SD card to SD card transfer?

[Xavier Barker]

The problem with netbooks is that they are inherently low-end machines and as such they have low life spans.  That might be 15-24 months in ideal conditions, the absence of which is the motivation for purchasing something portable here anyway.  Very few are fitted with solid state drives, certainly none in the 300-800 range you're talking here.  This is a pretty important consideration.  I'm not a field worker, I'm a technician and I support hundreds of these devices in victorian schools and they have an outrageously high failure rate.  If you were taking any sort of backup device off-grid and out of a controlled environment, you want solid-state storage, not spinning discs. I wonder if there's a  good reason for not following the path of other fieldworkers and exploring the benefits of the iPad:
http://marcalansperber.com/blog/2010/07/14/duke-global-health-institute-dghi-pilots-ipad-as-a-fieldwork-research-tool-and-im-involved/
http://www.apple.com/ipad/pompeii/
http://www.cultofmac.com/ipad-makes-an-ideal-computer-for-archaeology/60451

The specs of the iPad weigh up pretty well against any netbook and they occupy the same price bracket.  The iPad has a better battery, better screen, no spinning parts to fail, more easily weatherproofed and is far more portable. 

Cheers,
Xavier



On 12/10/2010, at 12:55 PM, John Olstad wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Agree with Ric (Hi Ric!), netbook with solar charger http://www.powerfilmsolar.com/ 
> 
> I'm leaving next month for a between 6 and 9-month fieldwork trip to a remote atoll with no access to electricity whatsoever.  Even this situation is not a no-laptop fieldwork situation.  I'm using the lenovo x201s which is a fully-powered laptop with a 12-hour battery.  My electronics are all charged by a car battery that is kept topped up by solar panels.  There are also cheaper laptops by ASUS that have 11-hour batteries.
> 
> That might sound like a cumbersome set-up, but I'm telling you it works and I'm not one of the first ones to do it by a longshot:)
> 
> Flash cards are pretty resilient (DOA or last forever so make sure to test beforehand), but if you are really worried about it failing, you could record to magnetic tape (i.e. cassette tape).
> 
> Good luck,
> John Olstad
> 
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Xavier Barker <meibitobure.gaunibwe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Did this go through?
> 
> Hi Andrea,
> 
> There are indeed SD card duplicators.  Depending on your volume, you might want to look at http://www.vconsole.com/client/.  If you're only doing 1-to-1 duplication, you might be best off finding a USB bridge which will let you back up SD cards (and other flash memory types) straight onto a USB device.  The USB device might be a series of flash devices or it might be a solid-state HDD in a ruggedised external enclosure.   THe difference is that the duplicator is at about $7000, the USB bridge is about $30.  There was, about 5 years ago, a portable SD cloning device from Panasonic but I'm not sure it made it to market.  You can then get small Pelican cases to weatherproof and shockproof everything.
> 
> Cheers,
> Xavier
> 
> On 12/10/2010, at 8:28 AM, Andrea L. Berez wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Hello list,
>> 
>> I am investigating options for transferring data from one SD card to another without the use of a computer intermediary (think no-laptop fieldwork). There must be some small device that can both read from and write to SD cards. Any recommendations, or barring such a device, and suggestions for work-arounds?
>> 
>> Best to all,
>> Andrea
>> -----------------------------
>> Andrea Berez
>> PhD candidate, Dept. of Linguistics
>> University of California, Santa Barbara
>> http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~aberez/
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

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