Ok - so i am planning a year of travel next year (finishing university and never had a year out - have to comply to the tradition dont i? )  and may need to be out of touch of electricity for months at a time and need some way of accounting for that with my camera.  Apart from taking large quantities of batteries with me the problem of storage comes to mind.  Does anyone use these external harddrive things specially designed for photo storage and organisation i have seen around and could tell me what to look for? or should i just stick with maybe getting a load of cards? i am expecting something like 20GB of storage minimum

Attached Link: P-4000

I have heard good things about this. If you can find the P-2000 you may get it at a good price. I know that Andreas uses the Archos. ;'] Here is another: http://www.amazon.com/Wolverine-MVP-9060-Portable-Storage-Multimedia/dp/B000BYU63Q Google "portable multimedia storage" and I am sure you find many more to choose from. Not sure what you'd do about power for it over those long periods though. I know there are products out there for that, but perhaps someone has first hand experience. Here some links anyway: http://www.cameraontheroad.com/?p=760 http://www.fredmiranda.com/A19/ http://www.luminous-landscape.com/locations/wilderness.shtml http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/

I use the Hyperdrive HD80, which is a version behind the current Hyperdrive SPACE model...and haven't had any problems. It uses double AA batteries, which I had several rechargeables already, so it worked out for me. It's not a media viewer, it's strickly for transferring your media card  files to it's harddrive.

Here's the link to get the current version info. It looks like its went through an overhaul...  http://www.hypershop.com.

Depends on what you want to do with it, view your images or have something as a simple storage device, some are as expensive as a laptop which is my own prefered method.. Compact flash cards are now 40 pounds for 2 gig so that may be one answer but I guess,  you will need to want to recharge your camera batteries  so months at a time with no electricity is going to be a problem when a solar charger may be a solution..  Are you backpacking or have a car with you on your travels?

Here are some Solar links. http://www.voltaicsystems.com/ http://store.sundancesolar.com/po20wafosoba.html http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=solar+charger&num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&sa=X&oi=froogle&ct=title When it comes to portable storage the question I ask is "where are you gonna store it?". Where are you going that dont have power?

wow - thanks guys - i am still only just getting through the links that kort posted.

As for the questions about my travels and a few worries i have:

Where i am going is yet to be decided but there is a very big possibility it will be extreme conditions, it will be south america as i am a spanish speaker and would love to explore that area of the world - so we are talking high altitude and cold in patagonia or humid and hot in the rainforests (i am looking at two different conservation projects as a starting point at the moment). So in terms of media storage i will definitely need reliability in extreme conditions - and that article at fredmiranda made me realise that the harddrive option is possibly not a good idea. 

I got looking at this Roadstor dvd writer as an option - but it seems the site is down for the company that makes it.  Also the battery wouldnt last a great deal of time - so taht could cause some more problems.

If i bought a load of cheap but reliable (and not necessarily fast) CF cards would it be ok to just have them in a rucksack out in extreme cold or heat? or could i have a problem with that?

solar power - might be an option but again the article at fredmiranda made me think that it might not be very reliable especially if my two main ideas of places are where the sun might not shine as much as you want ;)

edit - and as for what i want to do - the main thing is to store the images safely, any viewing will be done sparsely on the cam lcd.

furter edit - i wont be anywhere near a source of power (or civilisation! :biggrin:)as far as i can tell for at least a month.

Ok thats a bit clearer then I would go for the storage cards then they will outlast the conditions your camera will be able to manage and keep them safe in a good waterproof bag I think a rucksack would be asking for trouble if you get wet or fall into a river etc.. In humid conditions also use a plastic bag to use when you take the camera out..  Rainforest means just that it rains and you will get soaked... Be aware that batteries will not  last half the time in cold conditions so keep them warm on your person..

sounds like good advice to me... thanks danny :)

And looking into the whole card thing i just realised that my 4 gig card is a fake.  Luckily my 2 gig and 512mb arent - i never noticed the difference really - as the 4gig card is actually 4 gigs and it does work fine.  Just a caveat for those buying from ebay and anywhere else really - i'll certainly be using the 4 gig as a spare now:

http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/FAKE-SanDisk-Extreme-Compact-Flash-Cards-Exposed_W0QQugidZ10000000001456526

So the question now is - what type of card - surely an extreme IV is just overkill and overpriced anyway.  ultra II i am thinking - at £40 for 2gig it looks the best option - kingston do similar for around the £30 is it worth looking at that route?

