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Photo Storage: Flashdrive vs. External Hard Drive

hvulpus
Contributor

I am trying to travel as lightly as possible and, seeking to store at the end of the day the photos taken on my travels, is there any reason not to take a lighter flashdrive as opposed to the more cumbersome external hard drive? I will also be backing up to a cloud box, though the transfer via wifi in some places may be slow or non-existent.

Thanks for any wisdom here.

Howard

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Rodger,

I agree.  About 6 month ago, I switched from using a USB External Hard Drive and flash drives to a Cruicial 1Tb SSD USB-C drive that is about the size of the plastic case for a 49mm filter, but thinner.  I've traveled with it and use it for storage and use cloud storage for redundancy as well. 

When I transfer images from an SD Card, I store, edit and save those images as JPG's on the SSD drive.  I don't think my USB-C is the fastest way to transfer files from SD Cards and save edited images etc., but it works for me.  As you said, it's significantly faster than a USB flash drive or an external USB hard drive.

Cruicial SSD USB-C drives like mine come in storage capacities up to 4Tb and I'll bet other manufacturers sell similar products.

Good luck!

LZ

 

 

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3

wq9nsc
Elite
Elite

I have used flash drives a lot and never had one fail but given their small size and low cost, I would back up each file to two drives to be safe if the images are of high value to you.

Check write speed when buying a flash drive, some of them have very slow write speed relative to their read speed.

I use big external hard drives (traditional platter type, not SSD) ONLY for long term archival of original RAW files.

An "in-between" solution is one of the smaller external SSD drives which is a little larger than a typical USB flash drive but generally offers significantly faster transfer speed.  They are light weight and I sometimes use one when bringing large files between my home and office rather than transferring them via network.

Rodger

EOS 1DX M3, 1DX M2, 1DX, 5DS R, M6 Mark II, 1D M2, EOS 650 (film), many lenses, XF400 video

Rodger,

I agree.  About 6 month ago, I switched from using a USB External Hard Drive and flash drives to a Cruicial 1Tb SSD USB-C drive that is about the size of the plastic case for a 49mm filter, but thinner.  I've traveled with it and use it for storage and use cloud storage for redundancy as well. 

When I transfer images from an SD Card, I store, edit and save those images as JPG's on the SSD drive.  I don't think my USB-C is the fastest way to transfer files from SD Cards and save edited images etc., but it works for me.  As you said, it's significantly faster than a USB flash drive or an external USB hard drive.

Cruicial SSD USB-C drives like mine come in storage capacities up to 4Tb and I'll bet other manufacturers sell similar products.

Good luck!

LZ

 

 

hvulpus
Contributor

Thank you guys very much!

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