iodyne Pro Data – Fast SSD RAID for Video Editing Explained

by Jürgen MoorsApril 25^th, 2023

iodyne introduced the Pro Data device at the end of last year – an ultra-fast Thunderbolt SSD Raid storage solution for video editing. At this year’s NAB in Las Vegas, we had the chance to meet with Co-founders Mike Shapiro and Jeff Bonwick from iodyne to learn more about the features of this unique storage device, and what their latest 1.3 firmware update brings to the table. The 12TB Pro Data model starts at $4,450 and goes up to $17,500 for the large 48TB model. Let’s have a closer look at the product.

If you are unfamiliar with the Pro Data system, or if you’ve never heard of iodyne before, I would highly recommend reading the article and watching the video review my colleague Johnnie did. Just a few weeks ago, iodyne released a firmware update with a few improvements, which you can check out here.

iodyne Pro Data

Pro Data is a fast Thunderbolt storage solution with high performance, high reliability, RAID6-protection, and always-on encrypted storage. You can connect different computers for multipathing with different contributors. It comes in 3 different capacity sizes: 12TB, 24TB, and 48TB, with a lightning-fast performance of 5GB/s. These are impressive numbers, and to give you an idea of what this performance means in the real world, the device can playback up to 10 streams of 8K at the same time!

You might say that you have a few SSDs, or you already own a NAS and they are way cheaper than the Pro Data system. This might be true, but when it comes to features, no other device can match the performance of this device while also allowing data sharing between multiple users.

Your NAS is limited by the speed of the Ethernet and you cannot share data with an SSD, and that’s when iodyne Pro Data starts to get interesting – this is when you need exactly this application. This system can serve a single user, but things become much more logical when a group of people is working on the same project and you have to share the data between them in real-time.

Price – Performance

The cost of Nano Flash is dictating the overall price of the Pro Data, but if the price of Nano Flash comes down, then we might get more competitive prices for the Pro Data system as well.

So far, iodyne’s Pro Data only supports Apple computers, but we learned that they are working on a Windows and Linux version as well. The same applies to size and capacity. While Iodyne currently has a single product in the market, they are aware of the needs of its customers, whether there is a demand for even bigger, or smaller devices.

Pro Data – Key Features

• Transactional RAID-6 and RAID-0
• Data Checksums and Self-Healing
• XTS-AES-256 Encryption with Hardware Secure Enclave
• NVMe Thunderbolt Multipathing up to 4 x paths
• Multi-User connectivity for up to 4 x computers
• Storage Handoff between connected macOS computers
• Dynamic Containers with up to 15 containers per device
• RAID Levels per-Container with adaptive striping and parity
• Automatic SSD Fault Management and RAID Resilvering
• Designed for Self-Repair of SSD modules

Technical Data

• Capacity: 12TB, 24TB, or 48TB
• Expansion: Up to 6 devices can be daisy-chained per Thunderbolt port pair. Multiple daisy chains can be created on computers that provide more than one Thunderbolt host port.
• Performance: Up to 5 GB/s
• Connectivity: 8× 40Gb Thunderbolt3 ports: 4 upstream to one or more computers, 4 downstream to other devices and accessories
• Cables: 0.7m/2,3ft 40Gb included. 2m/6,6ft or 50m/164ft 40Gb available
• OS Support: macOS 11.0+ (Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura)
• Power: 180W GaN power adapter, 110-220V 50-60Hz
• Dimensions: 39,1×25,4×3,1cm / 15.39x10x1.22in
• Weight: 3,3kg / 7,3lbs

Price and availability

You can purchase the Pro Data SSD RAID system directly at the iodyne web store in three capacity versions:

• 12 TB for $4,450
• 24 TB for $7,500
• 48 TB for $17,500

For further information, please visit the website of iodyne.

What storage solution do you currently use for media projects? Would you prefer the features of iodyne Pro Data? Do you think the device is worth the price? Please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!