Backup photos and videos on the go, preferably without a notebook? This requires special hardware. In addition to commercial products, we also demonstrated the clever self-built functions based on Raspberry Pi.
Drone pilots, amateur photographers, divers: What they have in common is that they rarely have a PC to save photos quickly. This is a special niche market for devices that combine data storage and card readers for backup anytime, anywhere. We reviewed the finished products and DIY solutions of this guide.
Only for smartphones: Asus Travelair AC
's simplest solution should be Asus' Travelair AC. However, the biggest limitation is that you can only backup from your smartphone. The device is reminiscent of white ice hockey, and provides 32 GB of internal storage, which can be expanded by an SD card. Small devices can work on 2.4 or 5 GHz WLAN. To use it, you need the free Aidrive app.
Travelair AC can directly communicate with mobile phones in its own WLAN, or it can connect to existing networks. For example, you can open the visitor box and display a picture. Yes, the equipment is limited, but very cheap, less than 25 euros. This is an easy way to quickly back up pictures and videos from a local smartphone.
For example, if you have installed drone or action camera video on your smartphone and want to have an additional backup location anytime, anywhere, this makes sense. Unfortunately, the micro USB port is only used to charge the internal battery and cannot directly access data from the PC.
Big and expensive: Lacie Rugged Boss
If you are a serious person, you must study in depth. Then you will get the so-called boss drive from Lacie. Boss does not represent any Deutschrapper, but represents the Set on Backup solution. The advantages of these drives: an SSD or HDD in the enclosure, and the intelligence needed to back up data directly on site. There is also a power bank that not only keeps the hard drive running, but also charges external devices such as smartphones (providing applications for the hard drive).
Lacie offers two versions of hard drives. The cheap Lacie DJI co-pilot provides 2 TB HDD to prevent collision. If you want to use trendy orange instead of gray, you can use a 1 TB sturdy SSD-twice the price. Both products provide a three-year data rescue service and a one-month free membership of Adobe Cloud.
In the test, we like the speed of Lacie Rugged Boss SSD. The Micro SD card with 16.9 GB photos saved the device in less than 7:30 minutes. The hard disk is so smart that it can only perform incremental backups. All work steps are controlled by a single button on the front, and the integrated display informs you of progress or data, such as battery power and remaining space. The data is finally neatly sorted according to the folders on the hard drive, and the data can be read out on Mac or PC using Lightning, USB-A or USB-C.
Alternatives: Using Raspberry Pi to make homemade
For amateurs, the cheaper alternative is based on the mobile backup system of Raspberry Pi, there are many instructions on the network, an actively developed solution is Little Backup Box. The idea is that the Raspberry Pi automatically copies all data from the inserted SD memory card to a USB memory stick.
Now, the project brings it into an impressive feature pack. Little Backup Box not only has different backup modes (manually or through the integrated web interface), but also can directly transfer the images in the compatible camera to the USB memory stick in the compatible camera, can handle multiple SD cards or in the integrated web The data is displayed on the server.
The small parts box itself is very flexible in terms of parts selection. In the forum of the project, different users are working on solutions based on Raspberry Pi Zero W. If you want to increase the speed, you should switch to Raspberry Pi 4. As always, you need a micro SD for the operating system and scripts, a card reader for photos, a data storage device, and a mobile power bank to provide enough power anytime, anywhere. If you need information about the status, you can integrate different displays. The small spare box forum is very active and is a good contact.
Conclusion
Obviously, mobile backup of SD cards is a very small field. Well, you usually bring a laptop to back up data. Or, you only use multiple SD memory cards and allocate the risk of losing data accordingly. However, if you are taking photos at least semi-professionally, you should consider investing in an off-the-shelf solution or building at least a Litle Backup Box.
Even if you use a large USB memory stick, the price of the latter should be less than 100 euros. On the other hand, TravelairAC is a good head. This is not to keep up with the pace of large backup solutions, but it can be used anytime, anywhere.
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