Lexar Workflow Go - How I quickly back up photos while travelling
The Lexar Workflow Go is described as the All-in-one Portable Backup Solution. The Workflow Go is a modular system with two slots, allowing you to flexibly combine different modules. I use it in combination with a Lexar Workflow Portable SSD 2TB and a Lexar Workflow CFexpress 4.0 Type B card reader. This allows me to easily back up my photos on the go.
About Piet Hein Schuijf
Piet Hein Schuijff is a Dutch nature and landscape photographer. He specialises in bird photography. He is passionate about capturing birds in their natural environment. His photos show how beautiful and vibrant nature is.
Quickly and easily empty full memory cards
A problem that every photographer encounters sooner or later is full memory cards. I am fortunate to be able to use a 512GB CF-Express card from Lexar, because it takes a while for it to fill up. Still, I like to empty my memory cards before every new trip.
I remember being in Indonesia and having to transfer the contents of my 256GB memory card to my Macbook. This ended up taking most of the day and took a heavy toll on my five-year-old laptop. With Lexar Workflow, those kinds of problems are a thing of the past.
No longer dependent on a laptop to make a backup
In addition to the issue of emptying cards, I sometimes worry that my memory card will become damaged halfway through my photo trip. This would mean that I would no longer be able to view the contents, leaving me empty-handed when I return home. Fortunately, this has never happened to me, but I have heard enough horror stories about corrupted memory cards. The Lexar Workflow Go is a great solution for this.
No more worries about damaged memory cards
The big advantage of this device is that you don't have to rely on a laptop, because you can control and monitor the entire backup process with the Lexar Workflow app on your phone (provided your phone has a USB-C connection). With the app, you instruct the card reader to write the data from the card to the Portable SSD. It also has its own power supply in case there is no power source nearby: a removable battery with a capacity of 5000mAh.
How do I use the Lexar Workflow Go?
During my most recent photography trip to Hungary, I visited many photo hides. My camera (the Canon R5) shoots 25 frames per second. This makes it practically impossible to take a single photo; as soon as you press the shutter button briefly, you're already three photos further. You can imagine that after a day of visiting different photo hides, there are thousands of photos on my memory card.
When I arrived at my accommodation in the evening, it was simply a matter of inserting the memory card into the card reader and copying its contents to the hard drive, all done within minutes with Workflow. This way, I can set off again the next day with peace of mind.
Time saving - transferring files at 10Gbps
As I mentioned above, emptying a memory card used to take me half a day or more. If you're on a shorter photo trip, you can't always afford to spend that much time on it. Fortunately, this is now a thing of the past thanks to Workflow Go. Files are transferred at the incredible speed of 10Gbps. Assuming a worst-case scenario (i.e., a 512GB card that is completely full), this means that the Workflow would take about 7 minutes to transfer the contents of the memory card to the hard drive. And that's without a laptop!
Faster photo editing by using a single system
Editing has also become easier since I got the Lexar Workflow Go. I used to work with different types of hard drives, which were scattered around my house. Now, when an SSD is full, I simply replace it with a new one.
If I want to edit photos from the archive, I can simply click up to two Lexar Workflow SSDs into the Workflow Go module, giving me direct access to the photos themselves and the Lightroom files. This saves me a lot of hassle with external hard drives with different cables, for which I often needed an adapter because my Macbook only has two USB-C ports.
Conclusion - Lexar Workflow Go is an efficient way to back up your photos
In the months that I have been using the Lexar Workflow Go, it has quickly become an indispensable part of my setup. I use it before a photo trip to quickly empty my cards, during a photo trip as a handy backup, and after the photo trip to quickly access preview files as soon as they are archived. I still need a laptop for transferring files, because my iPhone 14 Pro does not have a USB-C port.
This means that I will make significant gains in efficiency once I purchase a new phone. Then I can leave my laptop at home during short photography trips, which will save me a considerable amount of weight. Over the years, I have used various backup methods, but Workflow is by far the fastest and most efficient form of backup I have experienced.
