Android/Card Reader/Storage Drive Question....

**H8R** · 03-29-2012, 10:19 AM

Ok so here is an odd one...

I am going on a 5 week trip and I want to leave the laptop at home. BUT...I will also be taking a bazzillion pictures.

I will have:

1) Samsung Galaxy S II phone with Gingerbread. Not rooted. (yet)

2) A portable USB harddrive

3) Nikon D7000 with SD cards

I will be getting:

A USB card reader

What I want to do:

Use the phone to connect the USB hard drive, AND a USB card reader so I can dump pics off the cards onto the drive. I don't want to have to buy a portable storage drive/reader.

The question:

Can I do this on the phone with a USB host cable and a hub?

***binary visions*** · 03-29-2012, 10:38 AM

Buy more cards.

What you're trying to do is going to be painful for a number of reasons. You'd have to use a USB OTG cable on your phone, connect your USB card reader, copy the files off the card reader onto your phone's SD card - which will be extremely slow, and limited by the amount of free space on your phone - and then copy the files back to the drive from your phone, which again, is going to be extremely slow. On top of that, your USB hard drive is going to need external power because the USB OTG mode of the phone won't be enough to power it.

USB OTG does not support using a hub in most implementations (none in a phone that I'm aware of).

SD cards are so cheap it's almost just worth buying a bunch of them. Alternately, I have an 80gb drive with a card reader that I'd be happy to lend you for the trip. It's a cheap model but it's functional and if you have a laptop hard drive of a larger size, you could probably swap it into the chassis. PM me if you're interested.

**woodsguy** · 03-29-2012, 10:43 AM

Get a wifi sd card and upload them.

http://www.eye.fi/

**H8R** · 03-29-2012, 11:15 AM

Last time I was on a 2 week trip I had 300gb of pics and vids. I'm looking at at least 500gb for this one. Maybe a portable storage solution like a reader/drive combo unit is best.

**woodsguy** · 03-29-2012, 12:03 PM

With that many pics I personally wouldn't trust an all in one drive. I would bring a laptop and save them on the laptop, external drive, and possibly the cloud.

***binary visions*** · 03-29-2012, 12:34 PM

Geez, 300gb? Is it mostly HD movies?

This is about the best-reviewed unit on the market:

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive-...-UDMA-s/64.htm

Not cheap, obviously. It's fast, though, and will simplify the whole process for you. Buy the bare case and bring your own drive.

Frankly, I'm thinking that, for my next trip, I'm going to upgrade my camera body for HD video plus dual card slots, and just buy cheap memory cards in bulk. That would give me two copies of everything on rugged media, automatically, without the extra step of loading onto a drive (which could fail taking everything, or a single card could fail during the day before you have it backed up, etc.).

I don't/won't shoot a lot of video, so the amount of media won't be too overwhelming.

**dante** · 03-29-2012, 07:31 PM

300gb? What the hell are you using, a Nikon?

**H8R** · 03-29-2012, 07:46 PM

Originally Posted by binary visions

Geez, 300gb? Is it mostly HD movies?

Raw stills, HD vids and the occasional jpg-based intervalometer sequence.

To put it mildly, I've been friggen trigger happy.

I thought of a D800 for all of ten seconds. In my hands I would need to haul around a small server rack to support it.

**H8R** · 03-29-2012, 07:49 PM

Originally Posted by binary visions

This is about the best-reviewed unit on the market:

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive-...-UDMA-s/64.htm

Not cheap, obviously. It's fast, though, and will simplify the whole process for you. Buy the bare case and bring your own drive.

Jeebus those things are pricey.

At that cost I'm better off getting something like a netbook and one or more 2.5" external drives.

***binary visions*** · 03-30-2012, 06:06 AM

Well, sure, but you're paying partly for simplicity. You're going to have to carry a netbook, a power brick for the netbook, maybe a card reader, the external drive(s), and you'll likely get slower copy speeds unless you buy a high quality UDMA card reader, which are more expensive. That won't fit into your camera bag either, whereas the HyperDrive will. Also the time/effort spent copying goes up since you have to set it all up, boot it, and tear it down when you're done.

You can get cheaper models:
http://www.amazon.com/Wolverine-PicP...dp/B00695YMVI/

That's similar to the one I have. It's adequate. Not as many features, no way to review the images no image de-duplication (i.e. if you copy the same card twice, it copies ALL of the images twice not just the new ones), poor battery life, and slower.

I'm just always leery of backup solutions that involve effort. They're too easy to skip. And frankly, I'm getting to the point where I'd rather start packing fewer and smaller electronics - travel light, simply, and reduce the amount of stuff you can damage.

**ridiculous** · 03-30-2012, 06:31 AM

Internet cafe and external storage drive? Or will you be flying through memory to frequently for that?

**syadasti** · 03-30-2012, 07:00 AM

Originally Posted by H8R

At that cost I'm better off getting something like a netbook and one or more 2.5" external drives.

Yeah just get a cheap netbook and swap the stock drive. 1TB notebook drives cost around $100 and an USB powered mini enclosure shouldn't cost much at all if you want an external backup. If you run a lightweight linux distro booting won't take long.

**H8R** · 03-30-2012, 09:51 AM

Originally Posted by binary visions

That won't fit into your camera bag either, whereas the HyperDrive will. Also the time/effort spent copying goes up since you have to set it all up, boot it, and tear it down when you're done

I use a Pelican 1510 carry on case for all the camera gear. Space is not really an issue, my 15" laptop will *just* fit in there. It's just a bit heavy, and I've recently installed Ubuntu Studio on it to make it a stand alone multi-track recording rig, so taking it back out on the road for a pic dump machine makes no sense.

I also bring a flattened Mountainsmith kit cube pad insert, that goes into a small messenger bag for walking around.

I'll be on a tour bus for 4 of the 5 weeks I'm out. There is always a corner somewhere to stash a setup, or even in a bunk on some buses. Plugging in a brick, etc is not a big deal - I was just hoping to "simplify" the whole thing by just adding a card reader to the phone. Sounds like the USB hosting limitations of the phone fvck all that up.

Hmm.

Does anyone make a cheaper tablet thing with decent USB function or a full size SD card reader?