Ask Engadget: Best portable photo backup / storage device?

Coming to you live from left field, it's this week's edition of Ask Engadget. Once your done reading and replying (in comments below, naturally) to the question here, feel free to send us your own to ask at engadget dawt com.

"I am looking for a portable hard drive with memory card slots so that I can save my photos onto it, straight from the memory card. It needs to function without the use of a computer. I have seen a few of these, but nothing name brand, and I was looking for some recommendations. A color screen to view photos would be nice, but not necessary. It doesn't need to be very large, 100GB should be more than enough."

You're right Seth, most of these things do indeed come from relative unknowns. That said, we're sure a few of our readers have taken the plunge, so hopefully you'll find out who likes and dislikes the one they chose. Right, folks?

[Rob @ May 22nd 2009 1:38AM]

I have been using a Hyperdrive SPACE. It works great and comes in a bunch of flavors to suit your needs.

[Gad Get @ May 22nd 2009 1:55AM]

Please, no spamming. Please? But I uprated you despite that. (I hit the button just before I saw the dreaded spammage.)

[zed @ May 22nd 2009 1:56AM]

i've been using your mom as a storage device.. its portable.. backed up.. and has tegs of storage.

[albi @ May 22nd 2009 1:58AM]

we are planing for a trip and just decided to use a laptop as a huge gps, then this problem was immediately solved as well

[Patriks7 @ May 22nd 2009 5:57AM]

Habs sucks!

[Ben @ May 22nd 2009 2:04AM]

This isn't a space for your ads buddy. You have to pay for that in the real world. If I worked for Engadget, I'd delete that.

[danieln @ May 22nd 2009 2:04AM]

Nexto DI Extreme: http://www.nextodi.com/en/product/eXtreme_en.html

Has eSata and USB

[Aric @ May 22nd 2009 5:41PM]

I've been using a Hyperdrive.. but this Nexto eXtreme seems to blow it away.. time to sell the Hyperdrive

[Andrew @ May 22nd 2009 2:19AM]

Epson makes a series of portable photo viewers, the base model being the P3000. A lil' on the pricey side though at $300, but I have the P4000 (older model) and it works fine. It's slow, but the newer models are a lot faster, and can also view RAW files. Not to mention the screen is beautiful.

But, the HyperDrive Colorspace mentioned is probably what I'd recommend, as it is half the price of the Epson for the same amount of space, but still performs as well. There are other brands out there, but I would consider HyperDrive to be the next sort of name brand next to Epson. The one thing you lose on the HyperDrive is screen space (nothing compares to Epson's screen), but I would just go for function and space over the screen as it isn't really a necessity.

[LimboMan @ May 24th 2009 2:10PM]

The nexto (various flavours) have been very good... and blazing fast transfers are a plus. you can load it up with any size notebook drive of your choosing and can find versions with various interfaces. some even have USB host to offload USB keys or other drives, even.

[Jeff Lewis @ May 22nd 2009 2:25AM]

A low end netbook.

Not only is it a good way to store photos.. it can *show* them. Upload them. Edit video. Upload YouTube..

And a low end netbook is around twice the price of a good card reader and does so much more (and has a longer battery life)

[pikamookie @ May 22nd 2009 11:19AM]

I totally agree. I am going to Costa Rica this summer for a month or so and bought a cheap ASUA eee pc for just that purpose. It's just as costly as a dedicated photo storage device but is multifunctional.

[Thai @ May 22nd 2009 2:25AM]

One thing I forgot to mention about the Colorspace is the screen may look nice on the product website but its' resolution is not so good in real life. Also another thing you have to worry about not getting scratched up and cracked.

[ThreeDee912 @ May 22nd 2009 2:25AM]

Might not completely answer your question, but back in 2005, Apple released a "Camera Connector" attachment for iPods. You hook your camera up to the adapter, and it automatically copies over all the media from the camera onto the iPod.

Sounds great, but it drains the battery pretty fast and only works on the old iPod Photo and iPod 5G...

