LaCie DJI Copilot Is a Portable and Completely Autonomous External Drive.

About company

LaC­ie is an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny found­ed in 1987 in Ore­gon. The main direc­tion is the devel­op­ment and sub­se­quent imple­men­ta­tion of data stor­age sys­tems. In 1995, it was com­plete­ly bought out by the par­ent com­pa­ny Elec­tron­ique d2, which, three years lat­er, as a result of rebrand­ing, offi­cial­ly appeared on the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket under the LaC­ie brand. Despite all the dif­fi­cul­ties that had to be faced from the moment of foun­da­tion, the man­u­fac­tur­er invari­ably fol­lowed the ini­tial­ly set goals and objec­tives in the field of activ­i­ty. From 2014 to the present, LaC­ie has been whol­ly owned by Sea­gate Tech­nol­o­gy, a world-famous devel­op­er of hard dri­ves and stor­age solu­tions.

About the product

This is the sec­ond joint cre­ation of the two giants Sea­gate and DJI Inno­va­tions. The release of the nov­el­ty took place at the inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tion of con­sumer elec­tron­ics CES-2018.

LaC­ie DJI Copi­lot is a portable and com­plete­ly autonomous exter­nal dri­ve with a capac­i­ty of 2TB, which allows you to quick­ly copy data from var­i­ous devices, includ­ing UAVs, with­out using a lap­top / PC, as well as view pho­tos and videos in their orig­i­nal qual­i­ty through a mobile appli­ca­tion that does not require an Inter­net con­nec­tion, share, edit with oth­er appli­ca­tions, move to oth­er devices con­nect­ed to the dri­ve, copy, rename and delete files. These are far from all the advan­tages of the device, there­fore, accord­ing to tra­di­tion, we will start with the fea­tures.

• The famous Scot­tish design­er Neil Poul­ton was involved in the devel­op­ment of the LaC­ie DJI Copi­lot dri­ve.
• The device received the “Prod­uct of the Year” award in the “Video Acces­sories” nom­i­na­tion at the Photo­fo­rum 2018.

Peculiarities

• Com­pact dimen­sions
• Does not require con­nec­tion to PC/Laptop
• Impact-resis­tant hous­ing
• Shock and vibra­tion resis­tant sys­tem
• Pro­tect­ed from splash­es and dust
• 2TB capac­i­ty (over 60 hours of 4K video or over 20,000 RAW pho­tos)
• Built-in sta­tus screen
• Equipped with ports: USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type‑A (for­mer­ly USB 3.0*); USB‑C
• Equipped with an SD card read­er that sup­ports UHS‑I and UHS-II SD card read­ing (with the abil­i­ty to read MicroSD cards using the includ­ed adapter)
• One-but­ton easy copy con­trol on the dri­ve
• Works with Copi­lot BOSS (Back-up On Set Solu­tion) mobile app
• Com­pat­i­ble with a wide range of devices
• Has a built-in pow­er sup­ply
• Pro­vides charg­ing for con­nect­ed USB devices
• Access to a 3‑year data recov­ery ser­vice plan
• Month­ly access to the Adobe® Cre­ative Cloud App Suite

*Recall that after the release of the USB 3.1 stan­dard, the orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing and sup­port­ing USB — USB-IF (USB Imple­menters Forum) announced that USB 3.0 con­nec­tors with speeds up to 5 Gb / s (Super­Speed) will now be clas­si­fied as USB 3.1 Gen 1, and new con­nec­tors USB 3.1 up to 10Gbps (Super­Speed ​​USB 10Gbps) — Same as USB 3.1 Gen 2.

