Micro SD to Hard Drive Copy Automatic

J

JJ91284

Gawd
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Mar 28, 2007
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Planning to go on a back packing trip that I'd like to document. I'm taking my Mobius HD camera and will be recording in 1080p for those 7 days. I figure every day I'll probably have 12 hrs of record time which means I'll be recording about 100 GB's a day. I have a custom battery setup I made that utilizes lithium batteries and weighs under a pound which will power the camera for the duration of the trip along with a solar panel to supplement some other devices. The issue I'm having is how to store all the data. I really don't want to buy 15 or so 64+ gb micro sd cards. I already have two 64 GB micro SD cards so I'm looking for a way where a 1 tb hard drive or something which will automatically copy the data from a usb or from a micro sd card. This way no computer is needed. I have a few spare 1tb Crucial SSD drives sitting I could re-purpose for this trip since they are just sitting. I'd like to try and keep the weight to a minimum since my camera setup right now with batteries is about 1 lbs and I'm trying to keep my pack around 40 pounds.

Let's hear some ideas.
 
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The other alternatives, which are also going to be much more expensive than that WD, are the Sanho Hyperdrive or Nexto Di storage drives. I believe they'd allow you to swap in your own drives if you wanted to not have a moving parts (spinning disks), but from what I remember when I looked at them awhile back, they're fairly slow to copy files.
 
from my experience with photograph is that i would much rather transfer something like that with a windows computer that is running terracopy. I have lost several images from bad copies and if your copying hour long videos its very likely in my experience that the video could brick in the transfer.

just saying.
 
Blue Fox said:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1330

That will do exactly what you want. Has a built in battery and you can set it to automatically dump the contents of any SD card you insert. Been using one for a while now to back up photos when I travel internationally.
Click to expand...

Is the wireless the only one that will dump SD contents to the drive with no interface? I would love to get something for my mom as she just puts the SD cards in a binder when they get full cause copying on a computer is too complicated, but I don't want her to loose everything over time.
 
westrock2000 said:
Is the wireless the only one that will dump SD contents to the drive with no interface? I would love to get something for my mom as she just puts the SD cards in a binder when they get full cause copying on a computer is too complicated, but I don't want her to loose everything over time.
Click to expand...

-_- How many cards does she have? But at least she na use the camera i guess....we got lucky and got my mom to learn how to text and send emails...she can only use an ipad :/ Before that she never touched a computer. :/
 
westrock2000 said:
Is the wireless the only one that will dump SD contents to the drive with no interface? I would love to get something for my mom as she just puts the SD cards in a binder when they get full cause copying on a computer is too complicated, but I don't want her to loose everything over time.
Click to expand...
It's the only one that I'm aware of from WD. If you don't need as much space, they used to have a 500GB model and you might be able to get that for less on eBay or the likes.
 
Get 128G SD Cards (Mobius HD supposedly supports up to that size, and maybe even larger). 7 of them (one for each day) will probably weigh less and take up less room than some sort of other backup solution. The cost delta, I don't know.
 
Blue Fox said:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1330

That will do exactly what you want. Has a built in battery and you can set it to automatically dump the contents of any SD card you insert. Been using one for a while now to back up photos when I travel internationally.
Click to expand...

That's a FANTASTIC tip -- didn't know such a (relatively) cheap consumer device existed. Do you know if it does (or there is any way to hack it) to do something like verifying the files copied OK?

I have an ancient EEE PC 901 on Lubuntu that I cram into my backpack on travel/shooting trips along with an externally cased 250GB SSD. Probably time to move on. I'm guessing with a powered OTG USB hub, you could simply use an Android phone to mediate a card-reader to portable drive copy with whatever verification and organization measures you needed.

Some of the Raspberry Pi clone SBCs feature a SATA port and USB 3.0; they all allow small touch LCDs (480x320 range). Might be a nice little project assuming a standard USB 5V/2A battery pack can power it all.
 
izx said:
That's a FANTASTIC tip -- didn't know such a (relatively) cheap consumer device existed. Do you know if it does (or there is any way to hack it) to do something like verifying the files copied OK?

