Can anyone recommend a good digital photo storage device? My sister and I will be doing the Stanley Wing Safari with Micato in September (keep the reports coming Hausfrau - it's like an awesome preview, you write exceptionally well, and you stayed at every hotel on our itinerary to boot). We're thinking about getting one of the Wolverine devices, but can't make up our minds. No need for video or audio storage, but no desire to buy and take a ton of disks. It seems that something like these portable units is the right thing to do. Ideas or suggestions?

Wolverine is OK, so is the Epson P-5000 or P-3000, which have very nice preview screens but are more expensive ... we usually take an older 100 GB Wolverine (one with no preview screen, just storage) and an Epson P-4000 (older version of P-5000) and both are OK, though the Wolverine is a good deal slower at reading the CF cards.

Bill

BillH -

Do you find you prefer the preview screen? That is, is it worth the extra cost to you?

Another alternative is the Hyperdrive HD Space, which does not have a preview screen but is far less expensive than the P-5000 and reads cards unbelievably fast (ours will download a full 4GB Extreme III card in 4 minutes). It also has excellent battery life and can be recharged from a variety of sources, which is really nice when you are traveling.

However, I have heard of problems when using the Hyperdrive with Lexar cards -- we use Sandisk exclusively and have had no problems.

Chris

Chris -

I've heard of Hyperdrive, too. I don't recall what kind of disks we use, so I'll look into that. I'm assuming you've been to Africa, and since we're also in Atlanta (marietta) I'll ask - have you flown on KLM from ATL? I've heard it's pretty awesome, and it's our airline for the trip to Nairobi. Not looking forward to the 18 hours, but oh well.

I've done the KLM flight from ATL (I live here too) and it is a long haul, but the layover in Amsterdam isn't that long so that makes for a little bit of a reprieve. Only a 2-3 hour layover, I believe. I've flown both first class and in coach and in first class, it's awesome. Coach, it's OK. There's enough variety of movies to keep you occupied.

The last time I flew it, coach, (Jan of this year) both legs of the flight were packed. It was unusual because the ATL to AMS is usually not very crowded. However, AMS to NBO is always crowded.
I look at it as just a means to an end, and once I land in Nairobi, all is forgotten.

We have been to sub-Saharan Africa twice, but never on KLM. The first time we went on South African Airways (2003) and then on our recent trip our entry point was Ethiopia, so we flew on Ethiopian Airways. So I can't comment on KLM, sorry. I deal with the long flights by taking Ambien and sleeping most of the way.

BTW one of the things Bill mentioned on photo storage devices is worth repeating: take two devices and back up on both in case one of them fails. We don't need/use the image preview -- we look at the pictures on the back of the camera if we get curious, but on our recent trip we used the Hyperdrive as well as another device (Creative Labs Zen Vision) for backing up the most important pictures. We didn't end up needing it, but it was nice peace of mind. On our next trip, we will probably take two Hyperdrives.

Chris

Thanks, both, for the advice. I agree, once we land in Nairobi, everything is forgotten. And we'll look at a possible backup device. Again, many thanks.

<b>BillH -

Do you find you prefer the preview screen? That is, is it worth the extra cost to you?</b>

Hmm, what we *actually* take is a 17&quot; laptop plus the Epson P-4000 and the Wolverine, so we download to the laptop and do a quick edit, then make backup copies to the Epson and Wooly. So we're using them just as back-up drives in Africa ... so I don't actually use the Epson preview screen to review shots, though it's nice to keep collections of images from previous trips on it to show people we meet along the way.

On a couple of rougher trips (camping in Alaska photographing bears comes to mind) I couldn't take the laptop because of space so just had the Epson and Wooly along, and here the preview screen comes in handy, but in truth you can skip it if you're comfortable doing previews on your camera's LCD.

I think a 120 GB Wooly cost around $100 on sale locally at Fry's while the Epson P-5000 is over $600, so there's a big premium for the screen.

Bill

Last trip I took a laptop but now have a Toshiba Gigabeat 40 I picked up for $89 on sale. Have a 500 MB for music and 39.5 GB for photo storage. Fits in my pocket. Will take it to Mexico this month, Galapagos in January and Africa next May.

Thanks as always for the advice. I was over at dpreview, and looking up reviews. I was going to settle on the Hyperdrive SPACE 40GB. Yeah, no screen but it is 170 dollars less than the FlashPro and Epson p-2000.

My one concern though, is the Sanho HYPERDRIVE SPACE the same thing as the one you are talking about? I read a confusing debate at dpreview about the companies. It is selling from B and H for 189. The wolverine flashpac is selling for 139, so if the Sanho 40GB is sketchy Id go with the wolverine (although I love the speed and battery life of the space).Thoughts?

Sanho is the name of the company that makes the Hyperdrive. In fact, I ordered mine directly from them (they are based in California).

Chris

Here's another Atlantan. We flew KLM to Arusha in February in coach. I don't remember anything about it being special. Just another jam packed flight. The trip back from Nairobi through Amsterdam had a long, long layover, we sure got to see everything in that airport.

We've got a refurbished Wolverine that I got through the company's Web site. With two cameras (5+ megapixels) and about 4 1/2 GB of memory for 11 days, we didn't need the Wolverine at all. One of the factors may have been that our drivers were experienced in working with photographers because sometimes they called the shot, and then you would see the way they were viewing the situation.

Based on the price of memory sticks now, I would just stick with more sticks. We even had extra protection packs for the sticks but didn't use them either, just the original cases.

I think I saw buy.com had a SanDisk Ultra with 2 GB this week for $34.99.

Battery charging was our bigger issue.

Another Atlantan (mariettta). glad to hear about KLM. We go next Feb. and plan to do 1st class. Glad to know that tha money may not have been wasted.