Equipment

The dri­ve reach­es the con­sumer in pre­mi­um qual­i­ty pack­ag­ing. The kit laid by the man­u­fac­tur­er allows you to imme­di­ate­ly start work­ing with any of the sup­port­ed devices. The only set includes:

1. Dri­ve LaC­ie DJI Copi­lot
2. Charg­er (with four inter­change­able adapters for com­mon sock­et types)
3. 2 × cables for con­nect­ing the dri­ve to a PC/Laptop: USB Type‑C — USB Type‑C (USB 3.1 Gen 2); USB Type‑C — USB Type‑A (USB3.1 Gen 1)
4. 3 × cus­tom (con­nec­tion) cables for smartphone/tablet oper­a­tion with Copi­lot BOSS app: Light­ning (IOS) / Micro USB (Android) / USB‑C (Android)
5. microSD adapter
6. Adobe® Cre­ative Cloud Month­ly Bun­dle infor­ma­tion sheet and acti­va­tion method
7. Infor­ma­tion insert about the three-year data recov­ery ser­vice
8. Quick Appli­ca­tion Guide (in Russ­ian and oth­er lan­guages)

At the time of unbox­ing, the DJI Copi­lot’s built-in bat­tery had a 38% charge lev­el.

On the disk, the user will find full instruc­tions down­loaded by the man­u­fac­tur­er in var­i­ous lan­guages ​​(includ­ing Russ­ian), as well as a war­ran­ty agree­ment.

Appearance

Specification

Stor­age capac­i­ty:

2TB

Num­ber of disks in the device:

one

Max­i­mum data trans­fer rate:

120Mb/s

The weight:

542gr

Dimen­sions (W×H×D):

136×36×110mm

Pow­er Sup­ply:

12V, 1.5A

Oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0 to 35°C

Frame

Neil Poul­ton, a per­ma­nent design­er of Scot­tish ori­gin for LaC­ie, worked on the devel­op­ment of the case of the most portable hard dri­ve today. Accord­ing to Neil, the Copi­lot dri­ve, unlike oth­er mod­els of this brand he devel­oped, received not only an impact-resis­tant sil­i­cone bumper, but also an entire inter­nal sys­tem, thanks to which the dri­ve is able to with­stand shock and vibra­tion with­out com­pro­mis­ing its integri­ty and per­for­mance.

The DJI Copi­lot dri­ve has suc­cess­ful­ly passed the mul­ti­ple 2 meter drop test on a con­crete sur­face. In addi­tion, the disc received splash and dust pro­tec­tion.

Status LCD

Pick­ing up Copi­lot, you will not notice that it has a screen, and it will be exact­ly until the moment when a device is con­nect­ed to the dri­ve from which data is planned to be trans­ferred lat­er, after which the sta­tus screen will imme­di­ate­ly indi­cate its pres­ence (you can also acti­vate the dis­play by press­ing the but­ton actions).

The main pur­pose of the dis­play is to dis­play cur­rent infor­ma­tion and requests for fur­ther user actions. The LCD is not a touch screen and can­not be used to ini­ti­ate any actions or respond to prompts. To con­firm or can­cel actions, there is only one but­ton locat­ed on the disk body: the “Action but­ton”.

It is known that in the ear­ly stages of devel­op­ment it was planned to imple­ment a full-size col­or screen in the hard dri­ve case, but none of the exist­ing dis­plays met the require­ments of dura­bil­i­ty. Ulti­mate­ly, this idea had to be aban­doned.

The durable dis­play was real­ized using a spe­cial film devel­oped joint­ly with 3M. A lot of research was car­ried out before it was pos­si­ble to get a shock-resis­tant dis­play that meets all the require­ments, which, in addi­tion, accord­ing to the design of the devel­op­ers, in the off state, should not be vis­i­ble to the naked eye.

Action button

The only but­ton on the dri­ve that con­trols the dri­ve in cas­es where con­trol using a mobile device and the Copi­lot BOSS appli­ca­tion is not rel­e­vant for the user. The oper­a­tion algo­rithm is sim­pler than ever, a short press (with­in 1 sec­ond) con­firms the action / request pro­posed on the sta­tus screen, a long press (3 sec­onds) can­cels.

