Kickstarter Showcases Two New SSDs for Filmmaking

New technologies that can move the state of the creative art forward, often find their way to Kickstarter to raise the funds to make them a reality.

With solid-state drives becoming a part of the workflow and potentially replacing media cards as a recording medium, it comes as no surprise that mobile SSD enclosures designed for this purpose would show up on the platform looking for crowdfunding.

Here are two worth looking at.

Image Credit – Dockcase

The Dockcase Pocket

Using an aluminum alloy M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure, the Dockcase Pocket can house drives up to 2 TB in capacity.

A little larger than an Apple Watch the drive sports two 1/4” mount holes, a USB-C Type 3.2 Gen 2 connector, and a 1.33-inch IPS LCD, the Pocket promises transfer speeds of 10 Gbps through a PCI e 3.0 bus and supports cameras from Blackmagic, Panasonic, Z-Cam, Sigma and even the iPhone 15.

The Pocket’s LCD display provides real-time readout of valuable data including available storage capacity, data transfer speeds, battery capacity, SSD temperature, and more.

The drive also has a special dual data power loss protection feature which stores data after a loss of power with a three-second writing of up to 2 TB of SSD data. There is also a read-only mode that prevents accidental deletion of files.

Image Credit – Dockcase

But what may be the most attractive feature is its price tag. Interested backers can pick up the Seesaw Pocket on Kickstarter for an early bird price of between $79-100, depending on the model. It’s available in Matte Black and Stripe Mirrored models.

Image Credit – Eon Electronics

The MagDisk MagSafe SSD

Eon Electronics has the MagDisk, which uses MagSafe to magnetically attach its SSD enclosure to the back of an iPhone. This is an elegant solution to adhering to small-scale M.2 NVMe SSD without having a cage.

The MagDisk can record ProRes 4K video at up to 60 frames per second in Apple Log with read/write speeds of up to 2,000 mb/s. It is built with a durable aluminum alloy for durability and is resistant to corrosion and UV damage.

Users can plug in either the Samsung T9 or SanDisk Pro M.2 drives with up to 4 TB capacities to the MagDisk, and enjoy brisk data transfer of up to 20 Gbps courtesy of the USB 3.2 Gen 2.2 specification.

And as an additional feature, the MagDisk is also supported through Apple’s Find My app, which once paired, will let creators locate the drive should it be misplaced or left behind on set.

The MagDisk is also swappable, meaning that users can increase capacity without having to repurchase the device.

And since the Eon Electronics MagDisk has a 2400 mAh battery that supports Qi 2.0 charging, the MagDisk can also double as a wireless external power supply for the iPhone.

It also has Dynamic Thermal Guard protection which provides effective heat dissipation and maintains an optical thermal condition.

The Eon MagDisk is currently being listed on Kickstarter and has proved quite popular with backers. To date, it has raised over $150,000 from nearly 750 backers. Users can pick up the 512GB version of the MagDisk for $109, 1TB model for $159, 2TB for $189, and the 4 TB for $239.

Considerations

As always, interested backers need to be aware of the risks associated with backing a crowd-funded project. It’s not uncommon for projects to either be delayed due to fulfillment or supply chain issues, or even fail to reach the market at all.

Also, long-term support may disappear should the companies close down or stop supporting the product. So let the buyer beware.

However, if you find you’d like to help bring these mobile SSD enclosures to market, it may be worth a shot for the performance benefits that they provide.

The Kickstarter campaigns for the Dockcase Pocket and the MagDisk run through February 2nd and February 10th respectively, with delivery dates expected sometime in March 2024 for both.

[source: DIYPhotography]