We are going to spend 2 months in Australia and New Zealand next fall. I took 12,000+ pictures in Africa in less time, plus many of the Australia pictures will be bursts for birds. I'm guessing around 14,000 46 MP images from the D850s.
I don't expect to have time every night to edit. Need to back up everything, too.
What storage options do I have? I have (3) 256 GB XQD cards ($400 each - ^&*()$%^*) and don't want to buy more.
Have a good laptop but it won't hold all this.
Ideal, I think, would be some device (or 2) with several TB's of storage and a decent SCREEN where I could review, edit, store, and delete on the road.
All suggestions much appreciated!
Posted by Jim DeWitt on December 29, 2017 at 11:10 PM
I use armored portable hard drives. I carry a solid state laptop for editing. One drive for primary storage; a second for backup.
Posted by Richard Ditch on December 30, 2017 at 12:48 AM
Let's see: 14,000 compressed raw images at 60MB each is 840GB.
A 15" MacBook Pro can be configured with a 2TB SSD.
Add a 2TB LeCie Rugged external drive and you still have 50% of the laptop and 50% of the external drive availalbe in case you end up taking 28,000 photos.
Or, if you don't compress the raw files they are 90MB each, so you use 1.26TB on the laptop and on the external drive.
Posted by Dennis Plank on December 30, 2017 at 9:38 AM
Hi Sandy. I use the laptop and external hard drive option. With external hard drives being so cheap and small, I'll usually take two. I believe you can now get them in ssd, though they're considerably more expensive and the old fashioned ones are quite durable. Another option is to get a bunch of slower sd cards and copy to them in the evening. SD tends to be cheaper thn CF for some reason and the price for the speed from a couple of steps down in speed drops dramatically.
How many USB ports does your laptop have? For the scheme below, you would need two (2).
Ideally, you should have two external USB drives; one for storage (drive-1), and the second for backup (drive-2).
You would need to have both drives attached to the laptop at the same time, so that you can access drive-1, and backup to drive-2.
For safety's sake, you should also backup your laptop's internal primary drive by creating a full system image. You would create the system image on drive-2.
As far as drive sizes go, Western Digital, HGST, Seagate and others make high capacity drives that perform well and are reliable. I suggest you obtain two, 3 or 4 TB drives and have them installed in enclosures that will protect them. The larger size drives I suggested are for 'future proofing'. You could also look at high capacity SSD's, but as was mentioned, they are pricey, but are less prone to vibration and/or shock damage.
For backup software, I highly recommend the (paid) full version of Macrium Reflect.
--P
Nothing anyone knows of with a screen so I can cull and delete along the way?
Sandy, why not just use your laptop? Your laptop likely would have a much better and larger screen, faster and more efficient CPU and RAM, and you will be able to copy your keeper images to an external drive and then backup.
--P
Discussion
6 repliesI don't expect to have time every night to edit. Need to back up everything, too.
What storage options do I have? I have (3) 256 GB XQD cards ($400 each - ^&*()$%^*) and don't want to buy more.
Have a good laptop but it won't hold all this.
Ideal, I think, would be some device (or 2) with several TB's of storage and a decent SCREEN where I could review, edit, store, and delete on the road.
All suggestions much appreciated!
A 15" MacBook Pro can be configured with a 2TB SSD.
Add a 2TB LeCie Rugged external drive and you still have 50% of the laptop and 50% of the external drive availalbe in case you end up taking 28,000 photos.
Or, if you don't compress the raw files they are 90MB each, so you use 1.26TB on the laptop and on the external drive.
How many USB ports does your laptop have? For the scheme below, you would need two (2).
Ideally, you should have two external USB drives; one for storage (drive-1), and the second for backup (drive-2).
You would need to have both drives attached to the laptop at the same time, so that you can access drive-1, and backup to drive-2.
For safety's sake, you should also backup your laptop's internal primary drive by creating a full system image. You would create the system image on drive-2.
As far as drive sizes go, Western Digital, HGST, Seagate and others make high capacity drives that perform well and are reliable. I suggest you obtain two, 3 or 4 TB drives and have them installed in enclosures that will protect them. The larger size drives I suggested are for 'future proofing'. You could also look at high capacity SSD's, but as was mentioned, they are pricey, but are less prone to vibration and/or shock damage.
For backup software, I highly recommend the (paid) full version of Macrium Reflect.
--P
Nothing anyone knows of with a screen so I can cull and delete along the way?
Sandy
--P