Sometimes Little Things Can Make A Big Difference

Sandisk iXpand Flash Drive (click to enlarge)
Press Photo

If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know that I have been experimenting with traveling and leaving my large, heavy laptop computer at home.  I have been looking at ways to reduce my gear bulk, weight and cost as well as simplify my travel backup and editing process.  With that said, I still want to retain high image quality with my camera gear as well as be able to  maintain most of the capabilities and flexibility of a 15" laptop, backup hard drives and associated cords, etc. 

On my last road trip I took my 12.9" iPad Pro with the Apple pencil as a substitute.  you can read how well the iPad served me, pros and cons, here and here. For that initial foray into the "land of no laptop when traveling", at the end of each day I used an Apple SD Card to Lightning Connector (buy the new model as data transfer is a lot faster than the original) adapter to load my images into the iPad.  I then moved them from the iPad's Camera Roll into Lightroom CC (the old Lightroom Mobile), edited and saved a few back to the camera roll for immediate sharing.  All automatically synced with Apple's Cloud to be instantly transferred to Lightroom Classic on my home computer.  When I made more edits, the additional ones synced as well.  When I finished, I deleted the images from Lightroom CC (Mobile) as well as the iPad so as to free up available memory on the iPad and Apple's Cloud.  The full resolution RAW images remain in my desktop Lightroom Classic for when I returned home.  Pretty easy but I found a few issues, which I wrote about in those two posts I previously mentioned.

My normal routine has been to upload and import my day's images into Lightroom on my laptop with copies going to two small, USB powered portable hard drives.  Only then, when I had three copies successfully saved, would I reformat my SD card(s).  This is probably overkill with today's electronic reliability, but I feel better that I have my images in three different locations.  Additionally, I always kept one portable hard drive in a different location in case the backpack in which the laptop was carried was stolen or dropped.  Back to the iPad procedure.....

After deleting my daily images from the iPad Pro, I would have liked to reformat my SDXC card.  The new, fast UHS II cards (which both my cameras use) are pretty expensive and I don't have many of them.  However, that would have left only 1 copy of my images in my home computer.  Not good.  From here,  I figured I have a couple of options.  First, I could use a couple of my old, slow SD cards (not really used but brought along "just in case"), insert them into my camera and copy the RAW images from slot 1 to slot 2.  That gives me an extra copy.  In fact, I could copy the images onto two separate cards so I then would have three copies, two with me and a third at home.  That procedure ties up my camera and prevents me from charging my batteries until that backup has been accomplished.  Second, I could leave the images on the iPad instead of deleting them.  Or I could do a combination of both.  It might be difficult to leave my images on my iPad, however, if I'm on an extensive trip.  The images may surpass the available storage of the device.  Both of those methods would then give me potentially three copies.  However, there is one more option.

I did some research and found this little Sandisk iXpand Flash Drive.  You can find it here on Amazon.com and here from B and H.  There are other manufacturers that make similar devices.  From the image, you can see it has both a USB connector as well as a Lightning Connector.  Its speed of data transfer is USB 3.0, according to Sandisk.  It can be used with Apple computers as well as PCs.  It comes in 32gb-256gb memory capacities.  I bought the 128gb model.  Of course, being as cost conscious as I am, I didn't buy one until it was included in a sale of some sort and Amazon had these in one of their Gold Box Deals a week or so ago so I purchased one.

The Lightning Connector has a long enough neck so it securely fits into my iPad connector without a case interfering.  It fits securely.  The USB portion of the drive will slide out of the way and under the iPad.

I have to say so far it works perfectly.  After downloading the Sandisk app I can now easily transfer files to and from my iPad and to and from my computer.  I've had no issues at all.

With this little device, I can now move my images from my iPad to the flash drive effortlessly.  I can also move music and other files if I desire.  By doing so, I can now keep 3 copies of my images while traveling.  One copy on the Sandisk iXpand drive, one copy on an old SD card and the third in the Apple Cloud/Lightroom Classic.  When I return home, I can upload any images or files into my computer if necessary. I now no longer have to carry two portable backup hard drives to save separate copies of my images.

I plan to try this new system on my next road trip.  I'm sure I'll write about it and let everyone know what worked, what didn't work as well as I desired and how things can be improved.  Also, in the future, if I find any issues with using this device, I'll provide a follow-up post to alert everyone.  However, as I said in the title, sometimes its the little things that make a big difference.  

The Adventure Continues..... :-)

NEW! As of January 1st, I've started an Instagram feed. I'll be posting photos daily so please follow @dennisamook. Also, for more images check out my website: www.dennismook.com. Thank you. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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