[Michael Scrip @ May 22nd 2009 2:37AM]

With all the new Dock Connector stuff coming soon... I wouldn't be surprised if there was another camera adapter for the iPod Touch and iPhone. It's perfect screen to view photos on.

You'd just have to keep enough free space for storing your pictures. A 4GB card lets you shoot over 500 photos... that's usually plenty for a weekend. With a 16GB or 32GB iPod Touch, it would be easy to keep 4GB free for photos.

[Scott @ May 22nd 2009 2:30AM]

For name brand a ot of the pro's like the Epson series of Multimedia photoviewers.
They are not cheap though but have additional features like quality hi-res screens, ability to view camera raw files and good battery life.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&infoType=Overview&oid=63061067&category=Products

[Cunthor @ May 22nd 2009 2:30AM]

Netbook. Cheap, and you can stick in large HDD, review, edit, email, burn (say you have external writer).

[Michael Scrip @ May 22nd 2009 2:45AM]

+1 for netbook

The Epson thing is nice... but it costs almost as much as a netbook... and a netbook is a real computer too! You can use it for other things. If you can just wait until you get back to the hotel room... just dump your cards onto the netbook. Or with a big enough camera bag, carry the netbook with you.

Serious photographers could use the Epson thing in the field to dump and clear their cards on location. But, if they are that serious... wouldn't they have lots of big cards already?

[Mike @ May 22nd 2009 3:32AM]

No, because the last thing you want is to be juggling a ton of cards amongst everything else you're carrying, traveling with, and dealing with. And if you have to hand off your photos immediately afterward in the case of a photojournalist, sports photogs, and others, its great to just hand off the HD with everything neatly sorted into folders to dump onto the main computer then have to sit there and put card after card in. Especially if you can say, check out so and so time is when such and such happened, you don't have to go through every single card to find that specific shot.

[Zhuzhu @ May 22nd 2009 9:18AM]

I used to carry a lightweight Vaio laptop, then tried several of the dedicated offloaders. But with memory cards so capacious & cheap now I see no point in carrying around anything else. I understand Mike's point about wanting organized access to the photos while on the road, but I doubt this applies to many people. A handful of 4GB cards easily gets me through the two-week trips I frequently take, and there are no hassles with airport security.

[GoGoGadget @ May 22nd 2009 3:12AM]

ZUNE HD

[Emmet @ May 22nd 2009 3:33AM]

fanboy...

[Wewtaco @ May 23rd 2009 2:55PM]

lol, you don't even know that it exists and you're already saying it's the best? I like my Zune, but that's just being stupid.

[Mike Pechyonkin @ May 22nd 2009 3:20AM]

I use HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA. The main advantage of this device is the very very fast backup speed. Sometimes functionality of images viewing is useful (it's able to decode and display RAW images). Disadvantages are: ugly appearance and awkward user interface. In spite of several disadvantages I like this Photo Storage for the fastest backups and recommend it.

[Mike @ May 22nd 2009 3:26AM]

The whole point of these devices is not just to backup the card at the end of the day, but to allow you to keep shooting all day! I never understand the people who recommend a netbook since in order to copy your photos, you have to pull the thing out of your bag, wait for the thing to start, and either have a script or manually copy the photos then shut it down and store it, and the darn things are not THAT portable compared to the hard drive devices.

Currently I'm using an older PD70x which is a great little machine. The key thing for me was the fact that it takes AA batteries, and speed wise it'll download a 1GB card in less then a minute. The Ipod camera adapter was notorius for being slow at over 12 mins for just 250mbs! The Epson P7000 is about 2+ mins per gig from personal experience as well.

If I was to purchase a newer device, I'd have to look at the NextoDi series though. As a pro photographer, these drives are the ones I'm seeing out and about in more hands then anything else, simply because of their speed, build, and price range.

