Archival Note (February 2026)
I originally wrote this hands-on review when the NextoDI ND2901 was my primary laptop-free travel backup device. Storage technology moves fast, and this model has since been discontinued and replaced by the NextoDI NPS-10, which I have also reviewed in detail here. I am leaving this original review up for archival purposes, as the speed tests and SSD modification notes are still highly relevant for anyone picking up one of these classic backup drives on the used market.
When I travel with a laptop, backing up my photos is straightforward. Add a small portable hard drive to the bag, and I have a pretty robust system to ensure my files get home safely.
But lugging a laptop along isn’t always practical or desirable. I prefer to travel light, and unless a trip strictly requires it, I’d much rather leave the computer behind and just carry an iPad. While I can’t do heavy edits on a tablet, I’d rather spend my time out exploring than sitting behind a screen in a hotel room anyway.
To make that work, I rely on portable memory card backup systems on the road. These battery-powered devices allow me to dump my memory cards directly to an internal hard drive without a computer. I can run backups anywhere — whether I’m sitting at a cafe or bouncing around on a chicken bus.
Because I never trust a single point of failure, I also carry a pocket-sized external hard drive to create a redundant backup directly from the main unit. With that workflow, I end up with three copies of my photos spread across different media in different bags. Things would have to go seriously pear-shaped for me not to come home with at least one surviving copy.
This is part of a broader archival series. I also published detailed hands-on reviews of this drive’s main competitors at the time: the HyperDrive ColorSpace UDMA2 and the Digital Foci Photo Storage II OTG.
Over the years, my laptop-free backup systems evolved alongside camera tech. I started out burning files directly from memory cards to writable DVDs. As files grew, I moved to a Wolverine PicPac 7500, a tiny device that paired a 250GB hard drive with an 11-in-1 card reader. Later, I used a ColorSpace HyperDrive, but it predated SDXC technology, meaning it couldn’t read modern SD cards larger than 32GB.
Eventually, I landed on the NextoDI ND2901, which served as my primary portable backup drive for several years.
I actively used the 500GB version, though a 1TB version was also available. For the thrifty, a popular option was to buy a small-capacity (or bare) NextoDI enclosure and install your own 1TB 2.5-inch drive to save cash. Doing so, however, required breaking the unusually prominent “Warranty Void if Removed” stickers over the screws.
If you’re using CFAST 2.0 or XQD cards, or are shooting with a pro video camera, you’ll want to look at the newer NextoDI NVS2801 instead.
Basics
The system is incredibly straightforward. It is essentially a battery-powered hard drive with a built-in memory card reader, designed solely to pull files off cards and store them.
The ND2901 natively handles CompactFlash and SD cards (SD, SDHC, and SDXC). I could easily back up microSD cards from my action cams by popping them into a standard SD adapter sleeve first.
Crucially, it also features a USB port for an external hard drive, allowing the device to mirror its contents for that essential secondary backup.
My field workflow
My daily routine with the unit was simple: insert a card, power the device on, and hit “Fast Copy.” It would dump the files and alert me when finished.
For critical jobs, I used the “Copy & Verify” mode. This ran the exact same backup, but then actively compared the copied data against the original files on the memory card to ensure no corruption occurred. The verification pass effectively doubled the time it took to finish a backup.
The device also supported incremental backups. If I shot half a card, backed it up, and then went out shooting on that same card again, the NextoDI was smart enough to only copy the new files the next time I plugged it in.
One specific feature I loved was the post-shutdown status check. If I started a long backup and the device auto-powered off after finishing, the very next time I turned it on, the screen would explicitly confirm whether the last operation was a success or a failure. It gave me the peace of mind to just hit “copy” and throw the unit in my bag without having to stare at a progress bar. If an error did occur, I’d be greeted with a bright red warning screen.
When I finally got back to my desk, plugging the NextoDI into my Mac via USB mounted it as a standard mass storage device, letting me ingest the files directly into Lightroom.
Real-world performance
In practice, the CompactFlash port was significantly faster than the SD port. To test this baseline, I loaded a 64GB CompactFlash card and a 64GB SDXC card with identical RAW files — roughly 59.5GB of data. Both were fast SanDisk EXTREME Pro cards. In neither test did the transfer approach the maximum read speeds of the memory cards; the bottleneck was purely the reader hardware inside the NextoDI.
While NextoDI rated the device at 4.5GB/minute for CF and 2.5GB/minute for SD, my real-world results fell slightly short of that, though it still easily outperformed the ColorSpace UDMA2.
