External hard drives for dummies

[UncleELROY]

So I have to use a computer at work to play my my mavic videos since unfortunately nothing I have (except my iPhone 7) can play them . I end up leaving them on the computer and occasionally dump them on my google drive that does a great job ruining their playback. I need to get an external hard drive to bury them somewhere for now but is that all I need? As I understand you need a "hub" to first connect the micro sd card? And "hubs" come with apps that let you control the file transfer to the external with iPhone?

Could someone recommend an external hard drive + hub that is popular and under 150-200$ total? Sorry if I am not as tech savvy as I want to be

PS I did see the DJI Seagate 2tb hard drive but no mention of hub?

 

[Bunny Too]

So I have to use a computer at work to play my my mavic videos since unfortunately nothing I have (except my iPhone 7) can play them . I end up leaving them on the computer and occasionally dump them on my google drive that does a great job ruining their playback. I need to get an external hard drive to bury them somewhere for now but is that all I need? As I understand you need a "hub" to first connect the micro sd card? And "hubs" come with apps that let you control the file transfer to the external with iPhone?

Could someone recommend an external hard drive + hub that is popular and under 150-200$ total? Sorry if I am not as tech savvy as I want to be

PS I did see the DJI Seagate 2tb hard drive but no mention of hub?

You will need some method of moving the files from the Micro SD card to the hard drive (you can get an inexpensive 2TB portable (or backup) hard drive for less than a hundred dollars; I like WD and Samsung.) With a USB hard drive you could take it to work, transfer your files from the card to the harddrive with your computer and you are good; for moving them to the phone I would buy a lighting/microSD card reader (I am not an apple guy so others may have better recomendations) the card reader is around twenty dollars. The other option is a wireless back up hard drive (Amazon.com: WD 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive - WIFI USB 3.0 - WDBP2P0020BBK-NESN: Computers & Accessories) this would allow you to transfer your card contents (as above) and access the hard drive wireless from your phone.

 

[tkinva]

Go to Amazon.

Look for a "portable" external drive. These drives are powered through the USB port and don't require a separate power supply.

You can buy a Western Digital portable 4TB drive for about $120. Smaller sizes cost less.

Stay away from Seagate. They have a higher failure rate.

--
Here's a panorama from my Mavic, and two more - - Art from the Air - -

 

[Lou]

To transfer video files directly to your iPhone/iPad from the SD card you will need a cable (Lightning to USB) and a powered USB hub (get a USB3, much faster), and an SD card to USB adapter. You can also do it directly by WiFi through the GO app. If you get an external HD, it can connect to the same hub.

 

[Mattw996]

You can transfer the photos to your phone wirelessly in editor and you can get a wifi external memory and transfer them from your phone wirelessly.

 

[Tonka]

Get this. This is what I use to connect my IP Mini 4 to the Mavic controller as well as transfer files off of it to my 256GB SD card. The Mavic only has 64 so theoretically I can store 4x what the Mavic has. I love this as all I have to do is carry 1 cable and an extra LARGE sd card.

 

[UncleELROY]

Go to Amazon.

Look for a "portable" external drive. These drives are powered through the USB port and don't require a separate power supply.

You can buy a Western Digital portable 4TB drive for about $120. Smaller sizes cost less.

Stay away from Seagate. They have a higher failure rate.

--
Here's a panorama from my Mavic, and two more - - Art from the Air - -

So my goal would be to do it all on the go with no need for a computer. Just my iPhone the drone and a portable

You will need some method of moving the files from the Micro SD card to the hard drive (you can get an inexpensive 2TB portable (or backup) hard drive for less than a hundred dollars; I like WD and Samsung.) With a USB hard drive you could take it to work, transfer your files from the card to the harddrive with your computer and you are good; for moving them to the phone I would buy a lighting/microSD card reader (I am not an apple guy so others may have better recomendations) the card reader is around twenty dollars. The other option is a wireless back up hard drive (Amazon.com: WD 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive - WIFI USB 3.0 - WDBP2P0020BBK-NESN: Computers & Accessories) this would allow you to transfer your card contents (as above) and access the hard drive wireless from your phone.

