Lacie Dji Copilot is an awesome tool to back up your data on the run! I love it only it´s not fast enough for me and I would  like to back up my
cine ssd while walking or driving in the car (bumps and vibrations) - so the solution seems to be to upgrade the internal hdd to an ssd and that´s what I did. I was imagening
big gains in speed but it still feels slow, power use seems down what is good. I am doing some real world tests right now and will report back later.

I am copying dng sequences so may small file what might not be perfect for an ssd ? what file system do you guys think would give the best performance - I read about a guy who fromated his cine ssd to mac os extended , not sure if he was doing it for copy speed gains.

if you have any ideas please join the conversation !

Flo, I'm on the iOS side with all things video. Thunderbolt 3 transfer protocol is unbeatable when time is a concern, period. CineDNG sequence takes approx. twice the time of footage to transfer from SSD card reader to Mac computer. That said, I have no experience with Lacie drive whatsoever, dealing with Thunderbolt 3 capable external drives, i.e.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product ... 0?ie=UTF8&psc=1

... which is not what Lacie is offering in terms of portability ...

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 9-5 12:30
Flo, I'm on the iOS side with all things video. Thunderbolt 3 transfer protocol is unbeatable when time is a concern, period. CineDNG sequence takes approx. twice the time of footage to transfer from SSD card reader to Mac computer. That said, I have no experience with Lacie drive whatsoever, dealing with Thunderbolt 3 capable external drives, i.e.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B071DQR3FY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hi Mat , always good to have you in the conversation !

Those G tech drives look nice also those 260 MB/s transfer speed could be achieved by a standard usb3 connection - that are 5gbps (gigabits per second) - note bit not the same as byte = 640 MBps (megabytes per second) . Your TB3 is capable of 40gbps what transfers to 5000 MBps what means you would need about 20 copies at the same time to saturate TB3 - the rule of the weakest link in the chain : your drive is to slow ;) also it is really fast for a spinning drive.

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 9-5 12:30
Flo, I'm on the iOS side with all things video. Thunderbolt 3 transfer protocol is unbeatable when time is a concern, period. CineDNG sequence takes approx. twice the time of footage to transfer from SSD card reader to Mac computer. That said, I have no experience with Lacie drive whatsoever, dealing with Thunderbolt 3 capable external drives, i.e.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B071DQR3FY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Try turning off spotlight indexing on the target HD when transferring DNG files.

PH3KS Posted at 9-6 03:17
Try turning off spotlight indexing on the target HD when transferring DNG files.

thanx for contributing to the discussion ! I know indexing is taking up some time but we are copying files right from the cine ssd to the lacie without a computer in the middle so I think there is no indexing that can slow us down.

There is an option to NOT CREATE THUMBNAILS that I think helps to offload the cine ssd faster when lots of dng files are recorded.

I am still testing .....

Flo the Pirate Posted at 9-6 01:03
Hi Mat , always good to have you in the conversation !

Those G tech drives look nice also those 260 MB/s transfer speed could be achieved by a standard usb3 connection - that are 5gbps (gigabits per second) - note bit not the same as byte = 640 MBps (megabytes per second) . Your TB3 is capable of 40gbps what transfers to 5000 MBps what means you would need about 20 copies at the same time to saturate TB3 - the rule of the weakest link in the chain : your drive is to slow ;) also it is really fast for a spinning drive.

Hmm, I'm not expert on these USB 3/TB 3 transfer speed things ... When I tested USB 3 option, however, the transfer was agonizingly slow, perhaps because some system tweaks I'm not aware of weren't right ... Thunderbolt is iOS native protocol and - once I went this route - I can't complain about transferring rate at all. This drive is my field storage only, I don't expect speed performance for video editing ...

Flo the Pirate Posted at 9-6 04:01
thanx for contributing to the discussion ! I know indexing is taking up some time but we are copying files right from the cine ssd to the lacie without a computer in the middle so I think there is no indexing that can slow us down.

There is an option to NOT CREATE THUMBNAILS that I think helps to offload the cine ssd faster when lots of dng files are recorded.

Misunderstood. My bad. Thought that he also copied to mac

PH3KS Posted at 9-6 11:17
Misunderstood. My bad. Thought that he also copied to mac

That's correct assumption, although I'm not copying to a Mac drive. My bad for change because I unwillingly derailed this thread off DJI Copilot issues. This device is storing video footage without computer intervention indeed, while mine field storage doesn't ...

Looks like not to many people are interested in this .... to bad i hoped there are more nerds having the same wish as me.