I have an ancient EEE PC 901 on Lubuntu that I cram into my backpack on travel/shooting trips along with an externally cased 250GB SSD. Probably time to move on. I'm guessing with a powered OTG USB hub, you could simply use an Android phone to mediate a card-reader to portable drive copy with whatever verification and organization measures you needed.

Some of the Raspberry Pi clone SBCs feature a SATA port and USB 3.0; they all allow small touch LCDs (480x320 range). Might be a nice little project assuming a standard USB 5V/2A battery pack can power it all.
Click to expand...

or a company like western digital could do its job and inform the consumer through its marketing mix of the importance of file verification and release that in one of its products....but again....i need to check myself and my expectations of society actually working :/
 
I spoke too soon. The WD Passport Wireless DOES run linux, and it's fairly easy to set up your own distro on it via chroot (leaving the WD and its basic functions still working). This guy got Debian/Ubuntu running on it . Not just CLI, via VNC he can get a full-fledged desktop on say a smartphone, but it's not very snappy, of course.
 
izx said:
I spoke too soon. The WD Passport Wireless DOES run linux, and it's fairly easy to set up your own distro on it via chroot (leaving the WD and its basic functions still working). This guy got Debian/Ubuntu running on it . Not just CLI, via VNC he can get a full-fledged desktop on say a smartphone, but it's not very snappy, of course.
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neat...i am ignorant on linux stuff in general so is there an easy way to implement a checksum copy? (for the ignorant crowd like me?)

like a very barney style video walkthrough or a self updater?
 
SomeGuy133 said:
neat...i am ignorant on linux stuff in general so is there an easy way to implement a checksum copy? (for the ignorant crowd like me?)
like a very barney style video walkthrough or a self updater?
Click to expand...

There MAY be. That's something that needs to be investigated. I'm considering getting an used model to play with.

But good news, everyone! Disassembly shows that it uses a standard SATA connection/drive, so unless there's a vendor lock built into the firmware, it should be VERY easy to replace this with one of those $220 or so 1TB SSDs, making the drive shockproof

Disassembly Picture:
 
Oh, it appears WD by default gives you SSH access to the drive (over its wireless connection). So it should be fairly easy to write a script that does the full copy/verify routine. A casual user would simply insert the card, login over SSH using a smartphone/laptop and the results would be there on the screen.
 
izx said:
There MAY be. That's something that needs to be investigated. I'm considering getting an used model to play with.

But good news, everyone! Disassembly shows that it uses a standard SATA connection/drive, so unless there's a vendor lock built into the firmware, it should be VERY easy to replace this with one of those $220 or so 1TB SSDs, making the drive shockproof

Disassembly Picture:
Click to expand...

izx said:
Oh, it appears WD by default gives you SSH access to the drive (over its wireless connection). So it should be fairly easy to write a script that does the full copy/verify routine. A casual user would simply insert the card, login over SSH using a smartphone/laptop and the results would be there on the screen.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

question...if i mailed you one to test would you be able to install an SSD and get that copy and verify to work?
 
SomeGuy133 said:
Thanks.

question...if i mailed you one to test would you be able to install an SSD and get that copy and verify to work?
Click to expand...

Opening these externals can sometimes be destructive, and playing around with its firmware carries certain risks too. So thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'd really not prefer to play around with someone else's hard earned $$$ given the downsides.

HOWEVER, I just ordered a "Very Good" used 1TB version from Amazon Warehouse and it should be here before the weekend.

