This Iodyne is the most gadgety portable SSD ever devised

Do you cognize what’s connected your portable drives? Or wherever you saw them last? Are they acceptable to store and stock monolithic gobs of video? Are they blazing fast?

The Iodyne Pro Mini is designed to beryllium the (pricey) reply to all of that.

It’s the archetypal outer SSD with a brace of Frore AirJet Mini Slim inside, a solid-state cooling spot that, the institution says, helps it transportation information astatine a sustained 3 gigabytes per 2nd with a thrust nary bigger than an iPhone.

It’s the archetypal I’ve seen with a built-in e-paper show that tin automatically support way of remaining retention and the past clip it was utilized — positive your task name, lost-and-found telephone numbers oregon emails, QR codes, oregon thing other you benignant in.

It’s the archetypal thrust I’ve heard of with optional Find My determination tracking, and not conscionable for iPhones — Iodyne says it’s moving with Chipolo to marque it the archetypal trackable SSD connected Google’s caller Find My Device network, too. Unlike an AirTag, it doesn’t person UWB precision finding, but it besides doesn’t request you to swap a coin artillery aft a year; the tracker has a rechargeable artillery that should automatically complaint whenever you plug the thrust in.

Once you find it with your phone, Iodyne says it’ll beryllium the archetypal portable retention thrust you tin unlock with your phone’s passkeys, too, nary net transportation required, and with built-in NFC truthful you tin tap-to-unlock conscionable similar tapping to wage astatine retail.

Your credentials are stored successful a dedicated Secure Enclave spot similar with a modern phone, too, the institution says — and the thrust has always-on XTS-AES-256 encryption, positive RAID 6 redundancy to perchance prevention your information adjacent if portion of the retention fails.

And if you wage extra, Iodyne says you tin remotely negociate a fleet of these drives from the web oregon a telephone whenever they’re plugged in. You could support way of which devices are assigned to which projects, one-click proviso them for caller ones, get alerts if transfers are interrupted, and adjacent remotely revoke credentials oregon hitch a thrust erstwhile it’s adjacent connected.

The 131mm x 69mm x 13mm thrust (thicker than an iPhone but astir the aforesaid size by volume) volition travel successful 4TB and 8TB capacities; you’ll request Thunderbolt 4 oregon USB 4 for its transportation rates, though it besides supports USB 3.2 and beneath arsenic well.

The institution claims this is each unheard of, and I’m inclined to agree. Even a 3GB per 2nd sustained work and constitute velocity sounds important — portion galore premium SSDs tin burst astatine up to 7GB per second, adjacent 12GB per second, Tom’s Hardware has found galore fashionable pocketable outer SSDs lone connection sustained transportation speeds of 1.5GB/s oregon less. Most drives throttle quickly.

Waiting for a catch? Well, those of america who don’t enactment for video accumulation companies whitethorn not beryllium capable to warrant the price.

Iodyne says it built this thrust to service the film, TV, and ocular effects industry, wherever it says its erstwhile $5,000-and-up laptop-sized drives are already being utilized to shuttle immoderate footage for productions similar Amazon’s The Rings of Power, Disney’s The Acolyte, and the Brad Pitt F1 film, arsenic good arsenic serving arsenic the editing presumption for an full indie film that premiered astatine Cannes. Some of its features are explicitly designed with those clients successful mind, similar a small reddish LED sidelight truthful you tin much easy work the e-paper statement connected set.

With the Iodyne Pro Mini, it’s aiming for some the 4TB and 8TB models to outgo nether $3,000.

Also, portion Iodyne’s founders person a past successful the retention manufacture — one of them cocreated the ZFS record system, among different things — I should constituent retired that journalists lone got the briefest glimpse astatine a DVT prototype. I haven’t really touched 1 yet, and the institution suggests I whitethorn not get to until aboriginal adjacent year.

To assistance warrant the price, Iodyne copresident Mike Shapiro explains the Pro Mini had to beryllium designed much oregon little from the crushed up to bash what the institution wanted.

While the institution does usage an enterprise-grade Microchip flash retention controller and Chipolo determination tracker, helium says the institution worked to physique its ain customized firmware, designed the drive’s cardinal processor and NAND retention chips, and helped make a customized Frore AirJet cooling plan arsenic well.

“It is not a wrapper astir an M.2 SSD,” Shapiro repeatedly points out.

Speaking of the AirJets, this outer thrust is the archetypal to item a caller self-cleaning diagnostic of Frore’s piezoelectric cooling chips, wherever the AirJet reverses the travel of aerial to stroke particulate retired of its filters. While the Iodyne thrust can’t straight archer erstwhile the filter is blocked, Shapiro says it can compare the results from assorted sensors to archer erstwhile it’s moving harder than it should and intelligently crook it on.

The Iodyne Pro Mini is technically disposable for preorder today, but lone for 25 unnamed partners, with a “select beta program” opening aboriginal this year. The institution says last products should vessel successful the archetypal 4th of 2025.