SD Card Backup

[Tom Boyles]

Thoughts anyone?: Recording on a DP-32 and not necessarily wanting to carry around a laptop to backup the SD card (because I like to know there is recovery in place in case things go wonky).

I have been carrying around a backup "box" that I have used when I go out on photography excursions. It's based on a Raspberry Pi and uses a little program called "Little Backup Box".

Here's a write-up I put together on a little website I am working on called Portable Recordist:
https://www.portablerecordist.com/sd-card-backup-tips-and-tricks/

The Raspberry Pi is best powered by a powerbank to make it battery powered and very portable. Back up the SD card to a USB drive of any type or form factor.

On top of that, each back up is the entire card, so you can even keep timed backups of the session through the day and go back to an earlier backup in case you delete a track you really should have kept.

 

[-mjk-]

Tom, very interesting! This post brought back memories of when I first visited Taiwan. Back in those days, digital photography was new. I took a Kodak digital camera with me when I went to Taiwan in April, 2000. Visiting the electronics street in Taipei it because clear to me that Taiwan had stuff that we never even heard of in the West. I bought what was called then, a "digital wallet." It had no display on it. My guess is you've never heard of/seen what I am about to describe.

Nowadays a digital wallet is a virtual place where you store cryptocurrency. But in the early part of the 21st Century, a digital wallet was a device to store your photos/files from various memory cards.

I dusted mine off and I made a quick Google Photos album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mek8FVnp4KpCB6HR8

This is the second one I bought and it had the unbelievable capacity of [edited] 30GB in 2002. On the side are slots for every card type that existed at that time. One simply took their card out of their camera, put it in the digital wallet and pressed the Copy button. The display confirmed what was going on. There were other functions as well, and even a headphone jack for playing mp3 files! my guess is that with the proliferation of mobile phones and how the cost of memory card media has dropped so significantly, these things are no longer needed. But, back in 2002 when I visited Taiwan again, my newer digital camera had one of those 1 GB IBM double-height CF card hard drives. This wallet, (called the X's-Drive) really saved the day. The last time I checked, it still works. The USB connection puts it's internal HDD available as a connected drive.

Come to think of it, I might have a 500GB drive sitting here that would fit this thing. They designed it so that the user could open it up and easily swap out the battery and hard drive themselves. A single locking screw holds the sliding bottom cover from opening. The protective case also has slots for memory cards. Really well thought out.

Anyway, that's a blast from the past!

 

[Tom Boyles]

@-mjk- -- That X's-Drive reminds me of a Wolverine Data FlashPac that I used for years when out on photoshoots. I really like the display screen and that there's a "copy" button and a readout of progress of copying status. I assume the X's-Drive's screen give similar info. Thank you for sharing images of that.

I'll have to dig up my Wolverine out from my photog gear and see what that can do. It seems it would be less sophisticated than the X's-Drive you have. But you also got me thinking that I may be able to upgrade the internal hard drive in the Wolverine as it has a 60GB drive (great when I was shooting with a Nikon D100 where the RAW files were a few meg).

There's nothing like taking old gear that was great yesteryear and tinkering with it to bring it back to new life.

But in regard to newer gear, there is a product from Ravpower (AC750 - Filehub) that is a battery-powered SD card reader with a USB3 port. Insert an SD card, connect a USB drive and with the press of a button, you back up the entire SD card to your USB drive.

Also, this thing is a network Access Point, portable router and you can access the files remotely!

Note: When I bought mine it was branded "Ravpower". I'm not sure if it is re-branding or another company bought it, but it now appears to be branded "NewQ". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's an Amazon link (I couldn't find a NewQ website, so I suspect it may be a Ravpower rebranding of some sort):
https://www.amazon.com/NewQ-Filehub-AC750-Travel-Router/dp/B09T9QKQH7

This little product would also allow the backup of SD cards with the added capability to access files wirelessly.

 

[-mjk-]

Thanks @Tom Boyles. Always good to know about newer gear. I also shot RAW on my Nikon's back in the day, and yeah they take up a ton of room. My 1G CF card HDD eventually died while shooting video. Amazing how that 1G card was huge back then.

When I took out the X's-Drive the other day, I charged it up and although the battery still holds a charge and the display works, its not fully functional. I can read files on the HDD but I cannot seem to copy anything from an inserted SD card. Also, the HDD is not accessible on the USB hose, like it used to be. I tried swapping out HDDs and it was no dice. So, its another paper weight now I suppose.

Similar to the Ravpower, I've seen a pocket Wi-Fi router with a slot for an SD card and a SIM card so it can be used for mobile Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi extension and also file management. That sounds like the ultimate toy.

 

[Tom Boyles]

although the battery still holds a charge and the display works, its not fully functional

@-mjk- I'm sorry to hear that the X's-Drive you have isn't working like it used to.

Amazing how that 1G card was huge back then.

I agree that 1GB cards seemed so much space and not all that long ago. (Well, ok, I try and forget that 2007 is now 15 years ago. Time flies by!) -- My old Nikon D100 RAW files were 6MB each (I think it's 5MP) so a 1GB or 2GB card was just fine for a lot of photos. I think early on I even had 512MB cards. That camera used compact flash.

Current megapixel RAW images almost fill up a card like that with just a few images.

I did locate my Wolverine Flashpac (7000 series) and it has a 60GB drive from the factory. Back in the day; 60GB, 80GB and 160GB models were enough space to backup a day's worth of RAW images. I did open it up and it has a standard IDE interface and used a 2.5" hard drive.

