off of my microdrive, deleted
the losers, then backed the remainder of the images up to a CD R
and the harddrive. It's not a portable harddrive, more an external
one, but it did the job and worked well. Obviously, it works only
when you're near a power outlet and it's not really a "rugged"
device. But it is small enough to fit into a medium/large size
camera back pack.

ricardo

Click to expand...

I use a 40gb Nixvue Lite digital wallet. I or my assistant will download a card as soon as it is full. I will not use that card the rest of the night. When I leave the wedding, I will have two copies of the wedding. One on the cards and one in the digital wallet. When I get to my computer, I plug the d/w in, highlight the folders from the wedding and then drag them to the clients folder on my external hard drive. I then burn cd before doing any editing of the files. Before I go to bed, I have 4 copies of the wedding (cards, digital wallets, external hard drive, cds).

Hi Jim,

That really does look like an interesting unit. What I really like is that it's powered by AAs, as I always carry zillions of them around with me.

I had two threads running re: my wedding disaster, one here and one in Mac talk:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1014&message=18524725
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1017&message=18524627

It all gets quite detailed. I at last handed the final photos into the hands of my partner yesterday. He's new to the biz, and hired me to work with him on this wedding, and he agreed to do all of the post production. Here I thought I was going to shoot on the day and be done with it! Well, the "disaster" meant a 100 hour week recovering only 150 or so files from the original 698 damaged. Agony!

I've since purchased another 4GB card, and just this morning found the external bus-powered drive that I really wanted (the LaCie rugged 120GB firewire drive I mentioned in my original post. Took me a whole day to find it by scouring all of the sites that LaCie has listed as resellers. I'm sure I got the last one of these in the entire UK!).

Thanks very much for the pointer, and I hope that my "disaster" experience proves useful to you (consider me now an expert in file recovery!)

Chas

cobrajim said:

Check out this unit....

http://www.hyperdrive.com

Looks like a great unit... maybe just what you need.

Jim

P.S. can you give the link to the discussion on your wedding
"disaster"?

Click to expand...

Hi Gerard,

"Slow"? Their website says it's "the world's fastest", how slow is it?

I have to say that my Epson p2000 is a definite candidate for "the world's slowest"

One thing that I don't like about the Hyperdrive is the lack of a screen to view photos. I find that very very useful when using the Epson unit (I only view photos to ensure that I've successfully downloaded them, though it does have a nice slideshow capability I haven't used yet).

Thanks for your post,

Chas

gerard boulanger said:

Yes, this is the one I use all the time, perfect, maybe a little
slow to download, but, it works great!

--
'Better than a good equipment: a good eye and heart'

Click to expand...

Heya,

It's a good suggestion, and I've already got one, and Epson p2000. The main problem is that it's too slow to deal with many of the jobs I'm on these days (far too slow to deal with the volume of a "reportage" wedding, especially if I'm shooting RAWs).

I'm not sure I understand how it's faster to download cards to a PSD than a notebook? Is the PD70X particularly fast? (or are you referring to the fact that two of them working on two cards is faster than one card at a time to a notebook).

I'm considering replacing my Epson p2000 with one of the new Jobo units, which trumpet their speed. They're pretty bulky though (compared to the Epson), and !@£!@! expensive.

By the way, I do bring my laptop to all events. Weddings aren't so time critical, my corporate work usually requires photos for press release the next day (if not the actual night of the event!). Luckily, when doing corporate work, I usually have a nice AC jack and can set up the laptop for wifi, and can transmit directly from the camera to the laptop as I shoot. Instant backup! (then I put the full cards on to the p2000 as soon as they're full, and now I'm going to have an external drive to automatically copy the files from the laptop too. Overly redundant? I don't think so, if it can absorb the big fluctuations in data flow that caused my wedding disaster).

Many thanks for your post, I very much appreciate it.

Chas

DancePhotographer said:

Why not go with a PSD? Who needs having to lug around a notebook?
Just plug the card into the PSD, and it is backed up. Later on,
when the shoot is done, you can male a backup of the PSD data onto
another HD.

With a PD70X on my belt, I have the original CF card and a HD
backup in minutes without touching a computer. I have even used 2
of them at an event, just to be sure. It's a lot cheaper than
risking my high dollar notebook at an event, and faster, too.

Click to expand...

Hi,

Thanks for the pointer. Luckily for me, I managed to source what I think is the very last LaCie Rugged firewire drive in the entire UK. I went to every website in LaCie's list of resellers in the UK, and finally found the drive I was looking for. You see, I really wanted the speed of firewire 800 for desktop work and firewire 400 for laptop work in the field, and that's not an option on many of the suggestions I received in this thread (though I do appreciate them).

I should point out that the Wolverine drives are all USB. I find that the sustained transfer rate of USB is quite slower than their max burst rate of 480Mb/sec (though I will be the first to admit I haven't done any rigorous testing, I have two identical card readers, one that connects via firewire, one via USB 2, and the USB one is far slower).

Again, I do appreciate your contribution, my thanks.

Chas

TsunamiFury said:

Wolverine's pro line

http://www.wolverinedata.com

--



I'd take the right eye over the best equipment any day.

Click to expand...

Hi ralu,

Excellent workflow. Since my wedding disaster, I've purchased another 4GB card in hopes that that'll be enough storage to not have to reuse a card during an event.