Speeds with a standard HDD installed
When I first bought the unit, I ran it with a standard spinning hard drive.
CompactFlash: In Fast Copy mode, I averaged about 3.3 GB per minute (roughly 57.7 MB/s). Dumping a full 64GB card took roughly 18 minutes. It slowed down slightly as the drive filled up and the battery dipped. A single battery charge would yield about 357 GB of transfers.
SD Card: The SD slot was noticeably slower, averaging 34.9 MB/s (about 2.1 GB per minute). A full 64GB SDXC backup took nearly 29 minutes. Copy & Verify mode doubled that time. I could only dump about 190GB of SD data before the battery died.
Speeds after my SSD upgrade
Later on, I opened the case and swapped the spinning disk for a solid-state Samsung 850 EVO SSD. Since I shot primarily on CompactFlash, I was thrilled to find the SSD sped up CF transfers by about 42 percent.
Strangely, when I went back to test the SD slot with the new SSD, my transfer rates actually dropped. I never found a solid technical explanation for why the SD controller struggled with the SSD, but because I relied on CF cards, the massive speed bump on that port — coupled with the drop durability of solid-state storage — made the upgrade totally worth it.
CompactFlash (128GB Extreme Pro 160MB/s): 128 GB of data in 23 mins @ 88 MB/s (5.3 GB per minute).
SD Card (32GB Lexar 2000x 300MB/s): 15.2 MB/s (912 MB per minute).
Power and battery constraints
While NextoDI claimed 90 minutes of usage on a full charge of the internal Li-Poly battery, the practical metric I cared about was data volume.
Because the CF slot was so much faster, I could easily back up six fully loaded 64GB CompactFlash cards on a single charge using Fast Copy mode (or three in Copy & Verify). The device got warm during these sustained runs, but never worryingly hot.
A major quirk of this device involved power delivery when using its best feature: the external backup drive. If I wanted to mirror the NextoDI to a pocket-sized Seagate drive, the NextoDI had to be plugged into AC power. It refused to power the external USB port using only its internal battery.
Controls and screen
The operation was handled entirely by a single, multi-directional joystick button on the top right. Navigating the menus involved a mix of short presses, long presses, and rocking the lever up and down.
I was never a huge fan of this joystick. It was too clever for its own good, making it incredibly easy to accidentally click “select” when I meant to scroll down — a real annoyance when trying to operate the unit quickly in the back of a moving vehicle. Three distinct, tactile buttons would have been far better.
The 1-inch color LCD screen was strictly utilitarian. It was far too low-resolution to critically judge focus or browse photos with any fidelity; it existed purely to navigate the menus and provide visual confirmation that the raw files were safely on the drive.
Internal hard drive modifications
Because the ND2901 was essentially a smart enclosure, opening it up to swap hard drives was a common practice, despite it voiding the warranty.
Removing a few tiny screws granted access to the standard 2.5-inch SATA bay. While standard Western Digital WD Blue spinning drives were the stock choice, adding an SSD made it an incredible travel tool.
The caveat was power draw. Early SSDs required too much voltage, forcing users to buy a bulky external battery pack just to run the device. However, I found that the Samsung 850 EVO series was efficient enough to run perfectly off the ND2901’s internal battery without any external power hacks. It made the unit lighter, completely silent, drop-resistant, and significantly faster on CF transfers.
Wrap-up
During its era, the NextoDI ND2901 served me exceptionally well, replacing my laptop on countless trips. While the joystick was finicky and required AC power to run, an external mirror backup was a frustrating quirk; it remained a durable, reliable piece of kit.
The portable backup market has historically lagged behind current camera tech, and the ND2901 eventually succumbed to that reality as USB-C, CFexpress, and massive sensor resolutions became the norm. While this specific model has been retired to the archives, the “travel light, backup twice” workflow it enabled remains a cornerstone of how I manage data on the road today.
Looking for more on portable backups? You can find my hands-on tests of the NVS2801 here or the newer NPS-10 here.
Hello David,
I’ve just learned that the ND2901 has been discontinued without replacement. NextoDi is trying to tell me that I should use their NVS2801+ but I don’t see it a viable replacement for me (larger, heavier, and significantly more expensive) … a very sad development. SO let’s hope someone fills the gap and comes out with a product that is faster downloading SD cards at about the same battery life and form factor …
Best, Stephan
Interesting. I hadn’t heard that yet–thanks for the tip. And yes, fingers crossed someone steps in with something that checks the right boxes on this kind of device. Unfortunately the the 2801 isn’t in the same price ballpark.