I'm not sure how big a drive this thing will be able to support. But for now, the 60GB drive in it works and I did test copying a few SD cards and reading it on a computer seemed to work as expected. I did have a 80GB IDE in the pile o' old 'puter stuff and swapped it out and it worked fine as well (after formatting it to FAT32).

I could update it to a 160GB IDE drive (fairly inexpensive and surprisingly still available), but now I'm curious if I could get it working with a 256GB mDATA SSD. I found an IDE adapter that takes a mDATA SSD and configures it to a very lightweight 2.5" IDE SSD drive.

This discussion made me recall when I was playing bass for a band and friends were taking digital images of us playing a gig on a SONY camera that captured on 3.5" floppies.

Similar to the Ravpower, I've seen a pocket Wi-Fi router with a slot for an SD card and a SIM card so it can be used for mobile Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi extension and also file management. That sounds like the ultimate toy.

That sounds like the ultimate toy indeed. OK, I'm off to explore the Innerwebs for that device. Please don't tell my wife I have my credit card out of my wallet again!

 

[-mjk-]

I knew someone who had a prototype Sony digital camera in the mid 90s and it had a mini floppy disk drive. Wow.... I got my first digital camera in 1999, the Casio QV-10. Then I got a Kodak something and after that it was a Nikon. Now I have an Insta360 One X2! Things sure have changed!

I'd like to know if you can get that SSD drive going too....

Awhile back there was a half-serious discussion of using a USB cable converter that fit the SD card slot in the DP machine. The thought was that it might be possible to use an external USB HDD or thumb drive with the DP machine instead of an SD card.

 

[Tom Boyles]

Now you're bringing up some old memories from the back of the noggin! In the '90s I had a Kodak DC50 that shot on full-size PCMCIA flash memory cards. (Probably before Compact Flash)

(I hate to admit it, but I may still have that camera in the back of the garage in a mystery storage box!)

 

[-mjk-]

PCMCIA! Wow, I still have a PCMCIA GPS card. The trouble is, People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms, so I have no idea what that stands for, lol. I had a notebook with a PCMCIA Wi-fi card too.

 

[Tom Boyles]

ROFL
I'm pretty sure that's what PCMCIA stands for!
It's better than what it does stand for.

 

[Tom Boyles]

@-mjk- You got me into a "Bringing old gear to new life" mode.

I created this Google photo album of a series of images of the Wolverine Data Flashpac. I also include in the images, an IDE-to-SD adapter I found that I was able to use to replace the 60GB 2.5-inch hard drive.

Now I have a Wolverine Data 256GB backup device that is all solid-state now!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Wn1Usj4nnyJaoZJV8

The device is now faster and much easier on the internal battery than the ol' 2.5-inch laptop hard drive ever was!

 

[-mjk-]

Wow! I guess that makes me a professional influencer! I need to update my internet resume immediately lol

The cool thing is you can get a 1 TB SD card and just leave it in that device and use it on everything.

 

[Tom Boyles]

You are indeed. I may not have thought to go down this path with the Wolverine device had it not been for our exchange in this thread. That's the beauty of a forum like this. The exchange of ideas that spark new ideas.

I'm now testing different speed cards to get a feel where the thing will bottleneck. I suspect the hardware itself may limit throughput and maybe even how big a card it will properly read as a "hard drive".

I did try a microSD in a SD adapter and I got some strange screen output from the Wolverine for free space available. It read it very differently than the full-size SD card. Both are Sandisk and specs... just different form factor (SD vs. microSD). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not gotten to a point of investing the $180 to $220 US for a 1TB SD card. I may try a 512GB first. But yes, in theory, a 1TB would improve the use of this 15-17 year old device.

 

[-mjk-]

I agree about forums and brainstorming in general. Sometimes a simple comment can get one to thinking....

Could you install an SSD in that device?

Now you got me thinking about the X's Drive too. One thing that I like about the X'S D is that the HDD is screwed to the back plate so it slides out and that keeps the pins aligned. Of course, unless you're using an HDD solution it doesn't matter. I have a thin Toshiba 1 TB USB 3 drive that I carry around. I am wondering if I could take that drive out and ??? I better get control of myself.... lol. When I'm out shooting 360 videos though, the card can fill up quickly. Having the X's Drive with a 1 TB drive would be very useful.

 

[Tom Boyles]

I better get control of myself.... lol.

LOL, you and me both. I do get a kick out of this stuff and definitely lose some self-control.

Could you install an SSD in that device?

Depends, I'm guessing, on the form factor and I am now learning, potentially, the speed of the card (whether a memory card or a SSD module). Discovering that microSD cards behave differently in the same configuration as the full-size SD card is puzzling to me.

There are converters for mDATA and M.2, for example:
mDATA: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81zQXiB8KQL._AC_SX466_.jpg
m.2: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61iuVbK8slL._SX522_.jpg

As I been taking this journey with the Wolverine, I tried the mDATA board above in the Wolverine first (before the SD converter) and it didn't work. Not sure if it is the converter, the mDATA or the Wolverine not liking it.

What I'm learning, while I test different SD cards, success or failure is based on the Wolverine being able to read the card/module as a hard drive. For example, with the IDE-to-SD converter, a SanDisk Ultra SD card works great, however, a SanDisk Extreme SD card fails in the Wolverine during the initial HD initialization.

Any way I look at it though, this is a lot of fun trying different configurations and documenting successes and failures, even though I don't fully understand why some things I try work fine (happy accidents) and some fail (to which I shrug my shoulders and move on to a different test).