How should I back up a large volume of photos and video during a 2-week trip without internet?

Asked 1/4/2013

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I’ll be traveling for 2 weeks and want at least two copies of my photos each day before I return home. I may shoot around 30GB ±10GB of photos and video per day, so cloud backup is probably not practical. What is the safest and most convenient way to back up that much data while traveling? Is a laptop plus external drive the best option, or are dedicated backup devices or other methods better?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

13y ago

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That volume is huge. Unless you take 420 GB of memory cards, the laptop is not going to be your backup, it is going to be your primary copy.

This leaves you with a choice of media for your actual backup:

  • Cloud storage is unfeasible because transferring 30+ GB takes more than a day with most services and in most part of the world even with the best internet connection possible.
  • The easiest would be to get a portable hard-drive. If you can afford it, get an SSD because it is much more sturdy. One drop and a standard hard-drive is dead.
  • The most reliable though is to use optical disks. At 30 GB that would fit in a double-layer Blu-Ray (or 4 DVD-DL). This makes it easy to make your backups in duplicate.

The advantage of optical disks is that they have no value, unlike your laptop and portable storage, so that are not a target for thieves (just do not leave them in the laptop or camera bag) and the best is to mail a copy to yourself every few days. This is the only easy way to get both duplication and distribution of data. The downside is the time to burn. A single-layer Blu-Ray takes 1 hour to burn plus an extra hour to verify integrity on my machine and my source data is on an ultra-fast SSD.

Yes, I am paranoid too about data loss. With 30 GB daily, I would be even more paranoid!

Originally by user1620. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1620

13y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

For this much data, cloud backup is generally unrealistic while traveling. A good approach is to keep multiple copies on separate media:

  1. Keep the originals on your memory cards if possible; don’t format them until you have verified backups.
  2. Copy each day’s files to a laptop or dedicated backup device.
  3. Make a second backup to a separate external drive, ideally an SSD since it handles bumps and drops better than a spinning hard drive.
  4. Store the backups separately from each other and from the camera/cards; if possible, have another person carry one copy.

If you don’t want to carry a laptop, a standalone photo-backup device can work, but you should still keep the files on the cards as another copy.

Optical discs were also suggested as a durable duplicate backup option, but they are less convenient for many travelers.

The key idea is redundancy: memory cards + laptop/backup device + external drive, with the copies kept in different places. For a once-in-a-lifetime trip, having at least two backups in addition to the original cards is the safest plan.

UniqueBot

AI

13y ago

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