Ollie

Dead easy. They also have an in-built multi card reader that takes all the common card types. To copy from a card in the field you merely insert the card and press the copy button. This copies the card contents to the devices hard drive. Its that simple.

When connected to the PC, the card slots allow direct upload of your images or you can copy from the devices hard drive to your PC hard drive. You can of course backup images from your PC to the devices hard drive.

It fits comfortably into a pocket.

There are other similar devices which may be cheaper which other members may have experience of.

Im going to go for at least a year so i would take the 80gb version. I also plan a lie up for 2 week in the middle so i can send it home and get the contents moved onto my external hard drive and sent back to me.

Ollie

You can also buy other models that allow you to view your images on the device. This way you can discard the non keepers to save space

That is something i would whant. I have created another thread on this subject so this thread can be kept to the subject.

I have come into this thread late but I had an experince that will either relate to some of you or warn the others.

Up until recently I backed up everything to a series of CD's and kept these CD's seperately in the Bedroom. Last May (whilst we were on the Isle of Skye) we were burgled and we were virtually stripped out. They even stole my back up discs. Thankfully I had some older back up discs in the loft which contained about 85% of my photos so all was not lost. I did lose some excellent photos but I could have lost the lot.

Since then I have purchased an External Hard Drive and save everything to both Internal and External drives as I go along.

There is always someone in the house now but if ever we go out and leave the house empty the External Hard Drive goes with us.

You have a good point there that everyone should think about. I back everying up to cd that i leave at home and also onto my external hard drive which goes everywhere with me. I would have to be extremly unlucky to loose both sets and the set on my pc hard drive all at the same time.

Having had my laptop stolen in Costa Rica with about 1000 photos on it of which I had no backups, I am acutely aware of the need to take backups. Have I done anything about it? Nope. I've just been too lazy. Reading this thread has inspired me to go home and start recording thisevening.

I have a backup harddrive that I copy all of my photos over to weekly. If I go to an event like an airshow or get some really good photographs that I absolutely can't loose I back them up when I download them from my camera.

We have a backup drive with them all on plus we back them up onto dvd's aswel.The pics go straight to the back up drive-copy n paste the folder and the pics get puts to dvd about once a week.

With these portable units do they actualy copy the images? Or do they work like cutting and pasting files on a pc?