Digital Foci Photo Safe II provides on-the-road image backup

[David Rasnake]

When it comes to backing up your photos on the road, there's a new game in town: the Digital Foci Photo Safe II.

Digital Foci's 80GB and 160GB harddrive-based image backup solutions let you quickly and easily transfer photos directly from any common memory card type – CF, SD/SDHC, Memory Stick, or xD-Picture Card – via it's built in card reader.

The entire contents of a memory card are backed up to the Photo Safe's drive with the press of a single button. Transfer rates of up to 5MB/s mean the Photo Safe takes less than four minutes to copy the entire contents of a full 1GB card.

According to Digital Foci's press release, "Photo Safe II copies all file formats (including RAW images and videos), in their original file name and file structure. Its icon backlit LED screen shows key system information, including operational status, battery life, remaining hard drive space, and active partition (Photo Safe II supports multiple hard drive partitions)."

The Photo Safe can be directly connected to a computer via its USB 2.0 port, allowing photos to be transfered directly from the Photo Safe to a Mac or PC.

Powered by a lithium-ion battery, the Photo Safe is charged via either an external charger or the USB connection. On a full charge, the device provides roughly an hour and a half of on-the-road transfer time.

The Photo Safe II went on sale this week. Suggested retail prices are $139 for the 80GB model, and $169 for the 160GB version.

[leaftye]

David, do you think this thing would be able to backup several full 8 GB cards on a single charge? Your description indicates that it would, and quite easily, but that's so much better than anything else I've heard of that I have to ask.

[CalebSchmerge]

It sounds like you will get around 25 GB of data transfer from a single charge.

[David Rasnake]

That's what the press release leads me to believe. I can try to confirm...

dr

[David Rasnake]

Here's what the press release says:

"User-replaceable Lithium-Ion battery with battery life of approximately 1½ hours"

I'll check on that with the Digital Foci PR folks to see if there are qualifications.

dr

[sgt101]

I'd like one of these with a review display - just something that showed that the files on the device were ok and readable. A file name just doesn't give me the assurance that I need that the photo is on there and ok (computers lie!!!)

Anything like that around - short of a laptop ?

And cheap too!!!

ipods just let you see the file names, do any of the other mp3 players let you review images first?

[David Rasnake]

Anything like that around - short of a laptop ?

And cheap too!!!

Nope. To my knowledge, you can have one or the other, but not both. Epson makes a line of photo storage viewers for professional photographers, but even the cheapest of these (the Epson P4000, I believe) is around $500. For that price, you could just buy a laptop.

dr