As I am mostly shooting DNG all those testing was done with 17MB 6k raw sequences and I think copying many small files is one of the
main problems - copying prores files might work way better but i haven´t tested yet. I am copying from the dji cine ssd to the copilot with
modded ssd. For now I was looking into copying from exfat to exfat filesystem and experimenting with different allocation sizes. It seems
that the maximum average transfer speed is around 67 MB/s when allocation size is set to 1024k . Cranking up the allocation size from
here doesn´t gain any speed and only let´s you store less data on your drive. Conclusion for now is that something I don´t understand is
stopping me from going faster - might be the hardware inside the copilot. Next step is to test with the original drive.

Flo the Pirate Posted at 9-10 02:06
Looks like not to many people are interested in this .... to bad i hoped there are more nerds having the same wish as me.

As I am mostly shooting DNG all those testing was done with 17MB 6k raw sequences and I think copying many small files is one of the

I suspect your hitting the copilot hardware limitation,  if it was designed to run with a slower hdd inside they wouldn't have spent the extra on faster components to maximise their profit.

DAFlys Posted at 9-10 02:16
I suspect your hitting the copilot hardware limitation,  if it was designed to run with a slower hdd inside they wouldn't have spent the extra on faster components to maximise their profit.

you might be right - for now the only performance gains with the ssd are less heat , more power efficiency and usability while moving it around - I will report back soon if and how much speed gain there is.

Flo the Pirate Posted at 9-10 03:27
you might be right - for now the only performance gains with the ssd are less heat , more power efficiency and usability while moving it around - I will report back soon if and how much speed gain there is.

The SSD will suffer at lot less to being dropped too.

Lacie just released the new `copilot`with an internal ssd


.... also I am still testing

Reformat your SSD with EXFAT... my copilot run at 124mbs. Copilot and cine station connected both to usb3.

I prefer cine thunderbolt station but it don’t work on pc :-/

FVP Posted at 9-18 01:43
Reformat your SSD with EXFAT... my copilot run at 124mbs. Copilot and cine station connected both to usb3.

I prefer cine thunderbolt station but it don’t work on pc :-/

Hi FVP , my first set of tests is running the copy from exfat cine ssd directly to exfat copilot with swopped out ssd mod. My focus is on copying 6k cinema dng.

Are you copying through a computer ? what files are you copying , I guess proress ?

FVP Posted at 9-18 01:43
Reformat your SSD with EXFAT... my copilot run at 124mbs. Copilot and cine station connected both to usb3.

I prefer cine thunderbolt station but it don’t work on pc :-/

Hi FVP , my first set of tests is running the copy from exfat cine ssd directly to exfat copilot with swopped out ssd mod. My focus is on copying 6k cinema dng.

Are you copying through a computer ? what files are you copying , I guess proress ?

Copy of CDNG 5,2k.

Yes trough computer but I tried directly between copilot and cinestation : less fast :-/

FVP Posted at 9-18 06:41
Copy of CDNG 5,2k.

Yes trough computer but I tried directly between copilot and cinestation : less fast :-/

same .... how large are those single pictures ? mine are around 17MB. I wonder if it´s the huge amount of files that causes the slow transfer ... will experiment with some prores files next also I never use it.

I’m late to this discussion.  Flo, can you share what drive you used and the steps to mod it?

Someone posted the reasons for the lack of speed increase you are looking after—the controller in the copilot cant move more data.. you are getting less heat and longer battery time which is always a PLUS when out in the field.

I’m using ntfs and I was getting slightly better (just slightly) speeds when using it to offload raw DNG// ill have to re test.

I’m interested in this discussion as well—I just spend more time flying and using the gear than sitting on a discussion forum, but ill keep an eye out on this topic...

Now I use cinestation-Thunderbolt on Mac pro 2018, i can copy 480go in 16 minutes on Samsung 1TO !

So copilot is sleeping at office...

marctronixx Posted at 9-24 05:05
I’m late to this discussion.  Flo, can you share what drive you used and the steps to mod it?

Someone posted the reasons for the lack of speed increase you are looking after—the controller in the copilot cant move more data.. you are getting less heat and longer battery time which is always a PLUS when out in the field.

Hi Marc ?! for now I was using an older samsung ssd (120GB) for my tests. I just tested with prores files but there is no gain in speed - so my conclusion is the drive controller is maxed out so beside less power usage and more ruggedness there is no use to change for an ssd. I think lacie changed that with their new drive sating about 480 MB/s conmpared to the 430 Mbits of the older gray drive.

If you still want to take it apart , it´s pretty easy just watch out for the little screen and it´s cable - as you are fiddeling around with drones I think you will find your way around - otherwise contact me ...

How the hell did you get the cover off the case? Mine does not want to budge.