Seagate Releases Drone Storage, Rugged Drives, And Mobile Storage With Built-In Battery

Storage is one thing we seem to never have enough of. With higher resolution video going from 720p, to 1080p, to 4K, 3D VR and 360 degree, 24, to 30 to 60 to 120 frames per second, more and more storage is needed. But quantity is only half the problem, it’s also connectivity, how you access the data in the first place.

Seagate, and its subsidiary LaCie, have released a bunch of new storage solutions covering a range of use cases, including drones, mobiles, rugged and secure devices, and some high-speed options to boot.

One of the more feature rich options comes in the form of the Copilot by LaCie, in conjunction with DJI, the largest drone manufacturer on the market. The Copilot is a fairly robust single-drive storage system that allows you to better integrate with a drone. The drive can be setup to automatically pull data from a drone as soon as it’s plugged in, and even save data from an SD card at the same time.

The Copilot can connect to nearly all modern connection types including micro-USB, USB Type-C and Lightning. The associated app lets you easily manage files as well, for you to play, copy, delete and move stuff around. Probably one of the best features is the inclusion of a battery powerbank (capacity is not listed). The Copilot is covered in a thick rubber bumper to protect against shock, and comes with a 3 year warranty, with capacities up to 2TB available. A slimmed down drive without the drone-specific features is the Joy Drive, a 1TB solution with battery backup and a 2-year warranty.

If you need something that can take a beating both physically and logically, then LaCie’s Rugged SECURE may interest you. It’s a big chunk of high-visibility orange rubber and a tough shell, packed with hardware encryption and software locking. It’s a 2TB drive that can be accessed via USB Type-C, and will work over Thunderbolt connections too. It’s drop, crush, shock and rain resistant for a variety of terrains and situations, backed up with a 2-year data rescue and recovery service. This service means that should you no longer be able to access the drive (it doesn’t power up or a broken connector) you can send the drive in to Seagate and they’ll pull the data off of it.

The last drive on offer is for the speed freaks out there, with the Seagate Fast SSD. It’s a USB Type-C SSD with a variety of cables included that let it connect to USB 3.1 gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 compliant connections to transfer data at 540MB/s. Effectively, it’s a SATA SSD running at full speed, thanks to the USB 3.1 connection. Sizes are available from 250GB, up to 1TB, although expect the latter to be pricey.