Backing up SD card while travelling overseas

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#230295 17-Feb-2018 07:40

My daughter is going to India and Nepal for around three months. She's taking her GoPro and her iphone. Iphone is 64GB and she has a single 64GB SD card. She won't be taking her macbook.

Issue is how to backup and transfer her GoPro pics and videos while she is away. The ideal would be to take a compact external hard drive, but without a laptop it wouldn't be easy to transfer files off her SD card.

I suspect at times that internet will be very limited.

I suspect that this isn't a unique problem - so any ideas greatly appreciated.

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#1959448 17-Feb-2018 07:40

Allow me to introduce you folks to our new travel community: TravelTalk NZ.

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#1959462 17-Feb-2018 08:35

I've seen a number of devices over the years that can accept a SD card and USB HDD to copy images. None were particularly cheap.

The most cost effective option is probably a new portable HDD with SD slot built it specifically for this such as the WD's

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#1959474 17-Feb-2018 09:25

Also Intermittently visit internet cafe or retail PC shop to use their PC to transfer files from SD card to portable hard drives.

Buy a very cheap second hand disposable laptop. If only they still made the Asus eePC netbooks.

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#1959492 17-Feb-2018 10:10

There are wifi capable HDDs, but I have found them pretty terrible. Slow wifi, only supporting obsolete file systems so having file size limits and terrible phone apps to upload to them are the few major problems.

Richard rich.ms

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#1959511 17-Feb-2018 10:50

I use an old WD My Passport Wireless to back-up SD cards from my GoPro and mirrorless cameras. It has a built-in battery and SD card reader. Just turn it on, slip in the SD card, and the copy process starts. Current model has an SSD drive.

Works fine. I've actually just upgraded the drive in mine to an SSD. So far so good.

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#1959555 17-Feb-2018 11:57

one would think you could cloud back from the go pro via wifi?

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#1959579 17-Feb-2018 12:35

I used one of these, which you plug a card into, a hard drive into, and it copies stuff over. That unit is obsolete but there will be new versions. I also had it somehow copying to my phone and my phone syncing to dropbox.

Best option might be to take a card reader, go to an internet cafe, copy the files up to dropbox or similar.

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#1959583 17-Feb-2018 12:55

I used the Apple camera connection kit before I had a camera with WiFi . Import everything into my phone. Then using Plex they’re sent hone. And google photos also gets them. They stay on the sd card while space permits meaning theyre generally in 3 places.

But it depends how much free space you have on your phone and what a shooting day is in terms of disk.

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#1959612 17-Feb-2018 14:19

Doesn't exactly answer your query, but I'm a fan of just taking multiple cards. One drive with everything = single source of failure if it corrupts/gets dropped/gets nicked. If one SD card out of a handful goes awry, at least you've still got the memories saved on the other ones. Backing up online when you can is obviously a *great* idea, but does rely on the infrastructure being available and trusted.

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#1959613 17-Feb-2018 14:19

Won't the GoPro footage be pulled onto the iPhone? 64GB on the phone is quite a bit. It's really only long videos (10 minutes=2GB) that eat up space.

Take more SD cards and just store them. I think I have a 64GB card in my GoPro and it's quite a lot of footage, maybe 10% winds up being kept. As for more storage on the iPhone, I'm not sure, use google photos, Flickr Pro and hope for wifi or cheap data. Surely Apple sells storage too?

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#1959615 17-Feb-2018 14:29

This would be perfect for backing up while travelling with no laptop. I have one of these but looks like no longer available.

https://www.amazon.com/Nexto-Digital-Photo-Storage-ND2730/dp/B0055EB9LK

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#1959620 17-Feb-2018 14:43

I carry multiple cards. The WD My Passport Wireless is just for making backups of those cards, so I have a copy should a card become corrupted. The photos and videos stay on the cards until I get home and everything is transferred to The Cloud. I also have an old 500GB Samsung T1 SSD which I'll copy the WD MPW to, if I have my Surface Pro on holiday with me, just as an extra precaution. Certainly cheaper and easier than having to do the holiday again just to try and recreate the photos.

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#1959625 17-Feb-2018 15:28

I'm take it that iPhones don't support USB OTG?

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#1959627 17-Feb-2018 15:51

Lightbulb:

I suspect that this isn't a unique problem - so any ideas greatly appreciated.

I used this one when travelling in Asia and uploaded occasionally when WiFi was available. Works with Android AND iOS (OTG, I verfied that).

From the iPhone you could back up to this via build in WiFi.

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#1959634 17-Feb-2018 16:22

Aredwood: I'm take it that iPhones don't support USB OTG?

No. You have their get their lightning to sd card adapter.

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