My ultimate goal would be just my iPhone, drone and a portable drive. I was in Germany this weekend and couldn't get to a computer so this would have been ideal. Does the wireless hard drive allow for that ? I am assuming it has an associated app that would connect to my phone? And if my phone is connected to controller could I initiate a file transfer ?

 

[Mavman]

I'm hoping in iOS 11 when we get further along in the betas there will be better support for external storage.

 

[Bunny Too]

My ultimate goal would be just my iPhone, drone and a portable drive. I was in Germany this weekend and couldn't get to a computer so this would have been ideal. Does the wireless hard drive allow for that ? I am assuming it has an associated app that would connect to my phone? And if my phone is connected to controller could I initiate a file transfer ?

Yes, the hard drive in the link above would work as a sort of personal "cloud" and you could transfer files to and from your phone (or other devices) wireless for eight hours of battery before you have to plug it in. Plus it has an SD card slot so you can transfer files from the Mavic's micro SD card (with an adapter) physically if needed.

 

[Mavman]

I use an apple camera connection kit (the powered one, usb3 capable), and a Transcend USB 3.0 SDHC / SDXC / microSDHC / SDXC Card Reader, TS-RDF5K (Black) Amazon.com: Transcend USB 3.0 SDHC / SDXC / microSDHC / SDXC Card Reader, TS-RDF5K (Black): TRANSCEND: Computers & Accessories

I use it with my iPad Pro mostly, but it works with iPhone 7 as well.

I hope you have a lot of free space on your phone, the only practical workflow I can think of is to first transfer via the sd reader to your phone (wireless takes sooooooloooooo long if you use high quality settings), then you would have to use one of the existing solutions which would require some specialty storage with a custom app, whether it's wireless or not, there's a couple out there. Then you also have the problem that while you import onto your iPhone, there isn't really a way to import photos/videos without loading stuff into your iCloud Photo Library, which if you use it will be trying to upload stuff all the while....

 

[Mavman]

Noteworthy, the setup I described with the transcend DOES require a power source be plugged into the camera kit, but you can just have a small external battery to use for the power source with a lightning cable.

 

[matth1000]

Hi.
Following with interest.
Is there a hard drive out there with a built in card reader.
So that we could plug in the sd card after a flight and it dumps the contents of card to HDD.
All powered of the mavic flight battery with the usb plug.

 

[Bunny Too]

Hi.
Following with interest.
Is there a hard drive out there with a built in card reader.
So that we could plug in the sd card after a flight and it dumps the contents of card to HDD.
All powered of the mavic flight battery with the usb plug.

The link I posted has that and an internal battery.

 

[matth1000]

Perfect, thanks.
Will order one tomorrow

 

[Blacksmith]

So I have to use a computer at work to play my my mavic videos since unfortunately nothing I have (except my iPhone 7) can play them . I end up leaving them on the computer and occasionally dump them on my google drive that does a great job ruining their playback. I need to get an external hard drive to bury them somewhere for now but is that all I need? As I understand you need a "hub" to first connect the micro sd card? And "hubs" come with apps that let you control the file transfer to the external with iPhone?

Could someone recommend an external hard drive + hub that is popular and under 150-200$ total? Sorry if I am not as tech savvy as I want to be

PS I did see the DJI Seagate 2tb hard drive but no mention of hub?

On eBay, pick up a used Epson P3000 viewer, cheap. It accepts SD and CF cards, has a 40 Gig (yeah, tiny) drive and a great display. There's a larger drive model available (P-5000?) with an 80 gig drive. I can't even give mine away because the capacity is so small BUT there are hacks to allow an SSD to be installed. That would solve your problem.

 

[newnan3]

Personally I would get a couple of Western Digital 1 or 2 TB hard drives. I actually prefer the 2 or less TB drives. The more you have on one drive the more you lose if the HD goes out. The failure rate is probably low but it can/does happen.

 

[geigy]

FWIW - and realizing this is not addressing the OP's question except in a general way - here's the system I've worked out for myself. I carry three SD cards two 64's ($25 each) and the 32 that came with the Mavic. These can hold several days' flying at 4K, with no need to do any transfers while out in the field, no batteries or other things to go wrong. If a card does fail, I would lose only what's on that card. When I get home I transfer it all to my home computer, which is backed up to a 4TB NAS drive.