vininnj2u Loc: Whiting, New Jersey, USA

As I have mentioned in a previous post. I am heading out West for a wedding in Colorado and then heading to the West coast for extensive traveling and photo ops. We will be gone for at least one month and will be taking lots and lots of pictures. ( MY wife also shoots) I always shoot in RAW and the wife in Jpeg. The question is I have purchased a laptop with a 1TB hard drive and I am afraid of running out of space. (Don't want to keep files on SD cards). Do you think 1TB (actually about 875 Gigs after needed programs are loaded) is going to be enough if I shoot in RAW and the wife in Jpeg or should I convert to Jpeg also, seeing as they will take up much less space. I am aware of the negatives of not shooting in Raw when it comes to post processing. I have seen people using a small external hard drive and would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you might have on them. Don't want to lug around one of my big external hard drives. Thanks in advance.

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Lets say you shoot 200 pics/day, and that can be a lot. That means over a 1 month period 6000 pics.
How big are your RAW files?
I am one who doesn't own a lap top and uses two of those smaller drives (with a in-built card reader) and keeps the original cards as a third back up.

CO

I would think that's plenty of storage. I often burn photos to M-Disc DVDs. I have slim external DVD burner. M-Disc DVDs are the most stable type of DVD there is. They don't use the traditional dye layer that can degrade over time. The M-Discs have a mineral based layer. The data is permanently etched to the layer. Tests have concluded that they will keep data stable for 1000 years.

easy8

You should be fine but if worried get a external HDTV 3 tb is only a hundred bucks

easy8

You should be fine but if worried get a external HD 3 tb is only a hundred bucks

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

I really don't think you will run out of space but I would have that 2-4Tb portable hard drive simply to back up what I'm taking. Always good to have an extra copy.

jethro779 Loc: Tucson, AZ

Buy a WD My Cloud Mirror external drive. You can set it up to hold your(you & wife's)photos. Set your laptop up to remotely download to your My Cloud Drive and you are good to go. All you need is a wi fi connection. I also have my cell phone set up to be a wi fi hotspot and can send to the My Cloud from my phone. I have two of them and used them last November when I went to Nebraska & Wyoming to chase UP 844.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

It's a good thing this was double posted because I was going to suggest you get two external hard drives. When it comes to backup you can never be two paranoid.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Probably enough storage. Determine the file sizes and do the math. Its not that complicated.

10MPlayer Loc: California

You can back everything up to your home system from anywhere in the world where you have a wifi connection.

Lowrider Loc: Kennesaw, GA

You can back up to Google's Cloud for 100 bucks a year you get another Terabyte. Better to be in/on the cloud then at home when lightning strikes or your house burns down. How many people unplug their desktops when they go out of town?

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I generally archive my images on a 4TB mirrored RAID plus on a 1 or 2 TB small (2.5") drive. Since I live in two places and switch month by month, I keep the RAID drives in Japan and carry the small drives on the road and store them in China. The little drives work brilliantly, require no external power and are totally portable. If I were you I would buy a couple of those and not even store images on the HDD of the computer. In that case you can get a smaller but much faster SSD in the machine for the same price as a 1TB HDD. Since switching to a SSD I will never go back since it is so much faster in booting and loading programs.

Szalajj Loc: Salem, NH

You don't say what operating system your new laptop is running.

Windows 7 has gotten to be a real hardware hog with updates over the last year. I have 2 computers that are virtually now just large paperweights because they ran out of room for any more updates. I'm sure that Windows 10 isn't far behind in the amount of hardware space it's going to need for all of the software updates that they're forcing on us in the background! Laptops are not designed to store large amounts of data!

That being said, definitely get at least one or two portable hard drives for your trip, and download your shots to them. They're small, compact, and lightweight. Less than 3.5" × 4" and ultra thin at under 1/2" thick in size. They'll fit into a Case Logic flash drive case for protection! I run two of them at the same time. Both are 2 TB WD "My Passport" Ultra drives, that I bought at Wal-Mart for under $100 each, I think they were around $60 +/-.

One is my working drive, the second one is my back-up. Downloads from my camera go onto both drives right out of the camera. A little bit of white-out labeled the back-up drive!

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Purchase a lot of memory cards for your camera, regardless of what you said. Number them. The keep notes as to which cards were used on what days. along with specific notes about certain exposures, if needed. Download everything when you get back home. I'd leave the laptop at home.
--Bob