Application

Copi­lot BOSS is a free mobile appli­ca­tion that allows the user to ful­ly man­age files both on the LaC­ie DJI Copi­lot dri­ve itself and on devices con­nect­ed to it. Com­pat­i­ble OS: Android 4.4 and above / iOS 10.3 and above.

Appointment Copilot BOSS

• View files locat­ed on DJI Copi­lot, as well as on SD cards and USB devices con­nect­ed to it in orig­i­nal qual­i­ty;
• Copy files from devices con­nect­ed to DJI Copi­lot;
• File man­age­ment (shar­ing, edit­ing with oth­er appli­ca­tions, mov­ing to oth­er devices con­nect­ed to the disk, renam­ing and delet­ing);
• Confirmation/cancellation of sim­ple copy using a mobile device instead of the LCD sta­tus dis­play and action but­ton;
• Port queu­ing for easy copy­ing via mobile device.

Application menu

Ports

In the arse­nal of the dri­ve there are 5 ports for var­i­ous pur­pos­es, which are locat­ed under a pro­tec­tive sil­i­cone cov­er:

1. Port for charg­ing the built-in bat­tery of the DJI Copi­lot dri­ve. The includ­ed charg­er is used for charg­ing.
2. The USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type‑A port (for­mer­ly USB 3.0) is designed to con­nect a wide range of devices to the DJI Copi­lot dri­ve.
3. The USB‑C port is exclu­sive­ly for con­nect­ing DJI Copi­lot to a Win­dows PC/Laptop (Win­dows 10 and above) and macOS (macOS 10.12 (Sier­ra) and above). Pair­ing cables: USB Type‑C to USB Type‑C; USB Type‑C — USB Type‑A are includ­ed. With this con­nec­tion, the Copi­lot BOSS appli­ca­tion becomes inac­tive.
4. Slot for Secure Dig­i­tal (SD) mem­o­ry cards (or microSD using the includ­ed adapter).
5. Mobile device port. Used exclu­sive­ly to pair DJI Copi­lot with a smartphone/tablet for file man­age­ment via the Copi­lot BOSS mobile app with­out the sta­tus screen. Pair­ing is car­ried out using the sup­plied spe­cial user (con­nec­tion) cable (one of three for IOS/Android micro-USB/An­droid USB‑C).

Supported Devices

The dri­ve sup­ports a wide range of devices, includ­ing: UAVs, pho­to and video cam­eras (from ama­teur to pro­fes­sion­al), mobile devices, PC (Mac / Win), card read­ers, exter­nal HDD and SSD dri­ves (includ­ing DJI CINESSD via DJI read­er ) and oth­ers.

copying

The copy­ing process can be imple­ment­ed both with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a mobile device using just one action but­ton on the DJI Copi­lot dri­ve, and with its par­tic­i­pa­tion through the Copi­lot BOSS mobile appli­ca­tion.

Copy Options

1. Easy Copy (Full) — imple­ment­ed with just one action but­ton locat­ed on the DJI Copi­lot dri­ve with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a mobile device and appli­ca­tion. With a sim­ple copy, all files are copied to the DJI Copi­lot with­out excep­tion. For exam­ple, when copy­ing from a mobile device, in addi­tion to pho­to and video files, all sys­tem files of this device will be copied. This copy­ing option does not allow step-by-step data back­up.
2. Step copy – imple­ment­ed when pair­ing DJI Copi­lot with a mobile device via the Copi­lot BOSS appli­ca­tion using a spe­cial user (con­nec­tion) cable (includ­ed).

