Device for downloading photos

[Alexander Hogg]

I'll be going abroad later this year and I don't want to take my laptop with me as it's quite an expensive one  Is there any other devices that are good for downloading photos while away One camera can back up onto another card but the other camera doesn't Any advice will be helpful Not really need to edit photos  while away as I'll be doing that when I'm back

[IKuzmin]

14 hours ago, IKuzmin said:

So, I tried a solution with my android cell phone. As shown in Mark's post above with both card reader and SSD connected to a dongle, it did not work. The phone was repeatedly missing connection with one device or another, required to restart due to incorrect disconnection of an USB device, and in total transferred nothing.

The approach without a dongle, copying files from cardreader to the phone first, and then from the phone to SSD, worked but with speed 21 Mb/s, and i can only do it by pieces 30 Gb each due to the phone drive capacity. This suggests that ~100Gb files I would be transferring to phone and then to SSD (in 3 portions) during 3-4 hours which does not sound very tempting. As such, a solution with a light cheap laptop (2 posts above) is going be my workflow (as previously...)

I thank the Person who gave me the green arrow, likely to neutralize the red one. I do not really care about the latter as I reported just my experience in a discussion, not giving any suggestions or opinion.

It seems to me that my problem might be caused by inability of the phone to provide sufficient power to both the card reader and SSD. But with the amounts of transfer involved, I cannot go for a lesser capacity (and I do not use SD cards which could be inserted into some dongles). In theory, one may consider adding a power bank to the equation, but to me that would be too much of exercise for a marginal (if any) benefit.

[Alexander Hogg]

3 hours ago, IKuzmin said:

I thank the Person who gave me the green arrow, likely to neutralize the red one. I do not really care about the latter as I reported just my experience in a discussion, not giving any suggestions or opinion.

It seems to me that my problem might be caused by inability of the phone to provide sufficient power to both the card reader and SSD. But with the amounts of transfer involved, I cannot go for a lesser capacity (and I do not use SD cards which could be inserted into some dongles). In theory, one may consider adding a power bank to the equation, but to me that would be too much of exercise for a marginal (if any) benefit.

Wasn't me I didn't know what I was starting up when I asked the question but it's been a good informative one Learnt a lot  

[Marianne]

On 05/08/2023 at 03:28, M.Chapman said:

 

 

I just installed LR Mobile on my iPad. It imported the photos from my SD card, but they aren't visible in Apple Photos or using the Files App. So where do they go??? Bit of investigation shows they have been uploaded to my Adobe.com cloud account with only a small local "cache" kept on the device. All very clever, but probably not a good "backup solution" if travelling without reliable and fast internet connection? Also would need to pay for extra Adobe storage.

 

In the meantime... I've ordered a small cheap USB/SD card hub like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BVB4RG2H for my iPhone/iPad which I think may provide a simple solution, especially as it has a power input which I hope can power a USB SSD drive, iPhone and SD card all at the same time and then simply use the iPhone (or iPad) with the FE File Explorer App to copy directly from the SD card to the USB SSD.

 

Mark

 

That looks good - guessing the second lightning port is just for charging and not for data transfer to an outside drive. My files from a trip would be too big to fit on my iPhone or iPad so I need the extra backup drive in the setup I described, though with iCloud they don't all have to fit on the device, but as you said, not a good solution in case there's slow internet . Nice thing about fitting them on your phone or iPad means they're also backed up to the cloud. Are both your phone and iPad lightning? My iPad is thunderbolt/USB-C and iPhone is lightning so I transfer any photos not taken with my iPhone via my iCloud account.  Glad you found a small and easy solution.

[Marianne]

On 05/08/2023 at 16:04, M.Chapman said:

I'm pleased to report the small USB/SD card hub https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BVB4RG2H seems to work just fine. I can connect it to my iPad or iPhone using the Lightning connector. I can also connect my iPhone power supply (if needed) and plug in the SD card from my camera and (if needed) a USB flash drive or USB SSD. I can than backup photos from the SD card directly to the iPhone or connected USB drive using FE File Explorer. I did try plugging a spinning USB HDD but that didn't work - presumably not enough power.

 

Given that I already carry my iPhone and USB power supply when travelling, this is by far the most compact and portable solution for me. I only need to carry the tiny hub if I'm just going for a day or two as my iPhone has enough storage. Or, if I'm going for longer, I can add a high capacity fast USB pen drive or SSD drive.

