Portable storage drive vs. additional compact flash cards?

[Jerry Vanderberg]

I already have two 256 MB compact flash cards but on an extended trip they fill up fast (especially with a new muscular 5 MP camera and taking of multiple avi video clips). So, does it make more sense to get additional flash cards (I note that prices are dropping) or go to a 1 GB portable storage device? I borrowed a jump drive from a friend to test out but the USB connector on it is exactly the same as the USB connector on the cable that comes with my camera (both are designed to plug into a USB port on a computer). Are there any USB bridging connectors that will allow me to plug the 2 together? Would a flash card reader (which is pretty cheap) help in transferring images from a compact flash card to a portable storage device?

[kb244]

You cant really plug the two devices together, you probally noticed any time you plug usb to something one end is usally a device, the other end usally the computer, and usally on the computer side are software drivers to recognize the device pluged in. Unfortunatly I dont know of any portible storage that will automaticly recognize a camera, or vice versa. There are those portible storage solutions that allow you to plug a memory card right into them. In my opinion if you have close to enough money to buy about a gigs worth of flash cards, pay just a tiny bit more to get one of those 10 to 20 GB photo jockeys, like the X-Drive or something like that. I have a 15GB Ipod, did get the media adapter for that, but had to return it as the media adapter for the ipod was horribly slow. I do have a spare 2GB laptop harddrive, so now I just gota find a cheap enough device, since most of those devices for that purpose take the 2.5" laptop HDDs.

[pradeep1]

If you have a 5MP camera, then consider this:

2 512 MB CF cards or 2 1.0 GB CF cards along with a 20 or 40GB X-Drive. That should carry you over on any trip. Also, I'd double on batteries....maybe 4 BP511's for your camera. On my G3, I figure I go through one battery pack for every 450 shots, or about 1GB of storage space.