travelling / backing up

hello,
I am hoping to go travelling for a few months, and will obviously take some pics
One dilemma I have is how to store the pics, I could buy 2-3 32Gb cards, I am sure I wouldn't fill them in, but more nervous about getting robbed and losing everything.
I've read a few forums online and people recommend having a notebook and/external drive. Since i'll go backpacking it doesn't work for me.
The two options I see:

a) get some 32Gb cards, find a way to duplicate them and hide one in my backpack, and the other one somewhere else
b) spend an hour once a week in an internet cafe and upload the files to dropbox (or similar service), which means I would have to pay a suscription
c) would shipping a SD card via DHL to Europe be a good idea?!

Any tips/advice?
thanks

Hi,

Just last night I have been looking around for a wireless media reader. They are small devices that allow you to access data on SD cards or USB devices through your phone or tablet. they do not need internet to connect to your phone or tablet. If you have a phone with decent memory, you could copy your photos to your phone and when you find an internet access point upload them to dropbox or similar. You could also copy photos to your phone and then back to a second SD card....

BR, Giorgio

Have you thought about cloud storage of some kind?

We're off for two weeks soon and I'll have 2 32gb cards, but a lot of that is to cover video recordings. I'll copy each days files to a laptop at night and then also burn it all onto a Double layer dvd (8.5gb). These can easily be stored safely in a range of spaces, or even posted home as an 'off-site ' backup. I keep the files on each card until both these processes' have been done, then use it again in alternation of the other.

Online options have to be qualified with questions about the internet connection type (real broadband or mobile), upload speeds available (which can be glacial), and data costs. I'll have ee 3g mobile internet, but won't even bother trying to upload my RAWs and .avi's ... Guaranteed exercise in futility.

Using Dropbox or other cloud storage relies on good reliable fast internet, and a stack of space in that cloud.

Have you looked at small portable drives which just read the card? They generally are expensive (though why goodness only knows) but small and very portable. Do a search for image tank or portable photo back-up.

Otherwise just a stack of cards. You could post them home to yourself occasionally I guess. Would there be someone home to receive and sign for them if you send them DHL or insured post?

Use your cards, keep them in your pocket at all times and dont worry so much

That's what I would do - and if I loose my camera/cards etc then I'd book the same holiday for next year

I'm abroad at the moment and have been using firedrive, their free amount may be large enough. Works fairly well but be prepared for long upload times even with a fast connection. The raw files from my k5 are pretty big.
I have a lenovo windows 8 tablet with me running lightroom, so I upload from that.

hello,
thanks for all your comments.
i dont expect to shoot that much, and i always delete blurry/missed shots straight in the camera.
1 pic is usually around 15Mb, i am guessing it will take 3-4 weeks to fill one 16Gb card. So will leave with 3 cards.
Firedrive looks great - it has 50Gb free storage, I will probably use that, and be patient when i have wifi connection.
thanks a lot - (and feel free to add more tips)

This holiday I've been in china, so all my normal cloud storage was blocked. Managed to get 10TB free from tencent (one of worlds larger internet companies), on their weiyun cloud, however had to get help to be sure of the translation during setup and for large file upload.

Just came across this Kingston DT MicroDuo USB 3.0 micro USB OTG - 64GB dongle on the 7 Day shop website. Looks like another possible solution as 1 or 2 of those should see most people through their holidays if they have a micro USB slot with OTG capability on their tablets.

(or put the card in an OTG card reader and transfer the files to the tablet or the microSD memory expansion card, then replace the card reader by this device and transfer them to the Kingston device)

Although the original post was a bit dated, and the person is most likely already back from the vacation and all...

The original post was missing the camera type. If it might be a camera such as one of the K3 variations; that camera body (and others) offer one the ability to mirror the memory cards.

But in case ones camera does not offer the internal hardware ability to mirror the memory cards; companies such as Sony do "occasionally" offer memory cards that do the mirroring themselves.


Not sure if this is worthy of a topic start on this next one, but also remember this gravely critical point. If one still happens to have a mechanical platter hard disk on their computer; one should never use any memory card that goes anywhere near half the capacity of that mechanical hard drive. The computer would most likely have large scale issues with near continual crashes; most likely trying to defrag a hard drive

I use 32Gb and 64Gb cards. When travelling I use a card reader, a Samsung NC10 with SSD and a 2Tb 2.5" ext drive (back up drive).

Where could I buy a 128Gb mechanical drive these days or how old would my laptop have to be to have one as standard?

My own practice is to only store images on the computer drive that are to be emailed or small images for posting here.

Best regards

Was just stating number and all for everyone to use.

Memory cards are readily available at both 256gb and even 512gb. Models released next year will easily be into the 1tb ranges. Unfortunately as it may read; over one half of all prefab (already made ones such as Dell, HP, Apple, etc...) still have mechanical drives.

Trying to sync one of those memory cards listed above to a mechanical drive would almost spell failure