Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield
Posted on Jun 5, 2024 by Pro Moviemaker
As solid as a ruck
The Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield is made of championship-winning stuff that’s ideal for covering the game of rugby
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When it comes to power, speed and being tough enough to take all the knocks, rugby is right at the top of the list.
And when a fast, yet rugged portable drive is needed to safely ingest, store and protect vast amounts of video footage of the game, the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield is a first-team pick.
You could say it’s better than a maul!
That’s the view of Jonny Lewis, a Royal Television Society award-winning filmmaker based in the UK. He primarily films arts documentaries with some of the world’s leading artists, ceramicists, writers and critics.
But at the opposite end of the scale, he also edits the longest-running rugby TV show in the US, MLR Weekly. Based in New York, it covers the country’s professional rugby union club competition Major League Rugby.
The show features game highlights, analysis and interviews with the biggest names in the sport and is broadcast on a number of TV networks.
And it’s always a rush to get the latest show out. So it was the perfect opportunity to test out the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield, to see if it could make it across the try line with speed.
“I’m sent the show footage and match highlights from New York every Wednesday,” reveals Lewis. “Transferring a typical 2GB file of footage to the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield took seconds, giving me a great start to my editing session.
“The show is broadcast every Thursday, so this doesn’t leave me much time to edit the show and get it uploaded for client review, before completing the final edit ready for broadcast. So having a fast and reliable portable SSD to copy files to and edit from is essential.”
For the past few years, he’s been using the popular Samsung T5 SSD – which has always proved reliable. “But the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield gave a noticeable speed boost, meaning I could edit without any disruption to the workflow and clock off earlier than usual! The portable drive makes for the perfect partner.”
The Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield comes plug-and-play ready for a Mac, where a Thunderbolt connection gives blazing-fast read and write speeds of up to 1050MB/s and 1000MB/s.
That’s around ten times the speed of most external HDDs. And it’s quick enough to edit directly from the portable drive, even in high-bit-rate 4K.
The rugby TV show features up to five guest interviews every week, requiring a multicam edit for the full 28-minute runtime. “In the past, I have used hard drives which struggled to keep up with the demands of so much footage, usually resulting in the dreaded ‘beachball of death’ on my screen. But not so with the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield. It handled the multicam footage with ease, meaning my stress levels were low too,” he says.
“The show also features many motion graphics showing information such as the latest league tables, game scores, star player information and segment introductions. Using other products, multiple layers of graphics can make the edit crawl along. But once again, the Samsung portable drive came into its own. It had no problems working with graphics in Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion timelines. Everything worked smoothly.”
The Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield was so quick, it almost ruined Lewis’s traditional tea break! “When exporting the final edit I usually have a tea break, but inevitably come back to still find it exporting. With this portable drive, the final edit was exported before I had time to get the biscuits out! The show was ready to upload for review with plenty to spare, making for a happy client and more time for me to refine the edit for final broadcast.”
The portable drive’s tough aluminium design aids heat dissipation to prevent overheating even when recording 4K, 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra footage or Raw files.
The body has a rubber cover to provide 3m drop protection, and is IP65 rated for water and dust resistance.
“That makes it a great addition to my gear when out in the field. The Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield is compact, portable and rugged, with 4TB of storage available, so it’s ideal to take on location,” says Lewis.
“It could easily withstand the demands of travel I encounter on my trips, especially when swapping between transport and locations. And I know it’ll quickly back up the large 4K files I film while on the go.” With high-sustained write performance, this portable drive is more than up to recording 8K or 12K video, too. With no moving parts, it keeps data protected.
“Often, the time I get with an artist in the midst of their work is one-chance-only footage, capturing them creating a piece of art that cannot be replicated. Having the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield gives me confidence I won’t lose the precious footage I worked so hard to get.”
For improved data security, the portable drive features drivers for Mac and Windows, plus Samsung Magician software which monitors its health and lets you alter settings.
As it weighs 98g and is just 59x88x13mm, it’s smaller and lighter than most smartphones, and can also be used on an Android phone with a USB-C connection.
“From my time using the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield, I saw how well it protected my data and gave me fast access to files. It lived up to my high expectations of high-pressure deadlines, needing rapid edit and export times,” beams Lewis. “I would highly recommend it for getting the job done with speed and peace of mind.”
This feature was first published in the May/June 2024 issue of Pro Moviemaker.
