Which portable drive with card reader?

Rhuarc

My wife and I are going on a cruise next March with family and I want to get a card reader/hard drive for daily backups. I'm not looking at the fancy ones that have a nice screen for viewing pictures, since I will also have a laptop along to backup shots to every evening. I am looking for one that has:

• A hard drive enclosure that allows me to upgrade the hard drive.
• Has built in card reader for at least SD/CF.
• Built in battery. (Can use it without pluggin it in)
• Easy to use. (One button copying)

This will be used as a backup during the day, and as a backup to the laptop and to an additional external hard drive that will go into the safe in our room. That will give me three copies of all my shots, one on the laptop, one on a hard drive in the safe, and one on my person. Should be safe enough! Oh, and I might take along a DVD burner just for good measure! LoL.

Anyway, I'm looking for some feedback from everyone here. This is one that I was looking at, but I am open to suggestions from others.

Sans Digital MS1U 2.5" External Hard Disk Enclosure with 9-in-1 Card Reader/Writer

Thank you!
Rhuarc

claudermilk

The two I'd look at are the Hyperdrive Space or one of the Nextos. I still have an old HD80 that just keeps on working without issue. I'm considering an eventual upgrade to either the Space, or more likely the Color.

Scott_Quier

I also have the HD80 (I've had it only about 4 months though) and have no problems with it. Since I'm not in a hurry, I set the copy speed to the slowest (you can set it to one of 4 or 5 different download speeds - depending on the speed of your cards) and have had not issues getting all the data copied first time, every time.

Martyn

You may also want to take a look at portable media players.

We have a Creative Zen which has a built in CF card reader (we also got the card adaptor free). Very good for viewing jpegs but doesn't show RAW files.

It also plays music, videos etc.

claudermilk

Re-read the OP, he doesn't want one of those. Just a simple backup device, for which task the Space fits the bill nicely.

IMHO, I don't like the all-in-one devices any more than I like the all-in-one software. Why load down the photo backup device with a music & video player to burn batteries? Then, when you need to back up the last batch of photos you're battery is dead from listening to music. :cry And, of course, for some of us the whole point of getting out in the boonies where one of these battery powered devices is needed is to escape the constant noise & distraction of civilization. OK, I'll climb off my soapbox now...