 

This has been a useful thread.

Mark

 

Will that second port support data transfer to an SSD or is it just for powering your device? I'd double check. If it supports transfer to an external SSD then that's great! (It might support an SSD and not an HDD since I think that flash memory doesn't need the same power, but I could be way off). The device you found isn't available in the US but it looks good. It's always helpful to learn about new tech solutions. And with airline weight limits on luggage going down all the time, good to find a way to travel without a laptop, not that plane travel is in my immediate future. You haven't told us where you're traveling to. Have a great time!

 

EDIT: Missed your post about it working with the SSD so that's a great solution. 

 

EDIT: Sorry, it's @Alexander Hogg who's taking the trip. Still dealing with vertigo and some days my brain is mush. Where are you headed to? 

Edinburgh, your home turf is a lovely city. My daughter performed at the Fringe back in 2007. Loved it! Spent 11 days there, and still so much I'd love to go back and see. Have a great trip. With overseas carry on luggage weight limits, sounds like leaving the laptop behind makes sense. On my last trip overseas in 2011, I took Icelandic Air and the carry on limit was 11 lbs! 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Marianne
Missed a post

[Marianne]

On 01/08/2023 at 19:21, StokeCreative said:

I tend to agree, I take my (expensive!) MacBook Pro everywhere (writing this from a motel in the US now :)) It's well insured and great for planning en route (Im frustrated doing much at all on the phone, maybe an age thing lol). I do do some editing while on a road trip so we differ there. I guess if I had a more up to date ipad/android tablet I might take that instead.

 

I'm still learning how to do more on my iPad -It may be an age thing but more that I've had it less than a year, so still new for me.  I do a lot of research when traveling via my iPhone but like you, I tend to take my expensive laptop (business insurance) along but am interested in using the iPad instead. I edit while traveling but mostly just culling/review so thinking I could do quick edits via the iPad PS/LR apps, though I guess that would mean paying for more Adobe storage space. 

[M.Chapman]

4 hours ago, IKuzmin said:

I thank the Person who gave me the green arrow, likely to neutralize the red one. I do not really care about the latter as I reported just my experience in a discussion, not giving any suggestions or opinion.

Have another "greenie" from me. No idea why someone gave you a red arrow.

 

You raise a good point about reliability. I will test my setup (iPhone or iPad with hub + SD card + USB drive) with many more files before I rely on it. And, when I do I'll be connecting power to the hub to ensure no power dropouts.

 

Mark

[M.Chapman]

9 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Have another "greenie" from me. No idea why someone gave you a red arrow.

 

You raise a good point about reliability. I will test my setup (iPhone or iPad with hub + SD card + USB drive) with many more files before I rely on it. And, when I do I'll be connecting power to the hub to ensure no power dropouts.

 

Mark

Mmm... turned out to be a wise move. Stress testing with 100s of RAW files showed the Image Capture Go app I mentioned previously isn't reliable and crashes after copying about 50 RAW files. So I'll go back and edit my earlier posts. But the inbuilt Files app works fine and copied 100 RAW files (2.4GB total) direct from SD card to Flash USB via the hub in 3 minutes (a transfer rate of 13MB/s). The problem with selecting individual images to can be solved by copying whole folders as mentioned by Marianne. I'll just have to create a new folder each day.

 

Mark 

[MDM]

I've not contributed to this thread but I have been dipping in and out occasionally as it is interesting. I tend to bring my (business insured) light MBP with me these days when travelling but it is interesting to explore other options. I am agreeing with Marianne in most or all respects. 

 

My 2017  iPad Pro, with lightning connector, is getting on a bit now and copying files from a camera card is a bit of a pain as it requires an adapter to connect the camera directly (I rarely use SD cards any more - XQD or CF Express nowadays). I experimented with my wife's much newer iPad AIr which has a USB-C connection and I can copy directly from a card reader and directly off the iPad to a fast SSD. Copying using the iPad Files app is very fast and very easy to do. I didn't have a hub to test but the process s so fast that just using the iPad as an intermediate and deleting files from the iPad if it fills up too much is not an issue. 

 

The need to create folders in camera is a non-issue in my opinion. It takes a second to create a folder on the iPad or on a connected drive if one wants to have a daily folder structure. I don't bother with this for stills photography as I use Lightroom Classic metadata to manage my files and all images from a single trip go into a single folder.

