Photographer/Content Creator's Essential - Travel Storage

Backing up your images/footage is a must, and it is an essential part of a travel photographer/content creator’s ecosystem. This is not going to be a long post as I thought of sharing an amazing solution with my fellow Photographers/Content Creators about on-the-go storage backup during travels.

Even until my last trip which was less than a month ago, I have been using WD My Passport Wireless Pro for

more than five years, which is a solid choice for travel backup! Its built-in Wi-Fi and battery make it really convenient for backing up photos and files on the go. I could quickly back up photos in the field without needing a laptop, its inbuilt card reader and wireless transfer capabilities really streamline my workflow. However, there are a few cons that I would mention:

1. It is pretty bulky and heavy.

2. It is not cheap (I got the HDD version and didn’t get the SSD version which would be about more than double the price)

3. The WD app syncing and interface wasn’t that friendly.

4. The HDD version transfer rate is not that fast.

The biggest drawback came recently upon an announcement made on their website which is.

“Yes, support for the WD My Passport Wireless Pro app will end on December 31, 2024. Western Digital (WD) no longer provides technical support or software updates for the My Passport Wireless product. However, you can continue to use the product and related applications.

WD retires software products that are no longer consistent with their customer experience ecosystem.”

I was not particularly happy with this news as it meant that my WD My Passport Wireless Pro for travel backup (without bringing a laptop) had been rendered useless! I was upset as it was still in good condition and a working product but because of this news, it would not be able to function as what it had been for the past five years.

Here goes my journey of embarking on a new solution, I went to many shops and researched online for an alternative, but they were mostly phasing out this kind of system (which I do not know why) I found an alternative called UnifyDrive UT2 but it was under Kickstarter.

I’ve had very bad experiences with Kickstarter and moreover this was essentially the same method/system of backing up on-the-go, it had a huge storage of 16T which I did not need, and it was a bit on the high side in price. Initially, I thought this was the best solution I have found, but I didn’t like the need of an app again and what if this company decides to kill the app like Western Digital again. - I will be at the mercy of UnifyDrive this time going through the exact same scenario. I decided to on-hold getting the UnifyDrive UT2 and just see if I could find any solution before the 31st Dec 2024 where my WD app will be gone.

After a lot of research and price comparison, I embarked on an alternative which I never thought I would as this need a little bit of unconventional usage of the system and it was not meant for what I needed it to do in the first place. Ok, here is what I did. I bought an Essager 8-in-1 Hub on sale in Lazada for about SGD$50 and a Crucial NVME.m2 1T SSD for about SGD$70 and did my own installation when it arrived. The total cost is about SGD$120, this was less than half the price of a WD My Wireless Pro HDD! (Take note that My Wireless Pro was an HDD and NOT SSD)

Even though I had to do some trouble shooting and thought I had wasted my SGD$120 at some point of time, I was able to solve the installation problem! Now I could use this hub by directly plugging it into my smartphone and control the ‘copy & paste’ easily into this backup storage hub all within itself. It had SD Card slot, USB-A slot and USB Type-C slot which I could easily attach even a CFExpress cardreader. All this without the need for an app or laptop! And did I mention that the hub is so small and handy for travels, about a quarter the size and weight of my WD My Wireless Pro HDD!

Wah lah! Problem solved! For those who needs more information about what I have purchased or the installation process do drop me a PM and I will be glad to help.