Compact Drive

Like its predecessors, the Compact Drive™ is designed to support the challenging demands of creative professionals and is backed by CODEX's world-class support while utilising the latest PCIe-based flash to deliver unrivaled performance for professional applications and feeds seamlessly into CODEX's industry-standard workflows.

The Compact Drive Adapter provides compatibility with Capture Drive solutions and a cost-effective Compact Drive Reader is also available.

Can I put camera tape or other labels on a Compact Drive?
Thin labels or asset stickers can be applied to the plastic surface of the Compact Drive (that has the large CODEX logo). No tape or labels should be applied to the metal surfaces of the Compact Drive.

The bottom surface of the Compact Drive is made of black anodised metal and must be kept clean to ensure that it does not overheat during recording. This is because the metal surface makes direct contact with the camera’s cooling core.

We strongly recommend that camera or fabric tape should be avoided as it may impede the Compact Drive being loaded in the Reader or Adapter, and leave residue that could cause damage or prevent proper cooling.

What is the capacity of the Compact Drive?
The user capacity of the CA08-1024 model is 960GB.
The user capacity of the CB16-2048 model is 1920GB.

I have accidentally reformatted a Compact Drive. Can the data be recovered?
When a Compact Drive is reformatted in the ALEXA Mini LF a secure erase operation is performed. This means that data is entirely deleted and recovery is not possible.

If a Compact Drive is reformatted or erased on a computer then a variety of methods can be used. In this case it may be possible to recover data using an application or specialist data recovery service, but CODEX does not provide any specific recommendations.

How long does it take to download a full Compact Drive?
Assuming that the Compact Drive Reader is connected via USB-C (to achieve ~1GB/s speeds), and that the backup storage is fast enough to write at ~1GB/s, the download time for 960GB of data would be 16 minutes. If a copy application is used to perform a verification pass (recommended) then this will add some overhead to the process - depending on the type of checksum and verification method used it may double the overall download time.

Here are some approximate download times for a full 960GB Compact Drive containing 32 minutes of ALEXA Mini LF 4.5K OpenGate MXF/ARRIRAW recording (at 24fps), along with the data rate that the backup storage would need to achieve them* as well as a comparative outline of timings for double the amount of data achieved by the 2TB Compact Drive:

READER OR DOCK	DOWNLOAD TIME (960GB)	DOWNLOAD TIME (1920GB)	DATA RATE
Compact Drive Reader via USB A-C cable (0.9A from host, amber LED)	89 minutes	178 minutes	180 MB/s
Compact Drive Reader via USB C cable (1.5A from host, green LED)	29 minutes	58 minutes	550 MB/s
Compact Drive Reader via USB-C cable (3.0A from host, blue LED)	16 minutes	32 minutes	1000 MB/s
Compact Drive in Adapter in Capture Drive Dock (Thunderbolt 2)	12 minutes	24 minutes	1400 MB/s
Compact Drive in Adapter in Capture Drive Dock (Thunderbolt 3)	6 minutes	12 minutes	2700 MB/s
Compact Drive in Adapter in Capture + Transfer Drive Dock (Thunderbolt 3)	6 minutes	12 minutes	2700 MB/s

* These tests were performed using an iMac Pro 10-core system with 3GHz Xeon processor.