 

The one thing I would question with Mark's workflow is the use of a flash drive at all. These are so unreliable and esy to lose that I would never trust them for anything more than very short term secondary backup. I would use a decent (not necessarily super fast) SSD drive (two in fact for anything important). 

 

So to summarise I would suggest an iPad with a USB-C connector and a couple of SSD drives plus an optional card reader (or connect the camera directly) as an excellent light travelling backup setup.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2023 by MDM

[M.Chapman]

4 hours ago, MDM said:

The one thing I would question with Mark's workflow is the use of a flash drive at all. These are so unreliable and esy to lose that I would never trust them for anything more than very short term secondary backup.

Swings and roundabouts - easy to loose also means easy to hide, to avoid it being nicked from a hotel room etc. A small SSD on my keyring or shirt pocket would also work, but would need another lead. Are there any really small ones with an integrated lead/connector? Key thing is keeping it somehere seperate from camera and computer gear, with or amongst things that aren't likely to be targeted.

 

I've not had problems with USB flash drives, just don't disconnect whilst they're being written to. Maybe I've been lucky. In any event, in this case, short term backup is exactly what I'm using it for.

 

Mark

Edited August 12, 2023 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, MDM said:

So to summarise I would suggest an iPad with a USB-C connector and a couple of SSD drives plus an optional card reader (or connect the camera directly) as an excellent light travelling backup setup.

Yes. Shame my iPhone and iPad have Lightning instead of USB C connectors.

 

Mark

[MDM]

23 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Swings and roundabouts - easy to loose also means easy to hide, to avoid it being nicked from a hotel room etc. A small SSD on my keyring or shirt pocket would also work, but would need another lead. Are there any really small ones with an integrated lead/connector? Key thing is keeping it somehere seperate from camera and computer gear, with or amongst things that aren't likely to be targeted.

 

I've not had problems with USB flash drives, just don't disconnect whilst they're being written to. Maybe I've been lucky. In any event, in this case, short term backup is exactly what I'm using it for.

 

Mark

 

I don't trust flash drives from experience as I've had them fail. I certainly would not trust one to carry my only backup copy of my images. But maybe I was unlucky as I'm thinking of early 128GB flash drives (in 2014-15) which were very high capacity at the time.

 

The advent of small external SSDs at reasonable prices has been revolutionary. I have a few fast 2TB SanDisk SSDs that are about the size of a credit card and very light, so easily fit in a pocket. The cables that come wth them are tiny so not an issue. I also have a Lowe Pro pouch that I can carry on my belt which is handy for carrying a few SSDs, car keys etc when travelling

 

 

[IKuzmin]

6 hours ago, MDM said:

I would suggest an iPad with a USB-C connector and a couple of SSD drives plus an optional card reader

Just reaffirms my decision on a laptop with an additional SSD (for dups) and a card reader. 

🙂

Edited August 12, 2023 by IKuzmin

[IKuzmin]

2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

I've not had problems with USB flash drives

I encountered many USB flash drive failures (and from different brands), not related to photo transfer but in daily use with computer/data. However, I am not sure SSD are much more reliable. As such, a laptop AND and an external SSD for duplication is my option.

[IKuzmin]

2 hours ago, MDM said:

I have a few fast 2TB SanDisk SSDs

How about this then?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/

https://petapixel.com/2023/08/08/sandisk-portable-ssds-are-failing-so-frequently-we-can-no-longer-recommend-them/

 

[Alexander Hogg]

On 11/08/2023 at 20:57, Marianne said:

 

Will that second port support data transfer to an SSD or is it just for powering your device? I'd double check. If it supports transfer to an external SSD then that's great! (It might support an SSD and not an HDD since I think that flash memory doesn't need the same power, but I could be way off). The device you found isn't available in the US but it looks good. It's always helpful to learn about new tech solutions. And with airline weight limits on luggage going down all the time, good to find a way to travel without a laptop, not that plane travel is in my immediate future. You haven't told us where you're traveling to. Have a great time!

 

EDIT: Missed your post about it working with the SSD so that's a great solution. 

 

EDIT: Sorry, it's @Alexander Hogg who's taking the trip. Still dealing with vertigo and some days my brain is mush. Where are you headed to? 

Edinburgh, your home turf is a lovely city. My daughter performed at the Fringe back in 2007. Loved it! Spent 11 days there, and still so much I'd love to go back and see. Have a great trip. With overseas carry on luggage weight limits, sounds like leaving the laptop behind makes sense. On my last trip overseas in 2011, I took Icelandic Air and the carry on limit was 11 lbs! 

