Portable Storage Devices?
 

Has anyone had any luck with these? We are looking at one for our upcoming trip. We only need a small 10G, and have found some on e-bay for about 100$. Doesn't have playback onscreen, but we won't need it until downloaded onto our home computer. Are there any issues (cons) that you all know about?

There are lots and lots and lots of different portable storage devices available and you'll find some discussions in various threads here if you search on "portable".

We use 2 X Drives, mostly because when we bought the first one, there wasn't quite the choice of brands and models that there is now and the X Drive was affordable and did what we needed.

It also doesn't have a playback screen but we don't need one anyway and they hammer the batteries too.

Key issues to look into are
a) how long does it take to download your card to it
b) how many downloads will a single charging allow for
c) how long does it take to recharge

One one trip we took two and copied all files onto both so that if one failed, we didn't lose our pictures.

On another trip we took the laptop plus DVD burner and an X Drive for backup incase we had problems with the laptop.

Hello,

I use an iPod photo -- a great device if size and weight are an issue. It has a small screen which allows you to check that the photos have transferred correctly before you erase your memory cards -- to me, that's pretty important. And it's easy to use for the non-technically orientated.

Cheers,
Julian

Julian,

I've tried using my daughter's IPOD for storing my pictures(RAW format) from my Canon 20D and it took forever(around 50 minutes) to download a 1 gb cf card. The IPOD battery was completely drain after just downloading 1 gb card! I then try downloading from my daughter's Canon IXUSi(photos were in med res jpeg) and it did the job quite quickly.

So if you shoot in RAW or in large memory format I would not recommend the IPOD as a storage device. Too long to download and upload..

Hello,

I didn't have any problems with battery drain on my iPod, but mine is the newest one with longer battery life. I also think that CF cards tend to be slower than other media -- I use SD cards and was able to download a 1-GB card in about 25 min.

Cheers,
Julian

I should have mentioned that I shoot in a combination of TIFF and high-quality JPEG.

Cheers,
Julian

We got the epson p2000 and it is great. My husband wanted the video to ensure the photos had been loaded before deleting them from the card. You can review the photos without putting them on the device if you want to. And the screen is large and clear -- 3.8 inches. Also what we are looking forward to is taking the device with the photos loaded to share with others. It is very user friendly and the viewer is great. We are glad we went ahead and spent the $$ on it.

mpkp - I just got the Epson P2000 and I love it. It's very fast downloading the images off the card and you can review them immediately. I haven't tested it but I think I've read you can download 9 GB on a full battery. That's alot. The safari I'm going on this year (19 more days!) is a true "photo safari" with a photographer leading it so I'm sure I'll take thousands of pictures and will be glad I have it.

Thank you for all of your input!