Copy speed

In prac­tice, the speed indi­ca­tors of copy­ing turned out to be the fol­low­ing:

1. From DJI Copi­lot to PC via USB Type‑C to USB Type‑C wire, the data trans­fer rate was — 128 Mb / s
2. From PC to DJI Copi­lot via USB Type‑C to USB Type‑C cable, data trans­fer rate was 128 Mbps
3. With DJI Copi­lot on a PC via USB Type‑C to USB Type‑A, the data trans­fer rate was 127 Mb / s
4. From a PC to DJI Copi­lot via a USB Type‑C to USB Type‑A cable, the data trans­fer rate was 127 Mbps

Note that in order to copy files from a mem­o­ry card installed in a DJI UAV, it is not nec­es­sary to remove it from the quad­copter. It will be enough to con­nect the dri­ve direct­ly to the drone using the USB cable that comes with the drone and per­form full or step-by-step copy­ing.

Charging devices

As men­tioned above, Copi­lot received a built-in pow­er source that allows not only to pro­vide autonomous oper­a­tion of the dri­ve itself, but also to charge USB devices con­nect­ed to it.

Charging ports

1. USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type‑A port — when con­nect­ing devices with their own pow­er source that sup­port charg­ing via USB, it pro­vides a charge with a cur­rent of up to 1.5A, devices with micro USB up to 900mA.
2. Mobile device port — in addi­tion to ensur­ing that the dri­ve is paired with a mobile device, it also pro­vides charg­ing.

Built-in battery

At the cur­rent time, there is no infor­ma­tion about the built-in pow­er sup­ply of the dri­ve in the device spec­i­fi­ca­tion. How­ev­er, over the sev­en days of the test peri­od, we found that the aver­age con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion time of DJI Copi­lot on a sin­gle charge (from 100% ‑4%*) was 1 hour 30 min­utes. When simul­ta­ne­ous­ly charg­ing a smart­phone (Meizu PRO 6), the oper­at­ing time was no more than 1 hour.

*Note that when a crit­i­cal remain­ing charge of 3% occurs, DJI Copi­lot will stop work­ing with all con­nect­ed devices, includ­ing the Copi­lot BOSS app, but will con­tin­ue to charge a smart­phone con­nect­ed via a cus­tom con­nec­tion cable. The dri­ve is then com­plete­ly dis­abled.

Charging DJI Copilot

The dri­ve sup­ports charg­ing the built-in bat­tery in two ways:

1. Clas­sic with the includ­ed charg­er. Charg­ing time from 0–100% in prac­tice aver­ages about 2 hours.
2. When con­nect­ing the dri­ve to a laptop/PC via a USB‑C con­nec­tion. The charg­ing time depends on the ener­gy poten­tial of the lap­top / PC to which the con­nec­tion is made. As described in the instruc­tions.

In prac­tice, with such a con­nec­tion, the dri­ve dis­played an indi­ca­tion on the sta­tus screen: “Con­nect­ed to PC.” The bat­tery charge indi­ca­tor was not dis­played. The charge lev­el of the Copi­lot remained unchanged dur­ing the entire peri­od of oper­a­tion. At the same time, it was noticed that if the cable was dis­con­nect­ed from the disk and con­nect­ed again, the indi­ca­tion appeared: “No PC con­nect”, then “Only charge” (a light­ning indi­ca­tor was dis­played on the sta­tus dis­play). Then the dri­ve went back to PC mode, and the charg­ing indi­ca­tion dis­ap­peared. Based on this, we can con­clude that this con­nec­tion method only pro­vides pow­er to the dri­ve, and not to charge it.

When the dri­ve is not in use, its proces­sor goes into pow­er-sav­ing mode, which com­plete­ly elim­i­nates the dis­charge of the built-in recharge­able bat­tery. To max­i­mize the oper­at­ing time on a sin­gle charge, the devel­op­er has set a pri­or­i­ty for this mode. As a result, the disk goes into it with any inac­tiv­i­ty. There­fore, before using the dri­ve, you need to “wake it up” with the action but­ton and then car­ry out work.

Restarting DJI Copilot

Like any oth­er high-tech device, the Copi­lot dri­ve can be forced to reboot if nec­es­sary. The reset but­ton is usu­al­ly hid­den behind a small hole that is locat­ed between the two USB Type‑A and USB Type‑C ports. Restart is real­ized by short press­ing the but­ton through the hole (for exam­ple, a paper clip).

