Backing Up In The Field #130
In the previous episode I talked about using large cards and writing to two cards. It was in response to someone who said they didn't need a card holder because they had a 1 TB card in their camera. But this got me thinking, as I just bought a new camera and I'm about to hit the road again. Since my new camera is going to require a card format I don't already own, I bought a 512 GB card. And I was thinking about my backup strategy. In the past I would write to two cards and I would backup all of my day's work every single night. With the 512GB card, I wondered if I could just get away with carrying 4 cards. 2 SD and 2 CF Express cards. Part of what was driving this decision was weight and cost. I am constantly trying to reduce my weight. I thought if I carry 2 512GB SD and 2 512GB CF cards, that's a terabyte of space. There's no way I'm going to get through a terabyte of space. But then it dawned on me, what if one of my cards fail early in the trip? Then I'd be down to a half terabyte only. Remember, in the previous episode, I recommended that if one of the two cards in your camera failed, that you should replace both cards.
Now that my camera is firing at 30 frames a second and nearly twice the megapixels, there is a possibility that it would hit a half terabyte of space. I'm going to be away for four weeks in three countries, with the serious possibility of shooting wildlife, which would up my frames by a lot. So unless I want to carry six cards, it would seem that I still need to carry external hard drives and need to back up. I won't need to do that regularly unless one of my cards fail. Now, I could just carry the six cards. But that's a much more expensive option than to carry a couple of 1TB SSDs. So I've decided that I'm going to opt to carry SSDs. My gut tells me that this is a much safer option as well. Another benefit is that the SSDs are larger and are less likely to get lost or damaged. I hope that was helpful. Until next time, keep on shooting.
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