 

Edinburgh is nice Looking forward to the trip to OZ All the info has really been useful 

[sb photos]

5 hours ago, IKuzmin said:

How about this then?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/

https://petapixel.com/2023/08/08/sandisk-portable-ssds-are-failing-so-frequently-we-can-no-longer-recommend-them/

 

 

Backup devices, SSD's or spinning platter hard drives can be a minefield. You can never have too many, and with additional drives use more than one manufacture where possible. Many of the small portable SSD's will run very hot and throttle with large sustained writes, though not currently a problem for me. I've had continuous success with the small 1TB Crucial X6 that I always carry with my MacBook, used for backing up edited images while away from the home office. Recently they were available at very good prices so bought 2 more while still available. Additionally I never erase my SD cards, I have plenty, until I am happy with my final backup choice. Adding 128GB CFexpress type B cards into my 2 D500 bodies second slots recently was expensive, but gave more security. Even with a raid with built in redundancy, if the controller board fails it can screw the data on all drives at worst.

[MDM]

On 12/08/2023 at 18:13, IKuzmin said:

How about this then?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/

https://petapixel.com/2023/08/08/sandisk-portable-ssds-are-failing-so-frequently-we-can-no-longer-recommend-them/

 

 

Yes I've read about that and I have a couple of newish SanDisk 2TB SSDs but so far no failures with any SSD. I forgot about the reported problems when I mentioned SanDisk. In any case, I make sure I have everything backup elswehere as well when I'm travelling. I have several G-Technology SSDs (the updated versions of which are now sold under the SanDisk brand name) and these have been completely reliable. I don't believe there is an intrinsic problem with SSDs as such as they have been around a long time now. Next time I buy I will probably go for a different brand (maybe OWC).

 

I still use a laptop when I travel but was recommending the iPad with SSD through USB-C as the lightest, quickest and most reliable method of backing up camera data without a laptop.

[Allan Bell]

17 hours ago, MDM said:

 

Yes I've read about that and I have a couple of newish SanDisk 2TB SSDs but so far no failures with any SSD. I forgot about the reported problems when I mentioned SanDisk. In any case, I make sure I have everything backup elswehere as well when I'm travelling. I have several G-Technology SSDs (the updated versions of which are now sold under the SanDisk brand name) and these have been completely reliable. I don't believe there is an intrinsic problem with SSDs as such as they have been around a long time now. Next time I buy I will probably go for a different brand (maybe OWC).

 

I still use a laptop when I travel but was recommending the iPad with SSD through USB-C as the lightest, quickest and most reliable method of backing up camera data without a laptop.

 

I was going to buy one of those but went for a Samsung T7 instead. Thank heavens I changed my mind.

 

Allan

 

[IKuzmin]

A little waiting was good. Dell announced 45% OFF this week for certain Outlet items. I got the 13" Latitude 5300 (RAM 16, SSD 512, WiFi, backlit keyboard, USB-C, USB-A, what also?.. Weight 1.3 kg) for $213 total (including tax and free shipment). I guess I'm set with the backup/travel computing for a while 🙂

 

[GP Essex]

Got my backup device backnow, so I know what it is 

It's an "Ex-Pro EX205KB picture2storage data bank"

It has a 1TB hdd and takes CF, Sd and MSPro cards to back them up to the HDD. Can be used as a normal external HDD on PC, (and presumably Mac, but I only have PC)

Can't find the website I bought it from, it was pre covid, but the are available on Ebay & Amazon. I've used it on quite a few trips & it has worked well for me. Though I usually take a laptop these days, but it still works well as an external HDD as well.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ex-Pro®-Picture-Drive-EX205KB-Storage/dp/B00OFVNPPW?th=1

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/392270905486

[Charles Stirling]

I used to have hard drives with built in battery and CF card reader, but only about 36GB, fine at that time. Moved on to small laptop and USB 3 hard drives (one for carry on, one for luggage one for partner to carry when travelling). Always worry about theft, bags going missing, etc. and very slow internet or sometimes very expensive.

 

Now trying some of the tips from here with hub connected with a USB-C connector to Android tablet. Even a hub able to have a power booster wasn't able to use a small HD (works on computer, not tablet or phone). Sort of worked going from SD or XQD card but difficult working out file structure as on Android not giving a good clear USB file map.

 

Going to try with SSD or get one of the housing for an M2 drive.