Hey, I'm considering buying one of these but not sure if it's worth it. I'm seeing them for $180 but not sure if it's worth the added cost considering I can buy one of the same storage capacity for much less. Thoughts?
Seagate 2TB DJI Fly Drive: Good or nah
- Thread starter BSauce955
- Start date
It looks like it's just an external hard drive with a Micro-SD slot, except that as best I can tell you don't know the specs on the actual SSD that was used. It seems like a decent unit but personally I wouldn't pay extra for it compared with other options.
How much does normal (where you are not paying for the name/s DJI & FLY ) 2Tb external HDD cost where you are?
$180USD = £131 at the moment and a quick google shows what looks like new, reputable, 2Tb external HDD from £39 to £54.
Does the "DJI FLY drive" have any advantages over a normal external HDD?
That I can see, in terms of hardware, there is built in mSD card reader but you still need to hook it up to a computer to transfer the files off the card.
USB card readers are cheap and so are memory cards, a 128Gb Samsung U3 is £13 on Amazon at the moment and that's from a supplier I have used previously and not had a problem with.
Looking at it does seem to offer a high transfer speed but is it worth it and how much depends on the driving computer?
My computer is relatively ancient and the speeds that guy shows for, I think, both a USB card reader and the drive are FAR FAR higher than anything I see with my computer.
But personally I think I would lump for additional memory cards and a normal external HDD and probably still save money.
Bearing in mind I am deaf and reading the subtitles ...the transfer rate, if I am correct, is an advantage but are you going to carry a computer with you on a hike? If you need an empty card quickly there is an even quicker solution, pop in a new one or one that you have emptied at your leisure.
$180USD = £131 at the moment and a quick google shows what looks like new, reputable, 2Tb external HDD from £39 to £54.
Does the "DJI FLY drive" have any advantages over a normal external HDD?
That I can see, in terms of hardware, there is built in mSD card reader but you still need to hook it up to a computer to transfer the files off the card.
USB card readers are cheap and so are memory cards, a 128Gb Samsung U3 is £13 on Amazon at the moment and that's from a supplier I have used previously and not had a problem with.
Looking at it does seem to offer a high transfer speed but is it worth it and how much depends on the driving computer?
My computer is relatively ancient and the speeds that guy shows for, I think, both a USB card reader and the drive are FAR FAR higher than anything I see with my computer.
But personally I think I would lump for additional memory cards and a normal external HDD and probably still save money.
Bearing in mind I am deaf and reading the subtitles ...the transfer rate, if I am correct, is an advantage but are you going to carry a computer with you on a hike? If you need an empty card quickly there is an even quicker solution, pop in a new one or one that you have emptied at your leisure.
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I have been a photographer for many, many years and usually used Toshiba and Western Digital for external and internal Hard Drives. I bought some Seagates several years ago because they were low priced. Of all the different makers of HD units I have, only the Seagate drives have failed.
I put one in my laptop of 1TB to replace the 750gb that was originally fitted and filled up and took a holiday and loaded the photos into it. I was about to back that up to my other 3TB Seagate for safety, but it was acting up, showing files when I went into it, yet not allowing me to open any of the file folders. I was going to do the back up once I sorted out the problem. The laptop Seagate failed totally (Dreaded Blue Screen) after just 28 days. The external Seagate of 3TB never did work again and that was only about 6 months old, so I lost all those files as well. I had another external 3TB Seagate which was also acting up about three months later and that has still not been able to be sorted.
This was all about7 years ago, but from that moment on, I swore that I would never trust another Seagate HD. The company offered to replace my drive that failed after 28 days but what I wanted was the photo file recovered, that I had just loaded into it. They offered a recovery service starting at $750 and going up to over $2,000 but would not do that for me at no cost, despite it all being under warranty. All they warranty is that you get a replacement drive if one fails. You still loose all your data, or have to pay through the a$$ to a recovery company, IF they can possibly recover data, they don't guarantee it.
