So....37 days from now, I'll be aboard the Grand Princess heading out on a 7-day Alaska cruise. Last time we cruised Alaska, I didn't take enough "space" - ~80GB of memory cards and ~80GB of internal HD space on my MacBook Pro (with a rented 1Dx in JPEG mode due to an out-of-date Lightroom install). This time around, I don't want a space crisis to be a concern in any way, so I want to assemble a suitable, portable system, and I'd like your thoughts.

1: My MBP is old and tired. The battery should be serviced, I should upgrade the RAM beyond the original 2GB, the touchpad is dying, and I ought to replace the HD with an SSD. Or, I could replace it altogether...though my wife's matching MBP at least has a reliable touchpad. Both have FireWire ports.

2: My Mac mini has a FireWire port. It has Thunderbolt, but I'm already daisy-chaining two 27" Apple monitors on the TB bus, and I question what level of performance I'd get plugging one or more TB drives into the second monitor's TB port. TB drives wouldn't work on my MBP, and they seem to command quite a price premium (OWC/macsales.com puts TB drives ~$75 more than FW800 portable drives, and ~$115 more than USB3.0 portable drives). Therefore, I think it makes sense to stick with FW800 since it's (at least the OWC Mercury On-The-Go units) daisy-chainable, preserving the onboard USB port(s) for memory card readers. I can buy a TB->FW adapter for future computers if desired.

3: I'm thinking about getting one 480GB SSD and two 1.0TB HDDs, always copying the day's memory cards to the SSD, then while at dinner letting an rsync script copy the SSD to one/both of the HDDs. If the SSD might get full, I could delete older files knowing they're on both HDDs (I would audit my rsync script to be sure it doesn't delete files), but if we manage to stay within 480GB I can do my editing at home directly from the SSD. I could put one of the HDDs in our cabin safe or even carry it across the ship to my parents' cabin.

4: I've also considered going with one 240GB (or MAYBE a 120GB) SSD and three HDDs, keeping one HDD as the staging point, and two HDDs as rotating "off-site" backups. The SSD would serve as the rapid-access staging point to get memory cards emptied, then dynamically copied to HDD1. HDD1 would be dynamically copied to HDD2A; when complete, HDD2A would go to my parents' cabin, and HDD2B would come back to be brought up to sync with HDD1. We're probably going to have ~240GB of memory cards with us on this trip.

5: Should I just skip the SSD altogether, and go with the 3 HDD (or just a 2 HDD) scenario?

6: Would any of you bother with a tool such as diglloyd's IntegrityChecker to ensure that the backup copies are 100% intact?