The new iodyne Pro Mini is going to be the holy grail of SSDs. The Pro Mini takes what is the stale world of portable SSDs and delivers what I think is the first real innovation we’ve seen in portable SSDs in quite some time. Instead of just delivering yet another portable SSD in their own unique form factor, iodyne has added some truly unique innovations tailor made for the needs of media creation.
The Pro Mini will be iodyne’s second product after the Pro Data, which we have reviewed here on ProVideo Coalition. The iodyne Pro Data took the SSD RAID and innovated on that idea with super fast speed and unique connectivity. The Pro Mini has even more new thinking applied to an old idea.
Here’s the bullet point list with a bit of my commentary after each bullet point.
- Sustained 3+ GB/s Performance—Pro Mini delivers 2-10X the sustained performance of typical Pro SSDs with encryption and internal RAID protection turned on, all the time.
Performance is everything with fast SSDs and iodyne designs its products with sustained performance in mind. That’s important as, talking to iodyne, tools like the Blackmagic Disk Speed test don’t exactly measure truly sustained performance on the long transfers or media playouts that we often ask of our SSDs. I’ve been guilty of relying on simple disk speed tests myself so it’s nice to know there is more thought and design behind their products when it comes to sustained performance. There is mention of RAID protection and while these are RAIDs, there is independent NAND Flash chips in the Pro Mini drives. They use RAID-6 to “transparently distribute encrypted user data and parity across all of the NAND, and also arrange things such that unexpected failure of an entire NAND flash chip still means your data is recoverable.” That’s kind of interesting and cool.
- Solid-state Cooling with Frore Systems’ AirJet®—Pro Mini is the first portable SSD in the industry with a solid-state cooling system powered by AirJet® modules. Silent, dynamic, self-cleaning, and protected against particles as small as 0.3μm, the unique cooling system enables Pro Mini to deliver unprecedented sustained performance and next-generation smarts.
I haven’t thought a lot about heat in an SSD but I sure have felt it after picking up an SSD after a long transfer. But heat is something we should think about as heat can mean less performance. The sustained performance is a hallmark of iodyne products and this AirJet tech is as unique implementation in an portable SSD for media production. Check out the Frore System’s website as it’s some cool stuff.
- Customizable Digital Label—Pro Mini’s unique and industry-first Digital Label enables customers to personalize a label for each drive, without messy stickers, masking tape, and pens.
Okay, how cool is the digital label and why hasn’t anyone thought of this before now.
The digital label isn’t too fancy as you don’t need anything too fancy. It’s based on E Ink technology, so it’s really all you need: black text on a light background to display customizable data like the name of the production, offload information, drive size and free space as well as a QR code for drive management. E Ink means you still have a readable label even when the drive is unplugged and without power. The status light will also indicate various drive states when in use. Yes, I’m sure this adds to the cost, but the thought of having an SSD come to the edit suite without Gaffer tape makes me giddy. Assuming the production takes time to set up this digital label.
- Find My Tracking—Pro Mini is the first trackable SSD that can be linked with the Apple and Google Find My Device networks to locate a lost or in-transit drive.
Most of us in post-production have spent time looking around our edit suite or our house (or maybe our car 😬) for a missing SSD. Portable SSDs are so ubiquitous in post-production now that many editors have too many of them, both of their own and clients. Since we all have an iPhone or Android device, using their tracking network to track small SSDs is another innovation whose time was coming. I have heard stories of Apple Air Tags placed into an SSD box. That won’t need to happen anymore.
- Device Passkeys—In place of insecure passwords, PIN codes, and keypads, Pro Mini provides the industry’s first implementation of secure Passkeys for a portable storage drive.
Do you have very sensitive data on your SSD? The idea of mobile Passkeys as security takes modern tech and implements it into an SSD. I’ve had keypad-based SSD drives give me mounting fits, so I like this Passkey idea.
- Fleet Management—With iodyne Cloud’s new Fleet Management service, users can manage and provision groups of Pro Mini and Pro Data devices for projects anywhere.
These are high-end SSDs that will come with a price. But for big, expensive productions, they will just be part of the line item budget. Many productions will be purchasing multiple Pro Minis for the shoot. Being able to provision them, manage them and track them as an admin in a batch will be a big time saver for some data wranglers somewhere.
- Multiple Containers—iodyne is bringing its unique Containers technology from Pro Data to Pro Mini to enable even more advanced multi-platform workflows across macOS, Windows, and Linux, making this technology available in a portable drive for the first time.
Like the Pro Data you can provision a Pro Mini with different containers. Those behave kind of like a drive partition, so if you wanted to break the drive up, you could, but I don’t think most folks do this for 4 TB and 8 TB shuttle drives. Since the Pro Mini will use the same iodyne software to work with the Pro Data, you can get some of the same functionality.
And the price?
This is the pre-order pricing for the two sizes the Pro Mini will ship:
4TB – Dark Space Grey $1,495 MSRP
8TB – Dark Space Grey $2,195 MSRP
The iodyne Pro Mini SSDs are more expensive for a 4 TB or 8 TB SSD compared to a random SSD you might order right from Amazon or drive down and purchase at Best Buy. But these are high-end drives designed with high-end workflows in mind. I would guess that the old saying will stand here, “if you have to ask the price then you can’t afford it.”
Our sister site, Filmtools, is an iodyne reseller, so reach out to Filmtools if you’re interested in a Pro Mini or a Pro Data.