I have recently upgraded from a K100 to a K5.

About to leave Australia for Europe where I anticipate taking perhaps 4,000 photos. In the past I have simply kept everything on SD cards ex the camera which I have guarded with my life.

I recognise the risk in the above but I am reluctant to trust shops to copy the SD cards to CDs/DVDs as backups. I may be paranoid but that's the way I am.

I don't want to cart a laptop around just to backup photos but I have been told that there is now some small lightweight gizmo that will backup photos.

Do any of you good people know anything about such an animal, please?

Any advice will be appreciated.

[psychdoc]

Plenty of options.

Portable Data Storage | B&H Photo Video

[mtansley]

I presume there are self-use kiosks in Europe that let you copy SDs to CD/DVDs. Use them and you control the operation. Make sure the tab on the card is set to 'Not Write' and you should be safe.

Don't reformat the card, use fresh ones all the time and that will give you two copies of your photos.

Get a data storage device like psychdoc mentions and you'll have a triple backup. Store them in different suitcases. That should give you some backup of images.

[Tom S.]

I use a portable device that is basically a laptop hard drive in an enclosure with a battery. It's rated at 500GB - far more than 4000 pictures, but has one issue that drove me nuts. Each time you insert a card, it copies all the files on the card, even if you already copied them once. So if you used a 24GB card and backed it up when it was half full, then again when it was full, you would end up with the first half copied twice a total of 36GB of files on the drive. Of course with 500GB, it didn't really matter, just annoying.

[psychdoc]

but has one issue that drove me nuts. Each time you insert a card, it copies all the files on the card, even if you already copied them once. So if you used a 24GB card and backed it up when it was half full, then again when it was full, you would end up with the first half copied twice a total of 36GB of files on the drive. Of course with 500GB, it didn't really matter, just annoying.

Just look for portable data storage models that have 'incremental back up' in the product description. It will backup only the new data on card and skip previously saved data.

[YM-Mundrabilla]

Thanks all.
Regards
Geoff3

[amoringello]

Got the Sanho last year for our trip to Europe. It is a bit slow, but works great!.
At least once a day, just popped in the card(s) and let it auto backup any new photos added for that day.
I then kept the SD cards safe so I always had two copies. I also used a new card each day to reduce problems with corruption or perhaps a lost/stolen camera with the entire trip's set of photos.