That's how I feel about Seagate, in case it helps. I have never had a problem with any of my other external or internal HDs from other makers and some of those are ten years or more old now. Something to watch for is the speed of any HD. The best ones are writing at least 7200rpm but many are only at about 5600. It just takes a bit longer with slower one, though if that does not bother you, then you'll get a lower priced one only writing at 5600rpm.
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tlswift58
Well-Known Member
Western Digital on NewEgg has a 12TB LiveBook for $300. Best price I've seen lately.
wow, amazingly cheap. But that's a ton of Data to loose in one go if it did fail.
That's just a crappy slow HDD in an enclosure with a SD card reader and marketed as a "Fly Drive". Not too appealing IMO.
If you want good backups in the field or on the go, look at the portable SSD offerings from GNARBOX, Lacie, and WD that offer built in SD card readers.
If this is for home, and just for backup purposes (occasional use), just buy the cheapest external HDD you can and combined with some form of cloud storage (Blackblaze is what I use), you never have to worry about anything. It doesn't matter if your footage is based up on 100 different hard drives at home, if your house burns down or something, you still lose it all. So there is really no point in much redundancy at home with the dirt cheap unlimited cloud storage options available.
A particularly good deal I have found are Seagate's 10TB external drives - all of them have 7200RPM helium filled PMR Barracuda Pros or Exos drives in them, which as a standalone product (without the enclosure) are over 2X more expensive. These are outstanding hard drives. I actually bought 4 of them, took 30 seconds to pop them out of their housings, and now they are in my PC. Here in Canada those drives are bout $450, but if bought with the enclosure, around $200-$220. Seagate does not make a low-quality 10TB drive so this is how you know what is going to be inside.
If you want good backups in the field or on the go, look at the portable SSD offerings from GNARBOX, Lacie, and WD that offer built in SD card readers.
If this is for home, and just for backup purposes (occasional use), just buy the cheapest external HDD you can and combined with some form of cloud storage (Blackblaze is what I use), you never have to worry about anything. It doesn't matter if your footage is based up on 100 different hard drives at home, if your house burns down or something, you still lose it all. So there is really no point in much redundancy at home with the dirt cheap unlimited cloud storage options available.
A particularly good deal I have found are Seagate's 10TB external drives - all of them have 7200RPM helium filled PMR Barracuda Pros or Exos drives in them, which as a standalone product (without the enclosure) are over 2X more expensive. These are outstanding hard drives. I actually bought 4 of them, took 30 seconds to pop them out of their housings, and now they are in my PC. Here in Canada those drives are bout $450, but if bought with the enclosure, around $200-$220. Seagate does not make a low-quality 10TB drive so this is how you know what is going to be inside.
tlswift58
Well-Known Member
True. Yet when most new drives fail, most people think data gone. Not true. There are programs out there that can help in recovery if the drive itself is still working. I do that all the time for older drives that quit and getting a "Blue Screen" does not mean the data is unretrievable (BSOD is more of a Microsoft Software issue). Now, if the platters, esp in older drives - has issues; then it becomes a costly endeavor to retrieve said data from a very specialized company that can do that.
At $300, buy 2 and use one mainly as a backup. That's what I do on my 2 drive dock. I have had one drive die and since I had a "copy" on the other drive - simply popped out old drive, popped in new one, and copied over.
Drives today are nowhere near the problems they were 10-20 years ago. I have had both Seagate and Western Digital drives stop working - mostly older drives. Less issues with WD, as I tend to buy them more than Seagate, as most Seagates are more expensive be GB than others. You'll have almost same issues with SSD's, but when they die - that data is gone, so I'd suggest not storing valuable data on an SSD, SD, USB, etc that are memory based products. Each one has only so many reads / writes before "poof".
My drive that failed after 28 days just kept ticking and the drive would not spool up. There was nothing a few places that tried, could do and said it needed to go to a specialist that recovered data and all of those started at $750 min. with no guarantee that any or all of the data could be recovered. As long as a drive spools up, then yes people like you can get data off, but what can you do if the drive starts to spool up then stops and just keeps making that slow ticking noise? Do you feel that you can still recover the data?
