Travel and Backup

Travel and Backup

Richard Gaston asked this in another post. I thought it was interesting enough to bump it upstream and solicit others' opinions, too.

When you say you take memory cards for 5000 pictures, then are you saying you don't back-up? Or are you also downloading them into your netbook? With Lightroom? I am trying to figure out a better way to travel and back up - currently I take my Mac Laptop and two external hard drives. Quite heavy.

This is one of those practical topics that I hope others will weigh in with their working methods. I've heard and read a number of strategies and, to be frank, I don't have enough experience with other methods to offer any sort of definitive opinion. That said, here's what I do.

I have two variations in my travel kit. Where weight is an issue but not a panic, I take my Sony netbook. It runs Lightroom and has an SDHC card slot built-in. Each night I upload my images to the netbook via Lightroom and clear my camera cards. While uploading to Lightroom, I simultaneously make a backup copy onto a small Western Digital passport drive just in case my computer is lost or damaged. Parenthetically, when I was in Asia and concerned even more about loss, I carried a second passport drive for a second backup. One drive was with me at all times, the second one was packed in my luggage.

There are times, however, when even a netbook is too much to take. For those occasions, I use a Nexto backup drive. (http://www.nextodiusa.com/extreme.htm) These handy little "image tank" units allow transfer from my camera's memory cards directly to the Nexto hard drive without needing a computer. Obviously, I can't visually check my images, but at least I can upload a backup from my cards. In this case, I leave the images on the cards and just take extra cards. I have 6@ 16GB cards and 4@ 8GB cards. With my cameras, this gives me enough for 8,800 exposures, just under 3,000 bracketed compositions. I've never run out of space yet, but I suppose it's possible. In that unlikely event, I have the option of not bracketing so extensively, or a more radical option of deleting the images from one or more cards so I can keep shooting. This runs some risk because some of the images would only be on the Nexto with no backup as a safety. As I say, fortunately I've never faced that gamble.

One additional comment. My strategy is to avoid changing cards in the field at all costs. Those little plastic buggers are just to small and too easy to drop. I also fret over dust and grit entering the card slot. If I need to change a card in the field, I head for the car where the environment is at least enclosed. Not always practical, but I try to do it if I can.

By the way, this is another reason why I prefer carrying two cameras with me. If one camera runs out of available memory or battery power, I can switch to the other camera and keep shooting. With two cameras, I don't have to swap lenses quite so often and exposing the sensor guts to the environment. I'm also insulated from a camera failure — something I never thought about in the days of mechanical cameras, but an inevitability with such highly complex electronic ones like we now use.

The only failure I've ever had in the field was with an Hitachi MicroDrive. These were notorious for failing, I suspect because of the moving parts. I've never had a failure with an SD or CF card. Knock on wood. Nonetheless, I just can't imagine being in the field without some form of backup — either my netbook or the Nexto.

Comments

[MichaelT]

Two additional thoughts:

1. USB thumb drives are now large enough to hold your "best" images while traveling (sometimes you know in the field that an image is a keeper). A USB thumb drive can be easily carried around your neck at all times as an additional backup for those images. (These memory devices can also service extra duty by storing PDFs of all your important documents while traveling, e.g., medical history, passport image, credit card info, important phone numbers, etc. You can easily password protect these files in case of loss or theft of the USB thumb drive.)

2. As we carry more and more electronics (computer, camera, phone, ipod, etc.) inevitably the hotel room has limited outlets. For this a portable "charging station" with multiple AC outlets and USB ports comes in very handy. BH Photo has a good selection, e.g., http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/795772-REG/Aluratek_AUCS05F_Mini_Surge_Dual_USB.html

[Markus Spring]

MichealT's hint to carry document scans on a thumb drive can be enormous helpful in case of an emergency - the necessary en- and decryption however can be a problem on different computers.

I usually carry a laptop (meanwhile with a fully encrypted disk) plus one external disk, encrypted as well. I feel much safer when I can review my images in the evening, detect maybe the necessity of a sensor cleaning or early signs of failure. This is the biggest disadvantage of the image tanks, as even seeing the embedded previews on the more expensive models doesn't say anything about the integrity of the image files themselves.

[Tom O]

In the old days, I don't remember developing and duplicating my film during any trips with a concern to have back-ups, but I do remember keeping it safe from the dreaded X-Rays. Today, if your income is reliant on your travels I can see a concern for all this back-it-up stuff.
If your just a commoner traveling, put your faith in the CF or SD cards that you carry... and... carry a bunch of them. Get snap happy, shoot for the right exposures and come home satisfied that you have more captures than you can digest in a decade. Digital card captures in relation to film exposures allow you to take a be-zillion more images... so what's the problem? I just bought several SanDisk Cards that are built for and tested under harsh conditions, the card is temperature-, water-, shock-, and x-ray-proof per the manufacturer. This is the same deal I had 33 years ago; I flipped in the canoe, the camera was toast, but the film was OK. If you're going to take anything extra, take extra cameras to load the memory cards into, I think that's more important in regard for today's technology. Oh, and remember, only one camera in the canoe at a time.

[Godfrey DiGiorgi]

Like Tom O, I rarely concentrate on backup when going traveling. I would if I were doing paid gigs, but with rare exception even if I did lose a bunch of exposures it wouldn't faze me much.

What I have done is standardize on 16G SDHC cards. Both my primary cameras use them, so I have a nice little stock of them now. Each one can hold between 600 and 750 JPEG+raw exposures from either camera. On a three week photo/vacation trip, I usually shoot between 800 and 1800 exposures, depending on just how many events/sessions I manage to get in during the course of the trip. That's one to three cards worth ... I just keep shooting til the card is full and replace it with the next one.

Every evening, I scan through the card using the iPad 2 and transfer a few to its internal storage. (I have a 64G iPad 2 and normally make sure I've got about 30-40G free when I leave on a trip - I could have backed up the entire last trip into the iPad as I only filled one 16G card and a little more.) With these I process out some of the JPEGs and post them while I'm traveling .. occasionally, I process a couple of the raw files too and then carry them forward, if it's a particularly tricky exposure.

I leave all the rest of the image management and processing to when I go home. I do keep notes in my day log about where and when I was doing what to ease my keywording and IPTC annotation then.

It's pretty light weight compared to what I once thought was necessary. In all the years since I started working with digital capture and flash storage cards, I've not lost one exposure to card failure. That's a lot better than film and xray scanners ever did ... !

[Janet]

Like the blog, appreciate the share!

[Em@ Philippine Travel]

When I take photos during a travel, I immediately save a copy of the photos in my hard disk then delete the ones in my SD cards. I also upload the photos in my Facebook account. This way, I'll also have a backup in Facebook. LOL