Backing Up Photos on Long Trips

I'm looking for a solution to backing up photos (shot in raw on 6D) while on trips. I'm tired of lugging around my laptop, and have only been carrying an iPad with me. I've tried researching ways to upload to my iPad, then upload the raw files to a cloud of some type. I've not had any luck finding a way to make this happen. I've decided it would be easier if I had a hard drive that I can plug my SD card into and backup the photos that way. Has anyone had success with a photo backup drive of this type? I'ver researched a few and have not read any good reviews on them. Hoping the members of this site can help me out some.

Apologies for putting this on the Lens page. Meant to click the accessories.

Moved it for you.

My mum just went on a tour of SE Asia, before she left we got her a little 12" netbook, just an Atom-based thingy with 1gb of ram, inbuilt card reader, a few usb ports, and not much else. brang an external hard disk, it worked great, also to check emails and such on the road from hotel-wifi.

I know Apple crippled their ipad and left off the USB ports, but how about the Samsung Galaxy tablets? afaik they all still have USB ports and work perfectly well enough for transferring from card to portable hdd...

Have you tried the Canon EOS Remote App? (http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consum...isplay/EOS_app) It should connect with your iPad. The only problem is that it converts RAW to S2 JPEG size, but that could be just to an iPhone. Another option would be an external hard drive with WiFi, that might work also. Providing you use a PC and not a Mac, a third (and possibly expensive option), is to get the Microsoft Surface Pro when it comes out. It will have a full version of Windows 8, a full sized USB 3.0 port and it will run any desktop application you can run on a Windows 7 or 8 machine.

Hope this helps.

Trent

There is an accessory for the iPad that lets you load images from your camera. RAW is supported:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC...connection-kit

Have you looked at the Nexto DI device? It might fit your needs.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...G&Q=&A=details

When CF cards were small capacity and very expensive, I went for a CF card to disk storage unit. As my CF cards got bigger I was limited by the small (100GB) internal hard disk (couldn't be upgraded), so it didn't last long. Eventually the internal battery died and I couldn't get a replacement.

I'm alway worried about taking my Netbook with me because it may be damaged, so I now buy larger CF cards before each trip.

Lots of cards, lots of storage... but no backup.

Has anyone had any luck with Digital Foci Photo Safe II? The more I travel around, the less comfortable I feel with carrying my laptop all the time for backup. I have an ipad, but it just doesn't have the storage space for my needs.

J. Findley,

I would agree that the netbook, such as Asus provides, is compact, but it is also very heavy. They'll do Win 7 and even photoshop except you cant reach the tools on some screens since the monitor is so small.

Giving you the same functionality and reducing weight, I would look at a nettop. These are mostly proprietary motherboards, the units are about the size of a VHS tape. You could google "super micro ATX motherboard" and the basis for a similar sized build. There are also smaller units that approach the size of a deck of cards. They may have an Atom processor and carry built in 1GB ram. These are not as configurable however you can choose the hard drive. The cases or chassis for these seem to have limited selection. Clearly you would want to put a 1TB platter drive into it, unless you want to pay a boatload for a SSD drive.

The pros of a net-top from Asus are less weight, much much less cost ($150 or so I think), less space and you keep a fully functioning PC. I would recommend using the "rubber keyboard" that rolls up to the size of a toilet paper empty tube and a portable size rf mouse.

The cons are not bad, you have a power cable with a small transformer, but so do laptops. The only other one, is no monitor. You would use a monitor or TV in the hotel, so you should keep a low gage and short vga cable and/or svideo, depending on what the net-top video out has. Hdmi would probably be best.

I've put Asus nettops in as POS terminals and secondary PC's, they're so small they mount on the back of the smallest monitors and cannot be seen and are not heavy at all. Asus I recommend, Acer and other brands I dunno.

Depending on what smartphone you have, you might be able to get a card reader and upload them with wifi, but it seems like that might be iffy when abroad in various locations.

Edit: to resolve the monitor problem, there are deck of card size projectors for relatively cheap. You could be assured of funciton and would only require a blank spot of wall to shine it on. These are generally low power and about 20" screen from several feet away.

You can in fact put this package together for less than a low end cheapy laptop, if you source materials correctly. Added that you would have a full PC, it's sort of nice. The main reason for the size of our consumer electronics being the size they are, is that if they were smaller, we could not interact with them due to the size of our fingers and also that the industry standard connectors are extremely large relative to their function. The super micro ATX board is basically PCB with a handful of giant looking USB and VGA connectors sitting on what looks like a credit card.

It would be fun to put together a device for you (at half the size of the asus net-top I have mentioned) if I knew you would buy it.

an iPad won't help OP much since the storage capacity is so small and the IOS makes file management rather difficult.

my suggestion: get a lacie rugged or western digital external hard drive. wd makes a version that's small, requires no power outled and has 2tb. every apple store has it, as well as the lacie rugged drives, which are a bit more expensive. throw that sucker into your bag. carry a bunch of 16GB or 32GB CF cards with you. you will run into someone every other week who will let you borrow their laptop for an hour, right? so connect the card reader you are carrying anyway, connect the USB port on the hard drive and download whatever images you can before you lose access to the laptop. done. you will never run out of space.

however: you lose the ability to edit images on the fly. unless you are really opposed to carrying a laptop, I'd throw in a mac book air with aperture or lightroom as well as the external drive. (airs have small hdd's.)

and then travel knowing that there are always more hdd's to be had anywhere you go.

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Originally Posted by memostothefuture

my suggestion: get a lacie rugged

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I've got several of the LaCie Rugged drives (some older FW800/FW/400/USB2 and some newer FW800/USB3/USB2 versions). I like the bus-powered drives and they're tough enough to throw in a bag and not worry about. I use some for routine clone backups, and some for archival storage of images, etc., and I have the colored bumpers to distinguish uses.

Having said that, on trips I often bring a MacBook Air, and rather than an external HDD, I bring plenty of CF cards and a handful of 64 GB USB flash drives. That way, I can have two backup copies of all images (one on the CF card, one on a flash drive), and they're small enough to have a set on my person/bag (as opposed to having all my images in my hotel room or luggage, where they can be stolen - to me, it doesn't make sense to have a copy on the computer and a copy on the HDD, and have them stored together).