Some kind of media vault? Recommendations?

[fuhreal]

Hey everyone, hopefullly I can get some help with this.

I'm trying to find a device, that will allow me to copy from an SD card to an external HD without a computer. I have found a product on a Japanese website, that is basicallly an external HD enclosure that includes a SD slot and a button to copy the SD card to the HD. Has anyone come accross something like this locally (GTA) or even a link to a website I can read would be good :D ....

Thanks in advance!

[HunkaHunkaBurningLove]

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/xdrive-vp300.html

http://www.image-tank.com/

I have an old Imagetank with a 6.5 gig hard drive which I never use anymore. Ever since media cards' prices have dropped so much it's just cheaper and easier to pick up a few cards rather than carry around a digital wallet type of device.

I thought Ipods had some memory reader attachment to convert them into digital wallets. You might search for portable digital image storage and see what comes up.

[fuhreal]

Cool THANKS!!!!

[eelfliw]

Try to get one with built-in review screen if you can.

I went on a photo excursion to Tibet 2 years ago and everyone had one of those portable HDs with SD/CF slots to copy image to HD. But the problem is, there's no way to verify if the copy was successful since there's no screen to see what's on the HD. Some people had ones with built-in screen but it could not decode the RAW files.

I was the only one with a laptop on the trip and became popular because everyone ended up borrowing my laptop to check the HD content.

[HunkaHunkaBurningLove]

It's definitely nice to have a screen to verify the transfer has been completely successfully. That being said, I've never had a problem with my Imagetank downloading every photo correctly from my compact flash card on the numerous trips I've taken it to. I think the most I've ever used is about 4.5 gig's of the 6.5 gig laptop drive. That was about 2000 photos I think. For DSLR's I can see how these digital wallets still can come in handy for longer trips especially with 12 megapixel and higher cameras!

Tigerdirect used to sell these Wolverine digital photo storage devices with the hard drive inside. They don't seem to stock them any more. You might find some elsewhere though.

http://www.wolverinedata.com/

For the IPOD:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M9861G/B

[ryan_lau100]

i used the photobank from bestbuy. sucked... read/write errors within the year. the case fell apart and i treated it sooo carefully and never dropped it. as for the ipod connector... sucks. unless you have an outlet near you it drains sooo much power.

my advice: get more CF cards. so cheap these days anyways.

[jamied]

I've been using a HyperDrive for a while now. Reliable, fast, uses rechargeable or alkaline AA's, and has a verification feature. I've transfered 100's of cards to/from it without a problem.

www.hyperdrive.com

Yes, big cards are cheap now, but some of us need redundancy when in the field.

[rubberband]

I own one of these:

http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/10544/epson_p3000_multimedia_viewer/

Epson P3000.

Expensive, but it works perfectly, and the screen is probably the best LCD I've even seen in person. You can also hack it (If you're brave!) to accept a 160Gb notebook drive.