I had a scary experience when we returned last week from our trip to Scotland. I thought I had left a film canister in the seat back in front of my seat on our flight home. This was not just any old film canister. No, I use it to store my used and unused SD cards and had also placed my hearing aids in it for temporary storage. I couldn't believe I had done that since I try never to put anything in that seat back pocket for fear of forgetting to take it out before disembarking. I have done that several times, so lesson learned. It was bad enough to think I had lost all of my memory cards, two with images from this trip, but to have lost two very expensive hearing aids was much worse.
Good news: turns out I had not put the canister in the seat back pocket after all, but rather in my other carry-on bag! Whew! However, I went through two painful days wondering if Aer Lingus would finally return my two calls and let me know whether they had or had not found my "lost" item! (Though we had nice flights with Aer Lingus, I don't have kind words for the responsiveness of their Washington Dulles lost and found personnel! One week later and I still have not heard from them!)
This post is not about my hearing aids but about backing up the memory cards you use in your camera! Though replacing my hearing aids would have been a huge expense, at least I had backed up the contents of the two SD cards onto my WD MyPassport Wi-Fi hard drive. So I had copies of the images on the cards I thought I had lost. These days it is easy and not outrageously expensive to put a system in place to back up your image files when you are traveling and you don't want to, or cannot, take a computer with you. My message, then, is clear: put a traveling backup system in place before you head off on your next trip!
I travel with just my iPhone and iPad Mini 3, so the 1TB wi-fi drive is my solution for backup. When we reach our night's lodging, I plug it in, stick my SD card in the built-in slot, and let my images from the day's shooting flow to the hard drive. When the transfer is complete, I can connect to the drive via wi-fi (the drive creates its own network, no Internet connected wi-fi is necessary!) and check the images from my iPad or iPhone. The drive doesn't even have to be plugged into power to work. It's battery will last about six hours between charges. We usually rent apartments or houses when we travel, so I will generally just plug the drive in an outlet when we unpack and leave it running for the duration of our stay. Another advantage of such a drive that I've mentioned previously is that anyone with a mobile device - Android or IOS - can connect to it. It is, therefore, a nice way to collect images travel companions have taken with their smartphones during the day. In addition, they can look at each other's and your images as well.
Using the MyPassport wi-fi drive is my current solution for backing up my memory cards when traveling. I also carry lots of cards and, after copying files from a card onto the drive, I stick it in my little film canister and insert a fresh card (albeit, previously used) into my camera. That is, I never reformat a card until I'm home and I know I have backed up the images to my computer and hard drive. The wi-fi drive is my safety net. Since memory cards are so in expensive now, many people just keep using brand new cards and never reformat their used cards. The cards collect like negatives used to in the film days. That's a fine solution unless - or should I say "until" - you lose the container with your memory cards and your images of your vacation memories!
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