Hi David,
at CES the My Passport Wireless SSD by WD has been announced. It has a SD card reader built-in that seems to operate at up to 65MB/s and the battery should last for 10h! This all sounds very promising…
best, Stephan
That does! Will aim to get ahold of one and review it when it’s released. Thanks for the tip.
the LaCie DJI Copilot is another one that got announced at CES and that looks quite interesting: https://www.lacie.com/as/en/professional/dji-copilot/
unfortunately read/write speeds have not yet been specified by the vendor
Thanks, David, for the excellent comparison.
I’m using an earlier version of the Colorspace UDMA with a 500GB capacity. After transferring my original files to a spare 4TB external hd attached to my pc, can I reformat the UDMA so I can have space to use when I’m travelling?
Thank you.
If I understand your question correctly, I don’t see any reason why not. It would only come down to how much safety you want. The downside of having only one copy, of course, is that if that external drive dies or goes walkabout, it’s game over.
Thanks for your response, David.
I’ll take the risk as the 4T HD is pretty new.
John
Hi David,
good news, NextoDI has just released a successor of the ND2901. It is called NPS-10 and looks like a great improvement over its predecessor. I’ve ordered one already and hope trying it in the next 10 days.
Thanks for the tip! Looking forward to testing it out.
Hi David,
Thanks for the great reviews. I have a few questions:
1) Did you try the Nexto with an external usb card reader? Does the Nexto support CFast with an external reader and does the reader make full use of the available usb speed? Is the male usb port actually usb3?
2) Nexto list a transfer speed of 24MB/sec for copying to an external hard drive. That is nowhere near usb3, not even close to usb2 maximum speed. Did you measure the transfer rate yourself?
Thanks and best,
Stefan
1) Yes, I’ve used it with an external USB 3.0 reader. It works, but no, you don’t get anywhere near USB 3.0 limits. I haven’t tested specifically with CFAST 2.0, but I would expect it to work but with nothing like proper CFAST speed.
2) No, I haven’t measured the transfer speed from device to external HDD, but in general usage it doesn’t appear to be even close to full USB 3.0 speed.
If you’re using CFAST 2.0, you might be interested in a new model they’re putting out, the NVS2801. I’ve been testing it recently and hope to post a detailed review in the next day or so. It has a built-in CFAST 2.0 slot (but CF requires an adapter), is faster overall, slightly bigger, and has some other improvements. It’s targeted mainly at video shooters, but those lines are increasingly blurred as stills shooters move to CFAST and XQD. The catch is that it’s not yet available in retail stores and there’s no pricing information yet. I’ll be posting my hands-on review shortly; in the meantime here’s some more info on it.
I’ve posted the NVS2801 review. You can find it here.
Thanks for this write-up David, based on your ideas I’ve just ordered the Nexto unit for outfit here in Oz for us eon upcoming trip to South America. Been lucky on travels this far and not ‘lost’ a memory card but don’t want push my luck too far.. I’ve ordered the external battery to go with mine so hoping it will work to power the unit while it backup up to USB HDD as well..
Have a great trip!
David,
Many thanks for taking the time to write this review.
You mentioned that for SSD’s, it is recommended to stick to the Samsung 850 EVO series.
Does the Nexto ND2901 work well with the 2TB version?
Any issues with it?
I haven’t used the 2TB one specifically, but I’m using the 1TB version and it’s my understanding the power requirements etc are the same. It’s been working smoothly for me so far.
Great reviews! Thanks for all of the useful information. I’m still trying to get a sense of the better choice between the ColorSpace UDMA3 and the Nexto. While your reviews are thorough, neither is persuasive. I understand that is not your goal, but….if your life depended on it, which would you choose. I need to make a purchase immediately.
Yes, each is good and not-so-good in its own ways. I personally went with the NEXTO, and it’s what I’ve been using for the past couple of years. I’ve recently added one of the new Samsung SSDs that’s working great. It’s very fast, I’ve found it to be very reliable, and even though it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the ColorSpace drives, it has been a solid performer for me.
Great review!
Wondering if you had tried using an SD card in a CF adapter to see if it copies over faster in the CF slot?
No, afraid I haven’t tried that.