Over the weekend I hope to have enough time to figure out (1) gently disassemble it so that upon reassembly there are no signs which would void warranty (2) get an SSD working instead of the HDD, copying over any necessary partitions and confirm there is no vendor lock in the firmware (3) Verify that all normal out-of-the-box functions work normally with the SSD and (4) Investigate the drives operating system, via the provided SSH support to see what level of access it provides. Is there a way a custom script could be notified when an SD card is inserted? Can the physical buttons trigger a user script? I suspect the default OS will be locked down.
 
izx said:
Opening these externals can sometimes be destructive, and playing around with its firmware carries certain risks too. So thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'd really not prefer to play around with someone else's hard earned $$$ given the downsides.

HOWEVER, I just ordered a "Very Good" used 1TB version from Amazon Warehouse and it should be here before the weekend.

Over the weekend I hope to have enough time to figure out (1) gently disassemble it so that upon reassembly there are no signs which would void warranty (2) get an SSD working instead of the HDD, copying over any necessary partitions and confirm there is no vendor lock in the firmware (3) Verify that all normal out-of-the-box functions work normally with the SSD and (4) Investigate the drives operating system, via the provided SSH support to see what level of access it provides. Is there a way a custom script could be notified when an SD card is inserted? Can the physical buttons trigger a user script? I suspect the default OS will be locked down.
Click to expand...

let me know how it goes...I am interested in this because i am going to Asia in at or right before April.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
let me know how it goes...I am interested in this because i am going to Asia in at or right before April.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. If you don't hear from me on this thread or just want an update or just want to prod me if I've been lazy, please feel free to PM me ;)
 
izx said:
That's a FANTASTIC tip -- didn't know such a (relatively) cheap consumer device existed. Do you know if it does (or there is any way to hack it) to do something like verifying the files copied OK?

I have an ancient EEE PC 901 on Lubuntu that I cram into my backpack on travel/shooting trips along with an externally cased 250GB SSD. Probably time to move on. I'm guessing with a powered OTG USB hub, you could simply use an Android phone to mediate a card-reader to portable drive copy with whatever verification and organization measures you needed.

Some of the Raspberry Pi clone SBCs feature a SATA port and USB 3.0; they all allow small touch LCDs (480x320 range). Might be a nice little project assuming a standard USB 5V/2A battery pack can power it all.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty certain it just uses dd and looks at timestamps and some sort of unique identifier (serial for example) of each SD card since it will do incremental copies. So, say you fill half your SD card, insert it, take it out and fill the rest, and then put it back in, it will only copy the new data when you insert it a second or subsequent time. It keeps track of multiple cards simultaneously and keeps each one in a unique folder. This allowed my girlfriend and I to easily know who took which photo.

As for verification, you get an LED indicator when copying. Since it does have WiFi, you can connect your phone to it and browse through the thing (albeit no previews for RAW). As you've discovered, WD does offer SSH access too and doesn't hide the fact. I haven't poked about much in there though since it worked fairly reliably for me and I didn't need to worry about everything being perfect as I don't delete photos on my SD cards ever and this was really just insurance in case my camera/card got lost or damaged.

I'm pretty certain you can have it perform certain functions upon finishing copying (or inserting the SD card) through the web interface. I'll go have a look later tonight. Oh, it works pretty well as a DLNA server too. Was great being able to stream movies to my phone on my flight back from Hong Kong last year. Overall, quite happy with the thing. I'll be taking it with me to Africa in a couple months since the return trip is 28 hours of plane time (plus 3 layovers). Would buy again.
 
Update: received the My Passport Wireless. SSH gives you root access. The good news is that copying from SD cards (and most other functions) are performed via shell scripts, so adding in some sort of verification should not require changing the OS or anything radical. Blue Fox : The copy is actually performed via rsync, hence the incremental backup.

The (possibly) bad news as yee245 mentioned is that there are reports of SSDs (or other drives) not working with newer models. Fortunately, mine has a very old firmware so if there's some kind of drive model/serial verification, we should be able to ferret it out. Also, there's a minimum 256GB requirement coded into the firmware, so the SSD must at least be that size.
 
Mine is about a year old and I haven't updated it at all, so let me know how that goes. Wouldn't mind swapping in a SSD for extra battery life myself.
 
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