Enclosure with SD reader

[Thready]

I see external drives with SD readers, but they either don't have battery power or they're very expensive.

 

I have some internal 2.5 HDDs I put in enclosures so I don't need the drives, I just need something that can I can dump my files into from an SD card and preferably one that I can power with either a battery or my car's AUX cigarette lighter port. Are those reliable to power electronics? 

[Biohazard777]

13 minutes ago, Thready said:

I see external drives with SD readers, but they either don't have battery power or they're very expensive.

 

I have some internal 2.5 HDDs I put in enclosures so I don't need the drives, I just need something that can I can dump my files into from an SD card and preferably one that I can power with either a battery or my car's AUX cigarette lighter port. Are those reliable to power electronics? 

So you want an HDD enclosure that is battery powered and has an SD slot in which you would put your card in and the files would magically move to the HDD?
You do realize moving files requires processing power? Two dumb storage mediums can't do that... You aren't looking for an enclosure, you are looking for a battery powered SoC that can be a host for both SATA and USB devices, that happens to have a shape of an HDD enclosure heh.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Take a look at these https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Stand-Alone-Data-Storage/ci/3369/N/4000227848

 

But there not super cheap, and Id just get a laptop here. 

[Thready]

On 8/21/2021 at 7:13 PM, Biohazard777 said:

So you want an HDD enclosure that is battery powered and has an SD slot in which you would put your card in and the files would magically move to the HDD?
You do realize moving files requires processing power? Two dumb storage mediums can't do that... You aren't looking for an enclosure, you are looking for a battery powered SoC that can be a host for both SATA and USB devices, that happens to have a shape of an HDD enclosure heh.

WD has one so they exist, but WD's is expensive

 

[Biohazard777]

52 minutes ago, Thready said:

WD has one so they exist, but WD's is expensive

Yeah I didn't say they don't exists, just saying that what your looking for is a bit more complicated than a regular enclosure, the market for such devices is far smaller (especially when you add battery powered requirement) and all of that will result in a higher price tag.
Also, lets say are a travel photographer, would you trust the device so much that you would blindly do a copy and then format the card? If my paycheck depended on that footage... I would not.
The point being, instead of looking for highly specialized hardware - why not use regular hardware? Like a small laptop or if you've got a phone with stupid amount of storage then you could use USB Type-C SD card reader and offload to you phone, or since you said it would be acceptable for the device to work from a car cigarette lighter you could get an USB SD Card reader + a regular external SSD and hook those up to your android car multimedia system (200-300$ if you don't have a system like that already).

[jasonditz]

sounds like it could be done with a raspberry pi setup.

[Thready]

18 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Yeah I didn't say they don't exists, just saying that what your looking for is a bit more complicated than a regular enclosure, the market for such devices is far smaller (especially when you add battery powered requirement) and all of that will result in a higher price tag.
Also, lets say are a travel photographer, would you trust the device so much that you would blindly do a copy and then format the card? If my paycheck depended on that footage... I would not.
The point being, instead of looking for highly specialized hardware - why not use regular hardware? Like a small laptop or if you've got a phone with stupid amount of storage then you could use USB Type-C SD card reader and offload to you phone, or since you said it would be acceptable for the device to work from a car cigarette lighter you could get an USB SD Card reader + a regular external SSD and hook those up to your android car multimedia system (200-300$ if you don't have a system like that already).

I guess a battery powered one wouldnt work then. I use 2 SD cards and I don't delete either until my photos are backed up to my 2 backup HDDs, my Synology, and Amazon and Idrive. But I was thinking I could just dump my SD card onto an HDD maybe powered by my car's aux USB port for an extra backup after a shoot which would also make it faster loading them onto my PC since SD cards can take 10 minutes. I'm thinking of extra redundancy in the field is all.

[Biohazard777]

4 hours ago, Thready said:

I guess a battery powered one wouldnt work then. I use 2 SD cards and I don't delete either until my photos are backed up to my 2 backup HDDs, my Synology, and Amazon and Idrive. But I was thinking I could just dump my SD card onto an HDD maybe powered by my car's aux USB port for an extra backup after a shoot which would also make it faster loading them onto my PC since SD cards can take 10 minutes. I'm thinking of extra redundancy in the field is all.

If it gonna be used as an additional backup then I guess some lower cost alternatives can also be considered, like the SSK Portable NAS:

Spoiler

* Don't own it personally, so if you decide to go this route do your own research about it!

https://www.amazon.com/SSK-Portable-External-Wireless-Auto-Backup/dp/B07T3KD58D/

USB SD Card reader isn't included, but it does have an USB port that can be a host for the card reader and then I guess you can use your phone copy files from the SD Card to the portable drive. WD has a similar thing, that does have an integrated SD card reader but that is two times

I wouldn't trust it to be the only place where the footage is stored, but as a backup I guess it will do.
And I certainly wouldn't pay 500$ for that 2TB WD thing that has an integrated SD card reader hah:

At that price point, I'd much rather get a small / 2in1 laptop.

 

Or like @jasonditzsuggested, if you don't mind putting in some effort, you could setup a Raspberry Pi.
- 60$ for the Rpi 4B (because it has USB 3.0) with 4GB of RAM

- 25$ for the cheapest 3.5" resistive 480x320 touch screen + case, so that you can interact with it... though the user experience would probably suck and you might want to consider a capacitive 5" or 7" with higher resolution but also higher price (70-120$ for screen + case combo).
- 10$ for UHS-I 32GB high endurance SD card from which Pi would run the OS

- 15$ for a solid USB SD Card reader

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115$ is the bare minimum you'd need to spend

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- 30$ for a power bank that can deliver 3A (which Pi will need when under full load + USB devices connected to it)

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145$ for bare minimum + battery powered
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Or you could power it directly from a car charger, again it has to be able to deliver 3A, also keep in mind that you wouldn't want to start your car while PI is running.

Lastly 50$ - ???$ for an external drive with at least 1TB capacity. HDDs are cheaper but an SSD would be a lot more resilient to vibration and drops, price would depend on that + capacity of course.