I just tried to fit my iPhone 6 in the Nexto leather case w/the Nexto – and I was surprised that it fit. Would you be able to try the same w/the Seagate 7 (and snap a pic if you will)? Just want to see if it would work out to have them in the same case to travel with and have a redundant backup drive right on hand,
Normally, I’d be more than happy to. But I’m currently shooting in Australia and using a different, larger drive here, so won’t be able to get to it for a few weeks.
the product page at bhphoto.com says “The ND2901 has a rechargeable (Li-Poly) battery built-in and will charge the battery with an AC adapter or a USB cable” but your review implies that is not the case. when only offloading memory cards (and no extra hard drive) can you power via usb?
I’ve corrected. You can charge and power it via USB. There are two different types of USB ports on the drive. The micro-B connector port is only for transferring data. The other, a regular USB A male connector, can be used for charging or powering the device.
so one has to find a male type a to male type a cable to charge it?
Yes. Or an adapter from mini or micro to step up to the standard size.
Does it support 256GB and higher capacity compact flash cards?
Thanks for the great review. Have been long time hyperdrive colorspace udma2 user and it doesn’t support my 256gb compact flash card. would be nice to have higher speed transfers too. I too wish it could run off usb power to have a more standardized charging system when on the road.
Sorry, but I’m afraid I haven’t tried a 256GB card in it. Completely with you on USB power–it makes things much easier.
Hello David,
I found your reviews on the card reading/storage devices, thank you. Here’s my question, I decided to go with the Sanho Colorspace UDMA 2, however I am unable to backup to my LaCie Rugged portable drive for that desired second copy. The Colorapace is USB 2.0, so I do’t know if that’s the problem, any suggestions?
Lastly, I believe you’re using the Nexto device, are you happy with it’s performance, for I believe it is a USB 3.0 device and would work with the LaCie?
Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated ~ thanx.
Best, Robert
It shouldn’t be an issue between the USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. The Lacie Rugged is specifically backwards compatible with USB 2.0. Are you using the HyperDrive OTG adapter? And do you have AC power running to the ColorSpace while you have the external drive connected?
Yes, I’m currently using the NEXTO as my primary device, although I still have a previous-model ColorSpace UDMA on hand as well. The NEXTO doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the ColorSpace UDMA2, but it’s fast and reliable and has been serving me well.
Is it possible to delete photos on this device before you transfer them to external hard drive? Can you set up folders with photos and directly transfer them? I am new to editing software and find it too complicated to achieve this.
No, not really. You can delete folders but not individual photos. And it creates the folder structure automatically itself.
Can it be plugged in to an external battery to transfer to an external drive? (Instead of AC)
Good question, and I don’t know the answer. The complication is that you can’t just plug in a regular USB external battery to power it and I don’t have the NEXTO one that’s dedicated for this device. The battery connection on the device is a small round socket (smaller than the one the regular AC adapter uses), and I don’t know off-hand if it’s possible to get a connector cable that will run from a USB external battery to that round socket (and then transmit power). There is a USB 3.0 Micro B connector on the device, but that’s to connect to a host computer or smartphone. I just now tried connecting an external battery using that port, but it doesn’t work–no power gets passed through.
So do you need to plug in your nexto to the power supply when backing up to the se agate seven?
Yes. It’s the same with any external drive. Even though the drives themselves are designed to work without a separate power supply and draw their power from USB, the NEXTO is programmed not to register the drive unless the NEXTO itself is plugged into power.
Why not simply take more memory cards with you on a field trip. Back-up later on your home computer?
A few reasons. The most important is that it helps with creating redundant backups to protect against card corruption, malfunction, theft, or dropping a camera in the ocean. Stuff happens, especially if you’re on the road for weeks or months at a time. I have more on redundant backups here. Memory cards–at least the good, fast ones–are much less cost-effective per-gigabyte than hard drives once you start getting into hundreds of gigabytes or terrabytes. And it’s also handy to have all your photos consolidated on an external hard drive if you’re doing any editing with a laptop or tablet while you’re still traveling.
I understand the benefit of a portable hard drive in your circumstances. I admit I was looking at it from my point of view; I don’t take nearly as many photographs/videos nor travel as extensively as you do, so extra memory cards is adequate for me.
Funny you should mention falling in the ocean – my camera did just that last month. While the camera was completely destroyed by the dip into the drink, the SD card was able to dry out and I was able to copy all of the pictures safely off before throwing the card out.
Glad you were able to rescue your images!