WD My Passport and Nikon D90

Al McCormick · March 21, 2013

General Facts: I work with my photos on an iMac at home...My laptop is a PC. I just ordered a WD 1TB My Passport Portable Storage device and I am going on a trip.

Please don judge :rofl

I was honestly thinking I could have connected the Portable Storage device directly to my Nikon D90. From the videos I was reviewing about the product it does not look like that is the case.

Apparently they show it with one connection USB 3.0 directly to the computer. Again, my laptop is a PC.

Question: HELP.

Can I hook the Portable Storage device to my PC Laptop download my pictures, then take it back and connect and work with my photos on my intel based iMac?:scratch
If not, anyone have any ideas? I do have an iPad.

I know, I should have read the :deal

Al McCormick
alm@mostvaluableplayer.biz

time2smile · March 21, 2013

I'm not an apple guy, but you should be able to do that. There's no difference in .NEF and .jpg files between PC and Mac. Check the passport when you get it to see if it reads in both systems and your good to go. If you have a issue you can always use a thumb drive to copy off the pc to the imac, I heard of people doing that.

Good Luck and have a safe trip

Al McCormick · March 21, 2013

Thanks Ted

time2smile wrote: »

I'm not an apple guy, but you should be able to do that. There's no difference in .NEF and .jpg files between PC and Mac. Check the passport when you get it to see if it reads in both systems and your good to go. If you have a issue you can always use a thumb drive to copy off the pc to the imac, I heard of people doing that.

Good Luck and have a safe trip

It does operate both, but once I realized it only had the interface [which it uses for power] I thought...I take that back...I didn't think, I :cry

Thumb drive a great idea. So I am going to hold my nose and route my photos through my PC.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I will let you know how it goes.

Al

ziggy53 · March 22, 2013

Al McCormick wrote: »

... Apparently they show it with one connection USB 3.0 directly to the computer. Again, my laptop is a PC.

Question: HELP.

Can I hook the Portable Storage device to my PC Laptop download my pictures, then take it back and connect and work with my photos on my intel based iMac?

If not, anyone have any ideas? I do have an iPad.

...[/email]

As long as the Passport can be connected as an external storage device, i.e. "common storage", and as long as you leave the files on the drive, you should not have any problems copying the files to multiple computers.

This does mean that you have to be careful how you treat the files on the external drive. For instance, some folks use a file transfer software (sometimes included with photo-editing software), which can be set to either "copy" the files from the drive or to "move" the files from the drive. If you "move" the files, they will no longer be on the external drive, and no longer available to another computer.

I recommend always using the "copy" files approach. I also recommend waiting to re-format any memory cards until you have 2 verified copies of each file on separate systems.

cmason · March 22, 2013

In order for a USB device, like a hard drive to support connecting directly to your camera, it must support USB On-the-Go protocols. Otherwise known as USB host mode.These seem to be rare these days, and a standard external drive does not support these protocols. But there are devices, like the Hyperdrive, that allow you to backup your camera cards, and are much lighter than a laptop.

Since you have your laptop with you, I don't see any advantage to having an external drive, assuming you are not out of hard drive capacity on your laptop. The only thing I can think of is allowing you to more easily move the images to your Mac at home later, in which case simply plugging in the external drive will be easy. USB drives are usually formatted in FAT32 Windows format, or if you get a 'Mac' version, in Mac HFS+ format. Either is readable by the Mac.

I can tell you from experience that the iPad does not work. You can not connect your camera directly to the iPad. You can use the Camera Connection kit to transfer images from the card from your camera into the iPad. However, most iPads are fairly limited in terms of storage, so one or two 8GB cards later and your iPad is full. Getting the images OFF the iPad is really challenging, as this mostly works via iPhoto, which is just another step you don't need, especially if you don't use iPhoto. The iPad does not expose a file system, and the Camera Connection kit does not change this, making it difficult to manage image files on the iPad.

I used to drag the laptop around to look at photos, perhaps do a bit of Lightroom work. It was fun. But not as fun as doing vacation. So instead, I simply buy additional cards, as they are actually quite cheap these days. Look around for sales and you can get some steals. Having, say, an 8GB card for each day is more than enough, and with space 1GB and 4GB cards, I never run out of memory, and therefore, never need to transfer images off of them to the laptop. Sure, there is no backup, but cards are very stable.

**edit: wrong info about Hyperdrive

Al McCormick · March 22, 2013

Photo File Support
Thank you for your help. I agree and do the same before reformatting.

Al

ziggy53 wrote: »

As long as the Passport can be connected as an external storage device, i.e. "common storage", and as long as you leave the files on the drive, you should not have any problems copying the files to multiple computers.

This does mean that you have to be careful how you treat the files on the external drive. For instance, some folks use a file transfer software (sometimes included with photo-editing software), which can be set to either "copy" the files from the drive or to "move" the files from the drive. If you "move" the files, they will no longer be on the external drive, and no longer available to another computer.

I recommend always using the "copy" files approach. I also recommend waiting to re-format any memory cards until you have 2 verified copies of each file on separate systems.

Al McCormick · March 22, 2013

The Additional Cards Have It

cmason wrote: »

In order for a USB device, like a hard drive to support connecting directly to your camera, it must support USB On-the-Go protocols. Otherwise known as USB host mode.These seem to be rare these days, and a standard external drive does not support these protocols. But there are devices, like the Hyperdrive, that allow you to backup your camera cards, and are much lighter than a laptop.

Since you have your laptop with you, I don't see any advantage to having an external drive, assuming you are not out of hard drive capacity on your laptop. The only thing I can think of is allowing you to more easily move the images to your Mac at home later, in which case simply plugging in the external drive will be easy. USB drives are usually formatted in FAT32 Windows format, or if you get a 'Mac' version, in Mac HFS+ format. Either is readable by the Mac.

I can tell you from experience that the iPad does not work. You can not connect your camera directly to the iPad. You can use the Camera Connection kit to transfer images from the card from your camera into the iPad. However, most iPads are fairly limited in terms of storage, so one or two 8GB cards later and your iPad is full. Getting the images OFF the iPad is really challenging, as this mostly works via iPhoto, which is just another step you don't need, especially if you don't use iPhoto. The iPad does not expose a file system, and the Camera Connection kit does not change this, making it difficult to manage image files on the iPad.

I used to drag the laptop around to look at photos, perhaps do a bit of Lightroom work. It was fun. But not as fun as doing vacation. So instead, I simply buy additional cards, as they are actually quite cheap these days. Look around for sales and you can get some steals. Having, say, an 8GB card for each day is more than enough, and with space 1GB and 4GB cards, I never run out of memory, and therefore, never need to transfer images off of them to the laptop. Sure, there is no backup, but cards are very stable.

**edit: wrong info about Hyperdrive

I agree and figure this is the way I am going to go. As I read your response I realized I was actually making something overally complicate that does not need to be.

Thank you for your reality check!

Al

WD My Passport and Nikon D90

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