Price

An autho­rized LaC­ie deal­er sells the dri­ve at a price of 28,854 rubles.

pros

• Pre­mi­um qual­i­ty work­man­ship
• Com­pact
• Autonomous
• Impact-resis­tant hous­ing
• Resis­tant to shock and vibra­tion
• Pro­tect­ed from dust and splash­es
• Capa­cious (2Tb)
• Built-in LCD sta­tus screen
• Easy to use (one but­ton oper­a­tion)
• For full-fledged work with files, it does not require a con­nec­tion to a lap­top / PC
• Advanced con­trol through the Copi­lot BOSS appli­ca­tion that does not require an Inter­net con­nec­tion to work, as well as the qual­i­ty of the appli­ca­tion itself
• Equipped with high-speed USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type‑A (for­mer­ly USB 3.0) ports for pair­ing; USB‑C
• Comes with high-speed USB Type‑C to USB Type‑C (USB 3.1 Gen 2) cables; USB Type‑C — USB Type‑A (USB3.1 Gen 1)
• Equipped with an SD card read­er that sup­ports UHS‑I and UHS-II SD cards (with the abil­i­ty to read MicroSD cards using the includ­ed adapter)
• The com­plete set allows to start work at once with­out addi­tion­al retro­fitting
• Sup­ports pair­ing with most of today’s devices, includ­ing drones
• Bat­tery life on a sin­gle charge
• Can charge con­nect­ed USB devices

Minuses

• When work­ing with the dri­ve with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a mobile appli­ca­tion, the func­tion of quick for­mat­ting SD / microSD cards was miss­ing. Of course, this pro­ce­dure can also be car­ried out through the soft­ware of drones or cam­eras, but still it would be more con­ve­nient and faster if the dri­ve itself had such a func­tion.
• Dis­con­nect­ing the user (con­nec­tion) cable from the dri­ve will require accu­ra­cy and skill. The absence of free space around the square part of the con­nect­ed plug pre­cludes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nor­mal extrac­tion. In our opin­ion, over time, such an incon­ve­nience can cause destruc­tion, or even sep­a­ra­tion of the port from the main dri­ve board, which ulti­mate­ly will lead to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of full-fledged use of the prod­uct.
• When the dri­ve is con­nect­ed to a PC via the USB‑C port, it is only pow­ered with­out charg­ing.
• The pro­tec­tive bumper of the dri­ve is eas­i­ly soiled and requires care.

Conclusion

With­out a doubt a rev­o­lu­tion­ary device. LaC­ie DJI Copi­lot will be appre­ci­at­ed by pro­fes­sion­als of the pho­to-video indus­try for whom “Time” is of para­mount impor­tance. Dur­ing the peri­od of oper­a­tion, the dri­ve has proven itself exclu­sive­ly from the best side, the very case when the expect­ed coin­cid­ed with real­i­ty. It is extreme­ly sim­ple in oper­a­tion, such qual­i­ties as porta­bil­i­ty, auton­o­my, resis­tance to shock and vibra­tion, as well as pro­tec­tion against dust and splash­es in prac­tice sig­nif­i­cant­ly sim­pli­fy the oper­a­tion of the disk. The only thing that DJI Copi­lot espe­cial­ly picked up was the func­tion of quick­ly for­mat­ting mem­o­ry cards with the action but­ton, we hope the devel­op­ers will lis­ten and add this fea­ture with the next update, since every­thing is solved pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly. Despite the sim­plic­i­ty of the prod­uct, before using it, we still rec­om­mend that you read the detailed instruc­tions that are filled in by the man­u­fac­tur­er on the media itself. This will save you from many sec­ondary issues that will 100% arise in the process of get­ting acquaint­ed with the device. We hope our expe­ri­ence was use­ful, thank you for your atten­tion.