use of portable hard drive as an alternative to expensive SD cards!

[spidey007]

hi
I have just bought a HD camcorder and the price of 16gb and 32gb SD cards is sending me to a spin.
I wondered whether anyone had tried using a portable hard drive as an alternative (50£ for 250gb and as big as a card).
I am going on a holiday and want to transfer the video from the SD card to a portable hard drive using one of the hotel PCs USB and thereby empty space for further shooting on the SD card! Can I do it with a Hotel /Internet cafe PC? Would I still have all the images/Video intact to download to my PC once I am back from the holiday?
Any suggestions at all?

[akkers]

Not all hotel pc will have a card reader that will read your type of card. Also I am not sure you will be able to connect the cam to every pc in any hotel - they may not have teh drivers etc, Anyway its worth a try but I would'nt bank on it.

What I do is to take my 90Gb digital vault with me which can read l types of cards. Whilst on holiday or adventue trips I copy the latest card onto the vault but keep the card intact. Also I keep the vault and camcorder/cards separate. That includes video footage off Sd cards and photos off a CF. When I get back, I have the copies of all photos and video on the vault and also on the cards.

[spidey007]

hi
thanks for the warning! A further possibly silly query....would carrying a 'memory card reader' help in any way to download the stuff?!
many thanks

Originally Posted by akkers

Not all hotel pc will have a card reader that will read your type of card. Also I am not sure you will be able to connect the cam to every pc in any hotel - they may not have teh drivers etc, Anyway its worth a try but I would'nt bank on it.

What I do is to take my 90Gb digital vault with me which can read l types of cards. Whilst on holiday or adventue trips I copy the latest card onto the vault but keep the card intact. Also I keep the vault and camcorder/cards separate. That includes video footage off Sd cards and photos off a CF. When I get back, I have the copies of all photos and video on the vault and also on the cards.

[andy1249]

You would usually run into the extra problem of most hotel PC's and Internet Cafe PC's will not let you attach mass storage to the machines for fear of adware and virus infections and the like.

Usage of hotel PC's and most foreign internet cafes is usually limited to direct internet access and internet email services.

Really it sounds like you need a cheap netbook or something , thats what I use to empty my memory cards while travelling.

[ronaldkwok]

The Sanyo HD2000 is able to connect to an external HDD directly without the need of a PC for video files transfer. Maybe this function is also available in other camcorders. Unfortunately it cannot use the smaller USB powered HDD but required a self-powered unit which means the bigger 3.5" HDD. I took such a HDD along with my HD2000 in my recent trip to Turkey and it worked very well and I was able to transfer my videos from the Camcorder to the HDD and reuse the SD cards as required. I thought of taking my netbook instead but felt safer to leave the HDD in the hotel room rather than the netbook.

[SSB]

Why not just buy multiple 4gb / 8gb cards, depending on what's the cheapest? You can get good prices on the smaller cards, especially if you opt for Clas 4 (which the HF100 is happy with).

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by SSB

Why not just buy multiple 4gb / 8gb cards, depending on what's the cheapest?

I like this option, too. Buying smaller cards is not only cheaper per GB, but you don't have all your videographic eggs in one basket should a card fail (which does happen, though thankfully very seldom). Plus with a bunch o' cards up yer sleeve, you don't need to worry about bumping your clips off to an external device.

How long are you going away for? I doubt you'd get through more than a 4GB card per day unless you were going nuts shooting everything - at the expense of relaxing and enjoying yourself!

[cv65user]

hotels charged me for using their pc at itnernet cafe rates even though i asked i only want to use the usb slot to back up my photos from sd card reader to my ipod.

try getting a handigo drive. you charge it and you insert your cf / sd card and it sucks all the data onto a 2.5 internal laptop drive pre installed. great for SLRs!