The point with devices like these are to keep you from having to spend a ton of money on extra cards. The allow you to use just a couple of cards and shoot all day! Fill up one, stick it in the HD to download for a minute and shove it into your pocket while you're shooting with the other card, and then swap em all day long. On a fire a few months back I shot over 3000 pics with just 2 1gig cards, and never missed a shot because I was fooling around with a netbook or trying to find an empty card. Just kept the HD in my front jacket pocket and kept going all day and night.

Traveling somewhere? Spending the day at disneyland or walt disneyworld? You probably already have a laptop n the hotel room, this device is just something you can shove in a pocket and it allows you to not worry about buying extra cards or running out of card space.

It all depends on you though. Personally I could care less about a screen since I have one on the back of the camera, and I'd rather have the faster speed and longer battery life. I've never used the Hyperdrives myself, but I can personally attest to the P7000 being slow, and the NextoDi's being built solid, fast, and honestly, probably my next purchase. A good pro card right now is about $10 a gig (4gb = $40) whereas the NextoDi is less then a $1 a gig at most reputable stores right now. I just wish they used AA's like my PD70x.

[BdgBill @ May 22nd 2009 4:01PM]

I like gadgets and I'm a fairly serious amatuer photographer but I have never been interested in one of the single purpose backup devices. I can get close to 1500 10 megapixel photos on my $10.00 4gb SDHC card. Even if I run into Elvis shaking hands with little green men from outer space, it's highly unlikely I would fill this card in a day. I have a couple of older 1 gig cards in my camera bag just in case though.

I'm going to Iceland for 2 weeks in August and plan on picking up a netbook to bring on this trip for basic editing (Picassa), showing pictures at the end of the day and uploading to Flickr when a WIFI signal can be found.

[Kit Gerrits @ May 24th 2009 4:27PM]

I currently keep a 4GB SD card in my DSLR (D90) and another 4GB SD card in my spare (pocket) camera.
Shooting in 12.9MP JPG FINE by defauld and occasionally in RAW or movie, I can tear through 6GB of storage in a single day.
To offload the pictures, I keep a (borrowed) EEEpc and a USB harddisk in my hotel locker.

But I still find myself running out of space once in a while before the day ends.

I am currently pondering buying a third ($15) SD card with a ($400) EEEpc of my own or a ($150) portable storage disk.

I gueess there's still a market for those USB devices like http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/22/ask-engadget-best-portable-photo-backup-storage-device/comments/18974936/

[liu_kevin1 @ May 25th 2009 1:01PM]

LOL, 4GB, 1500 pix?
Either you're not shooting at 10 MP, or you have a Point and Shoot.
Try shooting RAW, that thing fills up like... I don't know, but fast
12MP RAW files runs between 12MB ~ 20MB

[Willyumz @ May 22nd 2009 3:29AM]

I've been using an old 10" laptop and a small external HD (a WD Passport). So for the purposes of this discussion it's like the netbook setup. It gets tedious carrying two devices though, and I can't see spending $300 for a device like the HyperDrive or Epson as I'm not a professional photographer.

Go for either a netbook or a couple more SD cards

[Willyumz @ May 22nd 2009 3:32AM]

To elaborate, I agree with Mike above. My setup works since I'm not shooting 3000 pics in a day. Two 4GB cards last me all day.

[Technolala.blogspot.com @ May 22nd 2009 3:36AM]

I use eee PC , costing US$ 325 with 9" screen and 160 GB hard disk . It does everything you wanted and "so much" more .

[Uchiha Sasuke @ May 22nd 2009 3:46AM]

I use a 20gb smartdisk fotochute. USB on-the-go feature works great for transferring other file types as well.

[Cunthor @ May 22nd 2009 4:00AM]

Thing is, if you have a netbook and also have a portable dvd burner, you can back up and post away your images on the road. Not to mention use it to teather your camera, and back up onto a portable hdd drive.

Main disadvantages to a netbook I see are battery time, and having to carry power supply, and any additional peripherals. But again, this depends how far away you are from a power plug, and how long you are spending shooting in the field.

