Samsung: Faster than the pack

Posted on Sep 5, 2025 by Admin

In the heat and high-octane atmosphere of Le Mans Classic, the Samsung Portable SSD T9 proved that it’s the ultimate drive for filmmakers working under pressure

Advertisement feature

When Anglo-French cinematographer Christophe Carcelle set out to film the Le Mans Classic earlier this year, he wasn’t just chasing cars – he was chasing family history. His late grandfather Henry Mitchell was part of the Birmingham Mitchells & Butlers brewing family, but away from business, Mitchell had a passion for speed, and achieved a career highlight by finishing 13th in the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1953, driving a Frazer-Nash Le Mans Coupe. During research for a pilot TV series based on his grandfather’s story, Carcelle made the remarkable discovery that the same car is still in use today. Even more astonishing, it belongs to Pierre Macchi, a neighbour in Paris. The car still competes in historic events, including the crown jewel – the Le Mans Classic.

Carcelle decided that the only way to truly honour his grandfather’s legacy was to film the car in action. Armed with the Samsung Portable SSD T9, his cine camera and a set of anamorphic lenses, he threw himself into the high-octane atmosphere of the Classic.

The event is as chaotic as it is thrilling, with more than 80 cars across eight classes battling for track time. Carcelle describes sprinting between vantage points in the heat, capturing every detail of the car’s performance while juggling the pressures of being a one-man crew.

Over the course of the day, he shot an astonishing 800GB of 6K footage. For most filmmakers, the challenge of backing up that much material on location would induce anxiety. With unpredictable weather, limited downtime and only a laptop at hand, there was no room for error. For Carcelle, the solution was simple: the Samsung T9 Portable SSD.

Roughly the size of a credit card, and weighing just 122g, the Samsung Portable SSD T9 slips easily into a jacket pocket or camera bag. Yet, inside its compact, rubberised shell lies the kind of performance that makes it indispensable on shoots like Le Mans. Using USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 connectivity, the portable drive delivers blistering read and write speeds of up to 2000MB/s. Backing up all 800GB of his material took Carcelle around just 30 minutes on his laptop – the kind of turnaround that would be unthinkable with a traditional hard drive. “It just kept up with me,” he says. “I had to rush off to catch a train back to London, so it was all a bit of a panic, but I never had to worry about whether the footage was safe.”

That reassurance carried through into post. His editor Robbie Broster was tasked with turning Carcelle’s raw footage into a short three-and-a-half-minute trailer to pitch the series. He used the same Samsung Portable SSD T9 to cut the material in Adobe Premiere Pro, putting the portable drive through everything from proxy creation and stabilisation to audio mixing and rotoscoping.

“It handled everything smoothly,” Broster says. Exporting a 6K H.264 file took around six minutes – very impressive given the file sizes involved. The drive also remained cool and quiet throughout, a testament to Samsung’s advanced thermal management.

A racing car driving pass behind a metal fence

Two men standing at a racetrack and pointing

The Samsung Portable SSD T9 is a worthy partner on location and in the studio

Performance wasn’t the only factor that impressed the production team. On location, Carcelle valued the Samsung Portable SSD T9’s robust build quality. Its rubberised shell offers drop resistance up to three metres, while its operating temperature tolerance ranges from freezing to 60°C. In the baking French sun, surrounded by jostling crews and the constant thrum of red-hot engines, it never missed a beat. “It’s the kind of kit you can rely on when everything around you is unpredictable,” Carcelle adds.

Capacity was another consideration. With up to 4TB available, the Samsung Portable SSD T9 allows ample headroom for projects stretching over multiple days or weeks of dailies. So it was more than enough to capture a day of shooting.

For Samsung, this represents years of innovation in solid-state storage. Built on V-NAND technology and enhanced with TurboWrite algorithms, it maintains consistent high performance, even under heavy workloads. It’s also designed for the realities of professional use, with cross-platform compatibility across MacOS, Windows, Android and even external video recorders. Add in the reassurance of a five-year warranty, it’s easy to see why Carcelle trusted it to safeguard his grandfather’s story.

The resulting film is more than just a celebration of motorsports, it’s a bridge between generations, uniting a grandson with the memory of a man who lived life at speed. In a project about racing history, Carcelle needed technology that could match the pace – and he found it in the Samsung Portable SSD T9, with storage as fast, enduring and unforgettable as the cars of Le Mans Classic themselves.

Power to store more

The Samsung PRO Plus microSD 1TB gives you the space and speed to store a massive amount of data. With read/write speeds of up to 180MB/s and 130MB/s respectively, this tiny card handles high-performance tasks, perfect for action cameras, drones and smartphones. Samsung’s trusted protection means your data is safe too. The Samsung PRO Plus 1TB microSD is built to deliver reliability, performance and peace of mind.