Yeah thats a scam I had not heard about Rich sorry mate... I  can recommend the 2 gig Delkin devices one just got that and 110 speed for 2 gig the 4 gig is 2 gig you mean? always shoot jpeg as well get even more shots then 

and to add to that i just did a test - full quality jpeg+raw on continuous shoot on the same subject (a sheet of white paper with writing on it - held the shutter release until "failure" on my 2gig and my 4gig card.

2 gig card took 7 shots (the buffer size i assume) and then paused slightly and then shot an 8th shot (obviously the buffer had cleared the first shot by the time the 7th shot had been taken) so from start to finish it too 15.5 seconds for the red "processing" light to go off.

4 gig card took 7 shots and even tho i did hold the shutter realease to see if it would take another it didnt... so i sat and waited for 38.5 seconds for the light to go off.

So obviously the performance isnt there. although i have to say (through actually getting the card up to around the 3.5gig mark on a day of shooting) the storage is - not sure what putting it in 50 degrees would do to it tho ;)

danny - you need to punctuate better, sometimes it is difficult to realise when you are starting a new sentence ;)  but i meant that my 4 gig is actually 4gigs rather than just a labelling saying it is 4gigs when it is 2gigs or something.

Lol yeah sorry.  I tend to do that when I am doing 3 things at once!!  I did not understand what you meant by the card being fake?  So I assumed you meant it was not a 4 gig card, but something with less capacity.. 2 gig or lower.. ... Thanks for clearing that up..   Ebay are not willing to refund your money? I thought part of there blurb, was to protect the punters from such problems... Was the card you bought sold as genuine, has it got all the right labels etc? Or is it the poor performance you feel makes it not genuine?  A real card as a lifetimes warranty and any dealer will replace it if it is faulty...  

50 degrees would take the operation of the camera into question. I have used mine in hot and humid conditions of 43 degrees, Canon give 40 degrees in their stat sheets as Max ... In my view with a genuine card the camera would be the weakest link in any case.. Properly stored and with the use of plastic bags to prevent condensation forming inside the camera I doubt you will have any problems, but you may well be risking damage if you were using the gear in that sort of heat and humiditity. 

Yes - ebay does protect the buyer - but the thing is i forgot which ebay shop i got it from and i got it a while back so the records arent on my account anymore.  Also a 4gig card which maybe isnt the speed of an X-III is always useful i suppose if it works fine - i did get it for about £70. That should have rang warning bells i suppose, but i thought it was someone cutting out a chunk of the supply chain and getting a discount. I found out it wasnt genuine through that article i posted and taking a look at the card closely - it matched the description of the fake... i ran the test just to make sure because as far as i knew from using it it worked fine.

So basically i am fine with weather related issues - i just need to take care of the camera and its batteries and the cards will look after themselves (in a plastic bag with some silica sachets) :)

Attached Link: On the road

Here are some links I just found. http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/klum/index2.html This one might be (slightly) OT http://www.ppa.com/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=148

Sounds exciting Rich. And it sounds like you are getting a good feel for what you need. Just one other thought...be careful. South America is notorious for bad things happening to tourists. Of course, it depends on where exactly you will be. Also, watch out for leeches, pirahna and the yeti. ;']

Thanks for the links radlafx :)
Kort - thanks for the concern - tho i will be travelling in a group during the time away from civilisation - and quite a way away from anyone involved in the kidnapping business... as for afterwards i will probably be visiting other places which arent tourist destinations - i am thinking i might join a friend in chile as a snowboard instructor after the summer expedition for a while... whilst i do want to do peru - i will probably have to find a group of people to do it with - which i am hoping i will meet when i am there. Plus i speak spanish which i hope will not make me stand out so much - tho being blonde and 6'5" might counteract that ;) but it might help me fighting the yeti :biggrin:

I envy you this trip...the experience of a lifetime. When you have a family and kids you can kiss that kind of freedom goodbye. There are rewards to that too of course. Make sure you don't get caught without charged batteries or room on a CF card! ;]

yeah - that is why i am doing it now, i hear of people who just get caught up in jobs and family commitments etc who wished they had done something like this - i dont want to reach 30 and regret not doing it - even if it does cost me a fair amount of money...