If you have a hotel room with an outlet, get couple of 4 gig cards, and leave your netbook at the hotel and backup/review/organise your photos from there.

[Michael Scrip @ May 22nd 2009 4:29AM]

>> "Main disadvantages to a netbook I see are battery time"

[Michael Scrip @ May 22nd 2009 4:30AM]

Oops... Engadget barfed my reply. Read below...

[Michael Scrip @ May 22nd 2009 4:30AM]

>> "Main disadvantages to a netbook I see are battery time"

Positives for a netbook are that you won't need to boot it until you fill a card. Depending on how long it takes to fill a card... one hour, six hours, etc... if you only have to boot your netbook once or twice during the day, battery life won't be an issue. You can shoot in the morning... copy your pictures to a netbook during lunch... then shoot the rest of the day.

I think most people are hung up on the fact that a photo-backer-upper device can cost close to the same as a netbook... which is a complete computer that can do much more than store and display photos. $300 for a single purpose device vs. $400 for a tiny computer.

But if you can afford one... get one. Based on recommendations above, check this out: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/14/review-nexto-di-extreme-portable-media-storage/

[h_2_o @ May 22nd 2009 4:30AM]

I never found one i liked until i started using a netbook as one. they are powerful enough to look at raw files on a screen larger than your thumbnail.

[LabRat @ May 22nd 2009 4:38AM]

Check out the products by Wolverine.
I've taken many trips throughout Asia using it to back up my camera CF cards.
The older model I use doesn't have a screen so I can't view anything until I hook it up to a computer.
But the compact size makes it great for throwing in a backpack.
It has an internal battery so you need USB or the supplied cable to charge.

Works great, no problems.

[Dereck M @ May 22nd 2009 5:19AM]

I have the mofoto (http://www.momentadevices.com) and have been pleased with it. Like the original post said, these all come from random companies. It's a really simple gadget. A hard disk, memory card reader, and a very simple screen. It copies cards fast. I use it for photography, but the site says you can use it with a camcorder, I just haven't tried that yet. I had another one from Australia a few years ago (can't remember the name), and it crapped out on me, but mofoto has gone strong. I've taken it to africa and europe so far with no problems.

[Tom Johnson @ May 22nd 2009 5:44AM]

Thanks Dereck. I just took the plunge. Decided to go with the mofoto because I don't need to see the photos on the screen and 500GB for 299 was a lot cheaper than the over priced Epson, Canon, and other name brands. I mean $750+ for 160GB on the epson. I see why the no name companies can compete in this market. The Nexto seemed good too, but what won me over was that mofoto uses the new 500GB Seagate Momentus drive with the drop sensor. Since I'm going to be toting this thing around in my camera bag, I figured I could use a little extra protection.

Thanks for everyone's comments. I can't believe how many of these there are. I had only heard of the Epson and Canon ones before this post. Great question.

[James Young @ May 22nd 2009 5:38AM]

best portable photo backup/storage device? IT'S CALLED A HARD DRIVE. DUHHHHHHHHH

[ian @ May 22nd 2009 6:09AM]

I ahve been using the Hyperdrive ColorSpace 400Gb drive for some 3 years. I shoot 32Gb CF cards in the field and I can just slide in a card ad it backs it up at the push of a button (or automatically if you prefer). It also gives you the option to verfy each image by checking that it can read it back. It is small, has a protective neoprene case and a huge battery life. I can download hundreds of Gb of images on a single charge.

I do make a point of always keeping two copies of every image until I can get back to home base, thus I will only erase a CF card if I have done a second backup to a laptop. At the end of a days shooting I will copy from the CF to the Hyperdrive one cad at a time and then connect the Hyperdrive to my laptop and copy all the day's images. When I check that they have all arrived safely I re-format the CF cards.

The units are not cheap, and do much less than a netbook, but the compact size actually makes them more useful as they can be lost in most camera bags with no problems and are thus better protected. When flying I always keep the Hyperdrive on me so that if everything else is stolen I still have a complete set of captures.

