I usually shoot RAW+, but only resort to actually using the PEF file if there's something wrong with the Jpeg which is rare.

I wouldn't hesitate using Jpeg only in good light, you can still alter the WB if need be but with decent lenses AWB should cope.

The K-5 has more pixels than the K20D so sharpness shouldn't be a problem, possibly test sharpness on +1 before you go.

Set the underexpose/overexpose warning on the preview histogram and the histogram to show red green and blue histograms.

I thought it would be No point in keeping card readers that report problems with several cards, such as can't delete file etc.

Nice to see that you managed to sell it on ebay for a decent price.

Excellent lens, I still have one

That's really ban news. I hope it doesn't get any worse while you away. Take plenty cards.... and .... fill em up!

RAR has a batch like facility to "Put each file in a separate archive" where it uses the filename and adds RAR to the end of each compressed file.

So gb_0236.dng gets compressed into gb_0236.rar
gb_0236.dng can then be deleted and space on the HDD saved.

RAR can also uncompress RAR and ZIP files to a Directory with the
same name as the file so gb_0236.RAR would uncompress into a Directory called gb_0236 if so required, keeping all the later edited files
together in one Directory.

I'm not familiar with xbox, but have heard of people using them to watch movies. I think they also do BluRay.

Looks like 1TB drives have really come down in price

It's worth looking at compressing PEF and DEF files. I've just tried a 23MB DNG off a GX-20 and it compressed to:

RAR 14.9MB
ZIP 17.6MB

I would suggest you check the speed of these readers. A lot of the cheap ones only do about 3/4 MB/s compared to 18/20 MB/s of the better ones

Try a different reader on the PC.

I remember using Dropbox once to get a USB Driver. I had to register for an account which was really simple to do and then they let me get the file. I might have got a confirmation email, but I've never had any Spam from them. They seem to have a good setup.