Professional or forensic data recovery is extremely expensive and almost never worth it except in the rare instances where the value of the data is worth more than the recovery fee, for example something that may help you win a court battle or something along those lines. For $4/mo you can get unlimited cloud storage, and there would never be any need to even worry about paying for data recovery - that is a much better way to go about it IMO.
tlswift58
Well-Known Member
Nope - that is the dreaded head ticking noise and only way to recover was as mentioned by someone opening the drive and running the platters to try and retrieve data. Yet, it never hurts to try to hook them up to a separate PC view cables and see what happens and even run the software. It will tell you quickly if data is salvageable or not. Most drives do not incur head issues like you had unless they are being bumped when spinning or simply a head failure. Head failure is a manufacturing issue.
Most people do not have media worth recovering going the "specialized" route - so they just lose what they got and hopefully learn a lesson to always have a back up. Yet, again; most people still do not. A two drive USB dock and a couple of 2TB or larger drives is about $200 or less. Cheap insurance if you want to keep all that data around. If a pro photographer - maybe a NAS with more drives is best, but they get pricey real quick - but one of safe modes of data storage and not losing it due to a single drive failure.
Didn't that click get the nickname "click of death"? I recollect losing one to that....many years ago....I could hear then but I think it was an IBM HDD. When a 1.7G HDD could hold Windows 98 SE and a Unix operating system lol.
No matter which manufacturer you look at, there will always be some people who have problems with them - there seem to be just as many 1-star reviews on Amazon for WD drives as there are for Seagate. I use a mix of WD and Seagate drives at home so don't have any particular preference. However, just for the sake of balance, I have been running 2 Seagate standard (non-NAS) HDDs in my old home NAS for the last 10 years, 24/7 without a single issue.
Trying to make conclusions or blanket statements about HDD reliability based on a few anecdotal experiences is pointless. The very last place you want to look for objective data would places like Amazon or BestBuy reviews.
First, there are many different grades of HDDs. For example you can buy a crappy SMR drive only good for occasional use or storage, or good quality PMR/CMR drives designed for heavier workloads and more continuous use. Furthermore, some drives are designed specifically for NAS, Datacenter, or Enterprise usage. Other specific drives are designed to be made as cheaply as possible to throw into external enclosures and be sold to the masses for low prices. If you are not using the right type of drive for the job, you are going to have a higher chance of a failure and that is not any fault of the product. Second, things like temperature can affect longevity, so if you have all your drives crammed into a dusty case with inadequate airflow, you can expect them to fail much sooner as well (usually around 50C and above is where you can expect a significant reduction in reliability).
Seagate and WD have virtually identical failure rates (extremely low). Seagate for example states the AFR of their popular Barracuda drives at 0.73% and a MTBF of 1.2M hours.
Another good resource is data centers - they use hundreds of thousands of hard drives in the most demanding conditions, and failure rates are incredibly low. Here is some recent Blackblaze data:
First, there are many different grades of HDDs. For example you can buy a crappy SMR drive only good for occasional use or storage, or good quality PMR/CMR drives designed for heavier workloads and more continuous use. Furthermore, some drives are designed specifically for NAS, Datacenter, or Enterprise usage. Other specific drives are designed to be made as cheaply as possible to throw into external enclosures and be sold to the masses for low prices. If you are not using the right type of drive for the job, you are going to have a higher chance of a failure and that is not any fault of the product. Second, things like temperature can affect longevity, so if you have all your drives crammed into a dusty case with inadequate airflow, you can expect them to fail much sooner as well (usually around 50C and above is where you can expect a significant reduction in reliability).
Seagate and WD have virtually identical failure rates (extremely low). Seagate for example states the AFR of their popular Barracuda drives at 0.73% and a MTBF of 1.2M hours.
Another good resource is data centers - they use hundreds of thousands of hard drives in the most demanding conditions, and failure rates are incredibly low. Here is some recent Blackblaze data:
