Storage - On the road (OTR)

I realise that there is another storage thread but this one is more specific.

Every year my wife and I go on an extended driving holiday/expedition which can mean 2-3 weeks without internet (so no cloud option for storage).

During this time we take stills and video and can easily generate 300+ Gb of data.

On our last trip one SD card failed and we lost nearly 2 days worth of images and I don't want that to happen again. We will have a K3 (I hope) or K5iis, an X-5 and, at least, one GoPro to backup each day.

Although we are in a Land Rover I still want to keep the amount of equipment we carry to a minimum and I don't want to spend all evening, around the campfire, messing about with complicated backup systems (I'd rather be drinking:lol. In addition, with so many other expenses associated with these trips I want to keep the costs down if I can.

I've looked at stand alone options such as the Hyperdrive but they are quite pricey.

We already own iPads (which we will take with us) and a Samsung netbook and portable HDD (WD My Passport 1Tb). So it would be good to use the things we already have.

Unfortunately the iPad doesn't have enough memory and I can't find an option to use it in conjunction with external storage. I have explored 'jailbreak' options (such a ifile and SD card readers) but still haven't found anything definite.

This leaves me with the netbook. So what I am considering at the moment is this system:

1. Buy a seagate wireless plus and set this up in the car somewhere safe.
2. Fit eyefi (flu) cards in the X-5 and 1 slot of the K3 to stream jpg and video files directly to the Seagate HDD (like this).
3. Set the K3 to save RAW to one card and jpg to the eyefi
4. Each evening, using the netbook and a separate usb HDD,
.a. Manually copy the RAW files from the K3 card
.b. Manually copy the video from the GoPro
.c. Store the cards safely (putting new ones in the cameras each day).
.d. Manually copy the jpg files from the X-5 and replace the eyefi back in the camera.
.e. Verify the contents of the seagate drive

Hopefully this system will give me:
- one HDD with all the jpgs and Pentax videos on,
- a separate HDD with all the RAW K3 files, X-5 jpgs and the Pentax and GoPro videos
- the original SD cards, for each day, still intact.

Assuming the eyefi (or flucard if they're available by then) work as they should then, even if a card fails, the last image taken should be on the HDD.

Hopefully it won't take too long each evening to copy the 3/4 SD Cards onto the HDD.

Saying all this I'm still in 'research' mode so if anyone else has a better/simpler/ cheaper/more efficient system I would be very happy to hear about it. Our next trip is in July, to the Faroe Islands and Iceland, so we have plenty of time.

One lower-tech way, but fairly reliable, would be to burn DVDs of your originals each night, have some postage pre-paid card envelopes all ready, and just drop a disc or two into a postbox each day - sending them home or to someone for safe keeping. At least you know they are somewhere else should disaster strike you or the car.

I have been toying with the idea of setting up a Raspberry Pi to replicate SD cards on the go. Headless (with no monitor).

Haven't had the time to do it yet though.

Ipads, like all tablets can't power an external hdd, so you would need a separate power supply for the drive.

It all seems complicated to me, and imo the fewer things to go wrong the better. Since you already have a netbook, and an external hdd why not just back everything up in the evening using those. It will no doubt take a while, but you can be doing other things in the meantime.

I take my netbook and mini hdd with me. Sometimes I also take our ancient image tank too. It is similar to the hyperdrive but without a screen. On the netbook I generally have a quick weed out of duff photos, something I can't do with the image tank.

A USB memory stick or two, borrow a PC to copy onto it.

Enough sdhc cards not to have to reuse.

A netbook if space allows.

A portable usb hdd.




Buy best quality cards and use them a while before departure and look at the "bathtub" curve of device failure... Lots happen at the start of use and lots at the end.


Or buy a 2 slot camera and double cards and carry them apart or post them home.

I'd run with the netbook as well, use one regularly over a 2 week stint away from home, just download the raws to the hard drive, take out any immediate duffs.

Cant see the problem here..unless im missing something. Just use the netbook & HDD. Leave the ipads at home.. How about using your phone for extra storage ?

Thanks for the idea but that would involve more kit and take longer than what I am suggesting already. The nature of our trips, Sahara Desert, Iceland Interior, etc. means that there are no postboxes

I had heard of these Raspberry Pi and it does sound like and interesting option. However you would need a display of some sort to check that the files had transferred.

I think you're probably right and this is what we will do. The Eyefi and Seagate drive would just add another level of 'redundancy' to the system without much additional effort.

Borrowing a PC would be problematic where we travel. The netbook will allow the use of any usb storage and because of the amount of data it would have to be a HDD rather than memory sticks. As I said I will change the cards every day and I am hoping to have a K3 which has 2 slots.
Following the failure of a Duracell SD Card last trip I will now always use Sandisk cards.

Yep, I think you're probably right.

There isn't really a problem I was just looking for other ideas. The iPads will always come with us as we use them for so many other things whilst on the road such as updating various websites/facebook etc. of our progress, reading books, viewing photos etc.


Thanks for all the comments but it sounds like I have a reasonable system. However I'll still keep the research going as you never know I might find something better

Netbook or laptop with a good size HDD, totally cleaned. And a couple of 500GB portable drives.

Copy files from SD cards to laptop and have a backup app running that will copy all image files to HDD. You should be able to do it whilst driving or overnight.

Are you sure you can write to the seagate HDD via wifi? Looking a the spec it appears its wifi capabilities are only for reading to devices...

Was just thinking of using an LED to return the status. That status is possibly just an MD5 or SHA sum of the contents of each card compared after the copy script has run.

The copy script would run automatically on boot using /etc/init.d/

According to this website: link you can send files directly from the eye-fi card. Which is all I am after. I can then view (and verify) the files using a browser window on the netbook or through an app on my iPad.

Mmmm, I think I'd rather visually confirm the files are there. Still they're worth a look.

Are you aware how much battery life the eyefi card uses in the camera? I have found them to be very unreliable and it maybe easier and simpler to just copy the cards over to the HDD through the netbook.

Gary, A very fair point. I did add a little caveat to my OP which was

I must admit that I haven't found the eyefi card to that reliable either. I hadn't really noticed much impact on the battery but, TBH, hadn't really looked.
Sometimes it seemed to work like a dream, other times it just didn't work at all. The initial connection always seemed to take ages but once it was connected seemed to work quite well
My main reason for including this idea was because of our last trip. I know exactly when the SD card failed as it immediately gave an error message. We were driving through a Norwegian town at the time and my wife was taking snaps of the buildings. If (and I do mean if) it an eyefi cards was fitted (and working) we would have had all the images taken that morning and right up to the point of failure.

I must admit I hadn't thought about the battery limitations, especially in the X5, which runs on AAs. This might cause a rethink or at least a test of battery life when in use.

I'm ALS hoping that, when it finally becomes available, the flu card might be more reliable.

I bought the eye fi card for my club work so I could edit images quickly on the iPhone and upload to Facebook from the club but seemed to spend more and more time just trying to get the thing to work. I recently had it replaced by eye fi whose support is excellent by the way and despite numerous attempts still struggle to get it to work properly. Like you I found sometimes it works perfectly and other times annoyingly not.

As for battery life I usually get around 900 images from my k-5 mkii on a single charged battery with the eye fi card this goes down to 450 so a 50% decrease in usage.

I think for me on a trip like this I would buy lots of memory cards, back them up to the hard drive through the netbook and only use the memory cards once, keeping them as another backup method.