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USB-sticks as backup on location?

Michael Fontana

pro member
Beeing on location, I was used to carry - beside the powerbook - a external FW-harddisk with me, as a backup of the files on the mac.

The other day, I used for the first time some USB-2-sticks, and it went fine.
Asking the question: how reliable are these sticks?
 

Anil Mungal

New member
I don't have any empirical data, but they are probably as reliable as your camera's compact flash, since USB memory sticks are essentially compact flash memory attached to a USB connector.
 
I don't have any empirical data, but they are probably as reliable as your camera's compact flash, since USB memory sticks are essentially compact flash memory attached to a USB connector.

Add in that they have no moving parts that removes most problems with damage due to drops and other accidental motions.

They also use less power which is a big deal as running an external USB hard drive and a Wacom tablet will quickly drain a notebooks battery power.

So the real question becomes what is most cost effective? Do you really want to use USB flash drives? Perhaps simply buying more CF/SD/... cards and copying them to the notebook and not erasing and reusing the cards would be more cost effective.

some thoughts,

Sean
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Sean

one advantage of the USB-stick vs the CF-cards: It mirrors exatly the content of the shots folder on the powerbook, incl. renaming, cataloguing, rating, etc, which I do alwith on location.
Beeing at home, copying the sticks folder on the big box is easy and fast, plus everything is already organised.

You will not have this, if you keep the CF-cards (as a backup) unerased, unless you' d copy from the labtop to the big box, either by network or by FireWire-target. The two last solutions are not as easy as putting in a stick....


Costs: over here, USM-sticks are way cheaper than CF-cards...
 
Costs: over here, USB-sticks are way cheaper than CF-cards...

And that marks the solution to go with. <smile>

From a workflow perspective you could always upload a CF card to the system and then copy the files to a freshly formatted CF card which would retain file naming. But flash memory is flash memory and it is cost and viability that are the deciding factors. i.e., CF may cost more but for shooting action one may need more CF card storage as there may be no time for offloading images as you cannot monitor the laptop while moving about and expensive tools are theft targets.

enjoy your day,

Sean
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Shooting with the 1D series, using 8GB cards, one can mirror in one card. So for speed, maybe that's an easy solution for some. All one needs are spare SD cards! So one downloads the CF card and keeps the SD card as backup!

Asher
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Western Digital Drive

I use the USB Memory sticks for my accounting work all the time. I think they're a great portable solution. Never had a bad one. 4 gigs is my largest.

For my photos, I have a Western Digital portable usb drive. Size of a pack of cigarettes. Holds 120 GB. Use is when I take the laptop traveling with me and dump photos from CF to Laptop and backup to the Western Digital. Keep it separate from the laptop and not in the camera bag.

I never erase my CF when I travel until I am home - so I have 3 copies. When I get home, I burn a DVD and do another backup to another drive and transfer files to my desktop too.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
And that marks the solution to go with. <smile>

From a workflow perspective you could always upload a CF card to the system and then copy the files to a freshly formatted CF card which would retain file naming. But flash memory is flash memory and it is cost and viability that are the deciding factors. i.e., CF may cost more but for shooting action one may need more CF card storage as there may be no time for offloading images as you cannot monitor the laptop while moving about and expensive tools are theft targets.

enjoy your day,

Sean

As both, the CF and the USB-sticks have the same technology, I'll use the USB-sticks, in the future.

It's not only for the costs: As I'm - due to fear of bigger dataloss - prefer 2- and 1-GB-CF-cards, rather than the 4 or 8, I' m having several CF-cards within a shooting. Having the backup on the sticks only will avoid any mistake of confounding them....

Labtops on location: using it on critical shootings, or on assignements during longer than one day, as one can verify/reshoot the images.


Kathy: "Never had a bad one"

I'm glad!


Asher: I' ve alwith a SD's in the 2nd slot, but keep it as a reserve, for continous shooting, or if the Cf will eventually fail.
 

Vivek Khanzode

New member
The CF and USB cards contain flash memory which is guaranteed for at least 10,000 WRITE cycles and many orders more read cycles "per bit". They also have clever algorithms that "map out" bad cells and use the spares. When all the "spares" are used up, the card usually will have data loss.
For casual shooters, I dont think the USB sticks will have a problem.

Also, there are very few fabs that manufacture the flash memories anyway (Toshiba-Sandisk, Intel-Micron and Samsung). They are all pretty good and therefore the core of these sticks is all good. The brand should not matter much. As a rule, I NEVER buy the Sandisk/Lexar cards since I am a casual shooter. The RIDATA are much better value for the money.

As for cost, Buy.com was selling a no-name 8GB for ~60 USD (if my memory serves me right) a few days ago. Microcenter is selling 1GB ones for 9.99 and 2GB ones for 15.99. The SD cards are also same price.

BTW, how do you get the photos from the CF card onto the USB stick?? You will need a laptop??

-- V
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Vivek,

It may be possible to use a pocket pc type device for transfer, if you can find one that does usb both ways, or possibly there is a cf adapter to usb - I may be searching for something myself. If so, it would work well with the hyperdrive unit, as a display device if required.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
........
BTW, how do you get the photos from the CF card onto the USB stick?? You will need a laptop??

-- V

In my case, thist scenario (CF to USB-stick) is used when having the labtop with: either for critical shots on location - on one day-assignements (architecture plastre modells/white in white, as a example) or on assignements that go longer than just a day. The advantage of the labtop is to have a 100% preview of the shots; even a big LCD-display on the cam wouldn't show that. A reshot can be done immediatly, or on several days trip, the next day. Worste case would be here no backup, deleting/reusing the CF-card and a labtops-harddisc crash....

For less critical, daily shots I rely on the CF-card, plus the SD in the 2nd slot. No preview on laptop. Rather shooting some more picts.
 

Ian kydd'Miller

New member
Shooting with the 1D series, using 8GB cards, one can mirror in one card. So for speed, maybe that's an easy solution for some. All one needs are spare SD cards! So one downloads the CF card and keeps the SD card as backup!

Asher

Do this all the time (can either save 2 sets of RAW or 1 RAW plus 1 Large JPEG) on the different cards. If either one of the cards beggars up I know at least I have a BU.. raws get downloaded and copied to external HD ASAP..
 
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