SanDisk Professional Pro Blade Station Review: Is It Worth It?

The ProBlade Station is San Disk's Thunderbolt NVME SSD Reader. The Problade system is built around removable Pro Blade NVME SSDs that you use with Transports or Stations. They are fast and compact, but pricey. In this video we review the Pro Blade station and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the ProBlade System.

Correction: 4:00 I do notice heavy fan noise when transferring between 300GB-1TB. I haven't noticed it while editing off the drive.

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[NomadicMeow]

Damn, the production quality behind these videos is so underrated.

[harivonwintr]

Did I hear you correctly when you said it comes with all the different power adapters for EU / UK / US? Because I live in the US and in Paris and would need to swap between the different plugs constantly, its neat if it comes with it already so I can hot swap.

[RobertJBareIII]

Dear God. What are the prices on these things.

I thought this was a pretty novel solution. A way to get the fastest possible data transfer speeds out of a PCIE M.2 SSD when moving around between USB and thunderbolt hosts in a robust form factor (while eliminating the added cost of an interface on each SSD). That seems like quite a niche use case but one I totally can understand in the video production sector. Especially on smaller/medium sized productions. But any value that convenience brings went right out the window when I saw the pricing on these, even more so when I looked into the warranty.

This is effectively a WD Black M.2 SSD in a fancy (proprietary) enclosure with a variety of enclosures to connect it to. This base station seems to just be a thunderbolt enclosure with a PCIE PLX chip (a fancy switching chip that allows a bunch of PCIE devices to all share the full bandwidth of a given PCIE connection) that you can hotplug these SSDs into.

For a setup I think would even begin to warrant this unit (this unit + two 1TB mags + two 2TB mags + two Transport reader, you're looking at the following costs

Current Sale Price: *$1439.93*
Normal MSRP: *$1599.93*

So that is *$1600* for what is essentially a PCIE PLX chip in a thunderbolt enclosure, a bog standard USB3 to NVME adapter, and a couple of WD Black M.2 SSDs in fancy metal housings. Oh and by the way all of these use a proprietary connector to connect to one another.
When I parted out what I thought to be a somewhat equivalent setup using four standard M.2 SSDs (same capacities), USB3 M.2 enclosures, and a nice TB4 Dock, I got a number of $797.75.

That is a markup of over *_200%_*

More Still I came up with that number using SSDs (samsung 980 Pros) that are frankly over spec'd considering USB or TB4 could only at most reach half of their rated R/W speeds, While also purchasing a metal housing/USB3 interface for each SSD.

Going further, the warranty on these is what makes these feel almost criminally overpriced to me.

Nearly every single M.2 SSD will have a warranty that is good for a certain number of years, and a certain number of TBW (that being how many total terabytes of data the drive is warrantied to withstand having wrote to it). For a pro-sumer ssd like the 1TB samsung 970 evo plus that is 5 years and 600TBW (with the TBW scaling with capacity, I.E the 2TB drive has a TBW of 1200).

The SSD Mags, do not list any metric similar to TBW and only list a similar 5 year warranty. For a "pro" priced product They do not seem to offer any sort of extended coverage in terms of damage or data loss, and will not warranty any problems that result from "normal wear and tear". So from what I can gather, if you have a drive failure in the 5 year warranty period there wouldn't be any option for a warranty covered attempt at Data recovery and you'd have no way to dispute any claim that your drive failed due to "natural wear and tear."

Along with SanDisk's recent handling of the Pro and pro extreme portable SSDs I'd be very wary of this warranty.

In reality instead of making an eco system of what I'd describe as over-engineered, over-priced, proprietary, cnc'd alumnium bullshit, I believe a more self contained solution would have been better.

An external USB-C SSD, with either a physical switch to change between a USB 20Gbs or TB interface or have it automatically detect and connect with the appropriate mode. Or simply an SSD with two USB-C ports for each function. This would allow users to have the option/ability to connect their SSD to their workstation or camera at the fastest possible speed without forcing them to purchase an overpriced dock.

Though this proposition is made while ignoring my belief that TB in this use case is rather unnecessary only adding complication to a product that doesn't need it. For one, I know of _no_ camera that uses TB for it's external media. Two, to be able to make use of the bandwidth allowed by TB when offloading Media, you need an equally as fast destination. So unless you have a TB Drive array or somehow a 40Gbe Network connection to your NAS (Hello LTT) the added bandwidth would be wasted. When it comes to editing, I struggle to think what scenario could possibly allow you to hit the limit of 20Gbps (roughly 2GB/s) of a USB3 gen2x2 connection or even a normal 10Gbps Gen2 connection. If you are experiencing frame drops/playback issues due to hitting those read speed limitations, you're probably already well into the territory of proxies making sense in your workflow.

*Overall the convenience or value this system adds compared to already existing options does not seem like a good value at a near doubling in price **_at all_*

Sorry to write you a novel in the comments here, the video looks and sounds fantastic, but I couldn't disagree more on the conclusion.

[MJDross]

I just copped this because of your video. I also got MacDrive program to read the drive on my windows PC. I'm going to pick up more drives when I see them go on sale. I started with a 2tb drive.

Do you use any other programs on your mac or windows PC with these drives?

[OnYourLeft]

OWC DOES make their own drives as well as the enclosure. The 4M2 is a repository, though. Basically, if you have a slew of cameras that can write to the ProBlade magazine via transports, get one of these stations, copy the clips from the magazines to your 4M2, edit, and then put the final back onto one magazine. Save that magazine as your client's master copy. That's your archive right there.

At least, that's how I would use it. Sure, it takes a bit of time to go from the magazine to the 4M2 and back, but I'm not keen on editing right on my acquisition drives. That's too volatile. I prefer keeping the media in 2 places until I'm done, not including my online and offline backups.

[yugandhar_music]

Is there any product which uses Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4.0 connections? There are a few single slot USB4.0 enclosures which delivers approximate 3800 MB/s read / write speed but couldn't find a station with 2 or more slots compatibility. Also, does Pro blade Station use JBOD?

[aa]

Hi
me a question about SanDisk Professional 0TB PRO-Blade Station
Do the multiple 4 TB drives allow me to create a RAID array to backup my work?

[eduardoromeroquezada]

I bought it recently and when I transfer files larger than 500GB it disconnects and the units are very hot. Has that ever happened to you?

[undefined]

So, Blackmagic has a solution and it’s not using a proprietary media. Just a consideration.

[audeostudio]

How do you get products send to you by Sandisk when you don’t even have 3k subs?

[thomasrosier]

I totally disagree as far as the noise level is concerned! I have 2 of these pro blade stations hence a defect should not be the case. Sometimes you do not hear any fan noise, but quite often the fan speeds up even in situations where the system is not under heavy workload. This behavior has been confirmed by Sandisk Professional customer support service.

[Ruiyixin]

How many watts does the power supply need to work? 100W? 80W?🤣