[gs @ May 22nd 2009 7:24AM]

I just picked up a Vosonic VP8870. Has a 4.3" 800x480 LCD, video out, and video in as well - it can function as a portable video recorder. I'll be using it for a shoot next week, my only concern is that it takes 30+min to dump a full 16GB CF card... which is normal for most of these devices, except the ColorSpace UDMA which seems to be able to do it a lot quicker.

[Alienicecooler @ May 22nd 2009 7:44AM]

iPhone without a doubt!! You can view them and show em off then transfer them to where ever haha!!!!!!!!!

[otherMike @ May 22nd 2009 7:58AM]

haha, fanboy, haha, heehee, hoehoe, must, haha, put, hoohoo, feather, heehee, away, bahhh hahhhh hahhhh...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Peter Fang @ May 22nd 2009 7:55AM]

My Epson P-5000 has served me well for over two years now. It's expensive but it does the job well as a portable photo backup/storage device, and my wife uses it to watch downloaded TV shows before sleep instead of fighting with me to dominate the 40-inch Bravia flat screen TV. :)

If I were to buy one now, I'd still go with Epson's P-7000.

[greygabe @ May 22nd 2009 8:04AM]

It doesn't quite hit your 100 GB request, but I love using my Creative Zen 32GB as a photo vault.
It's incredibly light and thin and it copies a filled 4 GB SD card in about 20 seconds.

It also charges using a standard USB-mini plug - definitely an up side in my book.
Battery life if you just use it for copying SD cards is like a month.
You can show people the pictures you have stored on a truly stunning screen (tho somewhat tiny)

[Fat Tony @ May 22nd 2009 9:23AM]

Transcend StoreJet OTG.
Travelled with me for 9 months once around the world and it never let me down. Used it to transfer files to and from my camera, mp3 player and PSP. Battery life is excellent too, but then it doesn't have a photo viewing screen. But that wasn't a problem for me, I wanted something small and light that I could throw into my rucksack.

http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=104&LangNo=0&Func1No=1&Func2No=78

It doesn't get much use now. The introduction of cheap 4 and 8GB cards has made it somewhat redundant.

[spam_from_engadget @ May 22nd 2009 9:39AM]

If you don't need a screen, unless your requirements are unusual I can't see much advantage to one of these devices compared to spending the same $ on more flash cards.

My local camera shop had a gadget in their bargain box that had no storage itself, but would copy between its two USB ports. So you could plug in your camera on one side and any USB hard drive on the other. Not sure what the power supply arrangement was. Was from Belkin I think.

Do read the small print. I once looked at a gadget not unlike these and it went out of its way to say it might corrupt the data as it was copying it, and you should make sure that you have another backup. So basically you're supposed to buy two of these devices, presumably from different manufacturers. If you're doing anything remotely professional (wedding photos!) you really can't settle for something that threatens to not work if it doesn't feel like it. The last wedding I went to, the photographer had a laptop and checked the crucial photos immediately.

[David Talmage @ May 22nd 2009 11:13AM]

Here are two ideas that aren't hard drives as such but they'll do what you want.

A few years ago, I used an iPod 5.5G (later called "iPod with Video", I think) to manage the photos that a group of 20 from my church made in New Orleans during a week-long clean-up and repair trip there. I had to use a computer, alas, to hook up the iPod and the cameras. It worked well and with an extra cable I could show the day's photos on a TV. When we returned home, I put together a slide show with soundtrack on the iPod and showed it between church services for a couple of weeks.

More recently, I went to Europe for about three weeks with two DSLRs, a point-and-shoot, and a small HD video camera. I backed up the still cameras to a 32GB SD card in my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. I needed a little USB OTG adapter to make the NIT talk to the cameras. I couldn't make the video camera talk to the NIT. Still not sure why. I used Quiver on my NIT to view all of the photos and make a slide show.