On the Road - Part 2

Photography these days is a very technical affair: all very digital. Of course if we go out for day long shoots we rarely worry about protecting our images, as, when we get home, we simply ingest the images into our PCs and undertake additional back-ups for added protection.

But what do we do on the road? There are of course dedicated memory drives that allow us to back-up our CF or SSD cards. But these are expensive and only useful for this one purpose. Which is why many of us these days make use of our laptops, or our tablets.

Having looked into various options I decided to adopt two approaches, rather than just relying on my laptop's internal SSD.

First, I bought a cheap 1Tb ‘mechanical’ HDD, at about $75: a WD My Passport Ultra powered over USB-3.

Secondly, I decided on a more up market approach: a robust USB-3 SSD memory stick, in particular the Ventura Ultra with a max read speed of 450 MB/s and max write speed of 445MB/s. At $135 the Ventura gives you an ultra fast 240Mb SSD: a great on the road protection for your images.

Finally I bitlocked both drives for security. BTW for those that are not aware, Bitlocker is available from Windows 8 Pro or Win 7 Ultimate.  Bitlocker uses the PC's or the laptop's Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to store cryptographic information, such as the bitlocker encryption key. Information stored on the TPM is more secure from external software attacks and physical theft.

Thus, for those multi-day/week photo trips, I now have no fear of loosing my captured images and I can safely free-up my CF cards each day: as long as I remember to back up every night that is!