Backing up Photos while Traveling

In the lead up to my recent trip to Costa Rica, I looked back into how to back up photos while traveling. I already have a camera with two SD cards, so that wasn’t my concern. Rather, on top of my usual clumsiness, and with it the possibility of losing my camera over a cliff or something, I was also going to a country where theft of my equipment could be a greater possibility (the Government of Canada and the US State Department issued travel advisories recently for Costa Rica, specifically citing crime as an issue).

I was not impressed with the options I already knew about: bringing a laptop, backing up to “the cloud,” or a portable hard drive with an SD card reader. I don’t own a laptop (I find them expensive for what they offer, as well as added weight and something else to get stolen), I couldn’t guarantee a good internet connect, and those hard drives/SSDs with built-in SD readers, like the Gnarbox 2, are absurdly expensive ($650 CDN for a 256GB hard drive – are you kidding me?!?!?!?).

I despaired of finding a solution that didn’t offend my cheapskate sensibilities, until I stumbled across a humble card reader with a USB-C plug, which I could plug into my phone. A number of these card readers have ports for both SD and Micro SD cards; I settled on this one from Uni, for about $15 CDN. I also got some Micro SD cards for backups. Depending on the size of Micro SD card you want for backup, you can get 32 GB cards for under $10 CDN to 256 GB cards for under $30 CDN.

There is, however, a bit of a technical snag. Larger SD and Micro SD cards use a newer drive format (called exFAT); I use an Android phone, and until recently Android did not support the exFAT format, only the older FAT32. What this means, in practice, is that many (most?) Android phones won’t be able to access larger (64GB and larger) SD and Micro SD cards – without a little help. Even without operating system support, there are apps on the Google Play store which can allow the phone to read the larger SD cards (I used this one, which cost me just over $6 CDN).

To recap: you can get a backup solution that piggybacks on your smartphone for around $50 CDN. I splurged on a case for them which brought my total up to about $70 CDN – far cheaper than the Gnarbox-type solution above. The reader, cards and case are very small and portable, and you can easily conceal them in luggage, in your room, or even on your person when traveling.

So how does it work in practice? It’s all plug-and-play, as easy as copying files and folders on your computer. The app I used automatically loaded up when I plugged in the reader and memory cards, so I didn’t even have to search around for the files app. I was a little concerned about how warm the reader got while using it, but it never got so hot that it proved to be a real problem. But every night or two I spent 5-10 minutes backing up my files and tucked the reader and backup cards into their hiding spot afterward.

To sum up: if you’ve got a smartphone, this is a good and inexpensive solution.