New workflow is going to be:

1) fill card

2) copy to Epson p2000 digital wallet (I'm thinking of replacing it with a faster unit from Jobo)

When there is a pause, I return to my laptop with all of my full cards and will:
3) copy cards to laptop

4) cards will simultaneously be copied to an external hard drive (I just managed to source what I seriously think is the last LaCie Rugged FW 120GB drive in the UK!)

That will give me 3 redundant copies, and will deal with any high dataflow issues that led to my wedding disaster (the Epson p2000 wouldn't keep up, and so I had a single copy of many of the images shot during the day on the laptop. When the files got damaged on the laptop, it turned out that they were of course the ones not already copied to the p2000. Murphy strikes again!)

During corporate events, when I'm usually in one venue and can set up my laptop on AC and get my portable wifi router working, I also transfer all photos as they're shot to the laptop (I really like this, instant backup!).

I do envy you your assistant, I'm thinking of hiring one for my next wedding just to deal with dataflow issues (my daughter is 10 and quite computer savvy, maybe I'll train her up ;-)

Thanks for the insight into your workflow,

Chas

ralu said:

I use a 40gb Nixvue Lite digital wallet. I or my assistant will
download a card as soon as it is full. I will not use that card
the rest of the night. When I leave the wedding, I will have two
copies of the wedding. One on the cards and one in the digital
wallet. When I get to my computer, I plug the d/w in, highlight
the folders from the wedding and then drag them to the clients
folder on my external hard drive. I then burn cd before doing any
editing of the files. Before I go to bed, I have 4 copies of the
wedding (cards, digital wallets, external hard drive, cds).

Click to expand...

Hi Daniel,

I got my info on card downloading speed here:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-7892-8176

This review says that it'll do 13.3MB/second.

I'm talking about the new Jobo GigaVu Pro Evolution, rather than the older unit that's been around for a while.

Cheers!

Chas

Daniel Kkesi said:

Been checkin' out the specs of the Jobo gear... 2.5MB/sec does not
seem to be too fast to me.
--
Regards,
---------------------------
Daniel Kékesi
http://www.kekesi.com

Click to expand...

I never used to bring an assistant. Around 4 years ago, a Master Photographer who was and still is the the "top dog" around the area I live in, called me out of the blue and asked me if I could "flunky" for him at a large wedding. He said he would pay me for my time. I thought I should be the one to pay him for letting me watch him shoot a wedding. He told me that if I ever brought an assistant to a wedding, I would never do another without. He was right. Last year I finally started bringing one. It is usually a niece or local student in the area who will help carry equipment or hold a second light on a monopod.

Hi ralu,

I've been seriously thinking about an assistant for my more intense jobs (like all wedding jobs). And it's the "never do without" aspect that scares me, what if I try it out, and then can't work without one again!

Thanks for that info, enlightening.

Chas

ralu said:

I never used to bring an assistant. Around 4 years ago, a Master
Photographer who was and still is the the "top dog" around the area
I live in, called me out of the blue and asked me if I could
"flunky" for him at a large wedding. He said he would pay me for
my time. I thought I should be the one to pay him for letting me
watch him shoot a wedding. He told me that if I ever brought an
assistant to a wedding, I would never do another without. He was
right. Last year I finally started bringing one. It is usually a
niece or local student in the area who will help carry equipment or
hold a second light on a monopod.

Click to expand...

With a PD70X on my belt...?

I was just wondering how you put the PD70X on your belt?

Is there a belt clip built into the unit?

Thanks.

Jim

chasg said:

Heya,

It's a good suggestion, and I've already got one, and Epson p2000.
The main problem is that it's too slow to deal with many of the
jobs I'm on these days (far too slow to deal with the volume of a
"reportage" wedding, especially if I'm shooting RAWs).

I'm not sure I understand how it's faster to download cards to a
PSD than a notebook? Is the PD70X particularly fast? (or are you
referring to the fact that two of them working on two cards is
faster than one card at a time to a notebook).

Click to expand...

Yes it is fast. One of the fastest on the market.

I use a PD7X, which was the fastest when it came out and predecessor to the PD70X, and can easily dump 13G of photos to it in a little under 1 hour with plenty of time to spare. I use it whenever I need more than 4G for an event. I have a little padded case that I attach to my belt. I start the dumping process and look for the flashing green light durring the transfer and then the happy face at the end of the transfer. I'm planning on getting a second some some day.

--
Bryan - click, click, click, click, moo, click, click.

cobrajim said:

With a PD70X on my belt...?

I was just wondering how you put the PD70X on your belt?

Is there a belt clip built into the unit?

Click to expand...

Not on the unit it's self. I use a small padded camera case made for a point and shoot camera. I slip the unit into it and keep a CF card and a spare set of batteries in there too.

--
Bryan - click, click, click, click, moo, click, click.

chasg said:

Hi Daniel,

I got my info on card downloading speed here:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-7892-8176

This review says that it'll do 13.3MB/second.

Click to expand...

Burst speed, but on a 4G card they only susttained 8.3MB/second. It has a pre and post organization and sorting stages. Why? All one really needs is to dump the images to backup reliably and fast. Get a pair of PD70Xs and get two copies quickly.

--
Bryan - click, click, click, click, moo, click, click.