Travel Safely – Digital Image Storage On The Road

Having moved from film to digital, we have lost some challenges and replaced them with new ones. Whereas once we would have worried about being able to buy the film we wanted and store it properly whilst travelling, now we worry about storing our digital files safely. Imagine you are off for a 4 week trip to Africa.

So, for 4 weeks your every sense will be assaulted with the new and the exciting, the strange and the wonderful, the bizarre and the challenging. Things which may well be so far outside your normal experiences that they can have the effect or rendering you almost inert: anyone who has stepped off a train in one of these countries to be met with hundreds of people pressing and shouting will know what I mean. As a photographer, you will feel compelled to record all this as you travel.

Shooting JPEG will of course increase your storage – a Nikon ʫ will store over 5,800 basic JPEGs on a 16Gb Compact Flash Card, but if you shoot JPEG you are allowing the camera to decide what is important and to delete forever much of the original information the sensor captures. Shooting RAW is the best option but it does take much more space – that same 16Gb card will only hold 640 RAW files on a ʫ.

For most shooters, this means that you are likely to need an empty 16Gb card every 2 or 3 days – and perhaps daily from time to time on a really busy day. For our hypothetical 4 week trip, this would be equal to say 30 days of travel, 16Gb every 2 days – or 240Gb total. You must add in some additional margin for safety, so I would say that at least 300Gb is more appropriate. Add video as well and you can double that!

Most laptops are not shipped with 30Gb hard drives – much less 600Gb ones, so whilst you might well travel with one for editing or other tasks along the way, it won’t solve your storage needs.

My personal solution is to pack an Adata Sport A10 external HDD that connects to my Mac Book Pro via USB (Firewire would be faster but is not an option, sadly). I use the 640Gb version although a 500 and a 320 are available. The Adata Sport is a US Mil Spec tested rugged drive that has passed transit drop tests, liquid splashing tests and so on. It is covered with soft rubber which also makes handling it a non-slip operation.

The tests inflicted on the Adata Sport apparently include full immersion in water for 30 minutes and various drops onto hard surfaces. I do not recommend testing the claims personally! Nevertheless it is a tough unit that should be well able to withstand the rigours of baggage handlers, public transport, donkey packs and so on!

I also take a stack of blank DVD′s as well and burn back up copies when in a quiet hotel room or guest house – or, once, tent in the desert! CD′s are no use – you must use DVD′s because they have far greater data capacity (over 7Gb on a dual layer one). You can burn multiple redundant back ups and keep them in different bags to guard against baggage theft/loss and of course you can mail them home when convenient en route.

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