Why We Designed the Smallest, Fastest SSD for Creators (and How It Changes Everything)

The Storage Problem No One Solved for Creators

When your camera is a phone, your storage can’t be an afterthought.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max and now the iPhone 16 have turned mobile devices into professional cameras. With 4K120 and ProRes workflows approved even for Netflix productions, creators can finally shoot cinema-grade content straight from their pocket.

But here’s the catch: high-quality recording means massive file sizes. Your internal storage clogs up after a day of shooting. Cables, bulky drives, and failed transfers ruin the flow. We’ve been there. We’ve lived that pain. That’s why we built PlankSSD—to erase those barriers and give creators a seamless, cable-free workflow that just works.

It started with one question: how small can we go without sacrificing power?

When we first sketched PlankSSD, the goal wasn’t to make another drive. It was to pioneer an entirely new category: a creator-first SSD designed for phones. Armand, our CTO, put it best:

“I don’t want to prove it works. I want to prove it doesn’t break.”
- Armand, Planck Founder

That philosophy guided everything. We tore apart conventional drives, studied PCB architecture, and worked with factory partners in Dongguan to miniaturize every component. By combining chipsets, layering PCBs, and engineering a vertical USB-C port from scratch, we created the thinnest, most compact SSD we’ve ever seen—just 7.2mm.

4K120 footage doesn’t just fill space—it creates heat.

Recording at ProRes bitrates demands a minimum sustained 440MB/s. Not a burst speed. Not a lab-test snapshot. Sustained. Most drives drop speed as they heat up, leading to dreaded dropped frames and corrupted footage.

We tackled it with three engineering pillars:

• Chipset Selection: Hand-picked for power efficiency and sustained performance.
• Heat Dissipation: A custom aluminum heat sink integrated into the front housing keeps temps low without bulk.
• Quality Control: We didn’t just test to pass. We stress-tested to fail—pushing beyond creator workloads to guarantee reliability under pressure.

The best gear is the gear you forget you’re using.

PlankSSD doesn’t dangle on a cable. It doesn’t make you strip off your phone case. It doesn’t turn your mobile rig into a Frankenstein setup. Its T-shaped design hugs your phone, sits flush in your hand, and slips into your pocket without a second thought.

When you’re shooting, it disappears into the experience. When you’re done, it plugs straight into your iPad, MacBook, or editing station. No failed AirDrops. No “where’s the right cable?” panic. Just seamless capture-to-transfer in seconds.

Creators deserve gear that’s as ambitious as their ideas.

We could have built another “me too” drive. We didn’t. PlankSSD was engineered from the ground up for the realities of mobile content creation:

• Pocket-sized without compromising speed.
• Sustained performance for 4K120 and ProRes.
• Designed to disappear in your hand and workflow.
• Built with a “prove it doesn’t break” mentality for unmatched reliability.

This isn’t a storage device. It’s creative freedom in 7.2mm of engineering.

Kickstarter sold out. Pre-orders are now open.

Our first production run is limited. Every unit is built to the same stress-tested standard we demand for professional creators. If you signed up early, you already know the value PlankSSD brings to your workflow.

Now is your chance to lock in your pre-order and be part of the first wave of creators to experience the smallest, fastest SSD built for mobile shooting.