Portable hard drive vs USB thumb drive

I am looking for a solution to transfer photos when I am doing editing out in the field. With the USB thumb drives getting to be larger capacity, would that be a better option than getting a portable hard drive?

I rarely use either, so I am unsure of the pros and cons of both devices, so I am hoping to get some real world advice from those who have used both.

What I am looking to do is:

-take photos from SD card and transferring them to my computer.
-edit photos and export them.
-transfer those photos to desktop for storage.

Based on that what is my best option? I am also open to other suggestions that fit the bill. Thanks.

Why not just copy them across the network?

I'm currently using a compact 1 GB USB 3 hard drive for this purpose. I'm supposing that it is cheaper, bigger and faster than a thumb drive. I have not done side-by-side comparisons, though.

(I also have a 64GB thumb drive to use for photo backup while non trips - I should run some tests.)

For what you are doing it doesn't seem like read/write speed performance is critical, so you should just get whatever is cheaper for the capacity that you need. I personally use an SSD with SATA to USB3.0 adapter because they were a faster and bigger capacity was available v. thumb drives when I bought it. What I hear is that there are now thumb drives with fast read/write speeds.

personally i would use thumb drive but if away for more than 2 days i can see that it would fill up very quickly. I would think an external 2.5 inch drive would be best. you can pick up 1tb drives for less than £60 here in the uk.

Would anyone recommend cloud storage?

Say I am on my desktop, editing photos in lightroom, but then for whatever reason I leave, and want to edit those same photos on my laptop at the library or something. How could I make that work without importing photos twice?

Thumb drive have gotten to be quite large. Kingston makes the DataTraveler HyperX Predator at 1TB and it is USB 3.0. It is expensive, $700 as I recall, and no keychain! So chose a suitable size of either device and then make certain both are USB 3.0, then chose based on price and a reliable brand.

I would choose the put an SSD into an external USB 3.0 enclosure for lots and lots of data storage with none of the mechanical vulnerability of a spinning storage device, and transfer speeds approaching that of an internal SATA harddrive. For portability and pocketability and low cost, it is hard to beat USB memory stick, though! An alternative is to use SDHC memory card, if both laptop and home PC have the integrated SDHC reader (which avoids the need to carry around a card reader, too).

Use a portable HD. USB sticks are about the same cost as an sd/cf card, in which case you might as well just buy more sd/cf cards!

the flying moose wrote in post #17945301
Would anyone recommend cloud storage?

Say I am on my desktop, editing photos in lightroom, but then for whatever reason I leave, and want to edit those same photos on my laptop at the library or something. How could I make that work without importing photos twice?

I use an external, USB hard drive specifically for this. I have both my images and library all on a 2TB USB drive that I can just pack up and go (including my Lightroom installation and registration files). That way, I can plug into any machine I can access when/if I need to edit files. Cloud storage is something I intend to get set up for backing up my files, but I haven't found a great solution yet. For the amount of files I need stored, it would take weeks to upload to the services or require sending a physical drive through the mail; so I haven't moved on that portion yet.

But, I find keeping a "working" drive with current files with me to be a useful tool. I back those files up to a couple of different backup drives after every 2-3 shoots or if I have a particular shoot that I need to make sure I don't lose. 1 drive at home to archive all past files and one offsite that I only bring to the house to do the backup, so that I have one offsite if disaster hits.

Snydremark wrote in post #17945857
Cloud storage is something I intend to get set up for backing up my files, but I haven't found a great solution yet. For the amount of files I need stored, it would take weeks to upload to the services or require sending a physical drive through the mail; so I haven't moved on that portion yet.

Just bite the bullet and get it started. If you started weeks ago it would be done by now! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and blah blah...

If you don't want to spend the cash on sending a physical drive in, taking the time to upload is your only option. Only thing to worry about is if you have data caps.

I use a portable Transcend 2TB HD (weight: 260gr with the short USB 3.0 cable) and don't even consider cloud solutions, because I am so often completely without an internet connection in the field or on fairly expensive and/or slow metered connections abroad when I need backups most.

nordlysBW wrote in post #17946987
I use a portable Transcend 2TB HD (weight: 260gr with the short USB 3.0 cable) and don't even consider cloud solutions, because I am so often completely without an internet connection in the field or on fairly expensive and/or slow metered connections abroad when I need backups most.

^
I have stayed at hotels in Europe whose internet speeds would not even support a Skype VOICE connection! I cannot imagine trying to depend upon the Cloud under those conditions.

And only SOME hotels even offer higher speeds at a king's ransom, even if you were willing to pay more. I could not log in to check in for my flight from my hotel room, I had to go downstairs to the business center to check in with my airline.

The Cloud under such conditions...gimme a break! And I was not in some third world countries...near the Paris airport, and in Essen in northern Germany for both those above experiences.

the flying moose wrote in post #17945052
I am looking for a solution to transfer photos when I am doing editing out in the field. With the USB thumb drives getting to be larger capacity, would that be a better option than getting a portable hard drive?

I rarely use either, so I am unsure of the pros and cons of both devices, so I am hoping to get some real world advice from those who have used both.

What I am looking to do is:

-take photos from SD card and transferring them to my computer.
-edit photos and export them.
-transfer those photos to desktop for storage.

Based on that what is my best option? I am also open to other suggestions that fit the bill. Thanks.

If you do this per photoshoot, then USB flash drive is a much better IMO. Reason being the capacity you need isn't too large, and you will be doing transfer often. USB flash drive is a lot faster than 2.5" HDD. USB is dirty cheap today even for a fast USB3.0 drive. And NO, USB thumb drive is no where as expansive as CF, not even close.

If you do this once a while when the files accumulateate enough, then HDD. Flash drive is still expansive at high capacity

Just over 2 years ago, I bought a couple of name-brand (not Western Digital) external 500GB USB 3 hard drives. I used them as occasional backups, but both of them have now failed... Just sayin'