Akitio Launches 2.5" Quad Thunderbolt 3 Storage Device for New MacBook Pro

[MacRumors]

Akitio has announced the release of the its Thunder3 Quad Mini, a 2.5" four-bay Thunderbolt 3 external storage solution for the latest MacBook Pro.

The aluminum storage device has removable trays designed to house up to four 2.5" SATA SSDs or hard drives purchased separately. The device is equipped with two Thunderbolt 3 ports--the first one connects to the MacBook Pro, and the second one can be used to connect or daisy chain Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C peripherals.

With Software RAID, Akitio said four striped SSDs can reach data transfer speeds of up to 1375 MB/s, while four striped hard drives max out at around 400 MB/s. Thunderbolt 3 provides sufficient bandwidth to connect dual 4K displays to the latest MacBook Pro and complete other data transfers simultaneously.

A dedicated DisplayPort 1.2 video output provides connectivity to the 4K displays at 60Hz, while the device supports Power Delivery up to 15W to notebooks that support charging from a 5V/3A power source. 15W is hardly sufficient wattage for the latest MacBook Pro, which fully charges at up to 85W with Apple's own charger.

Akitio said the Thunder3 Quad Mini will be available in March for $329 alongside five other Thunderbolt 3 storage devices it sells.

Article Link: Akitio Launches 2.5" Quad Thunderbolt 3 Storage Device for New MacBook Pro

 

[bsbeamer]

any details on speeds WITHOUT being in a RAID mode for SSDs? assuming it does support JBOD and would show as 4 separate drives if setup for that.

 

[zaphoyd]

Curious if anyone knows or has tested what happens when multiple power sources are plugged into a USB Power delivery enabled system.

For example the 4K LG USB Type C Monitor that delivers 60W of power and this disk array that delivers 15W, if they were both plugged into a 15 inch MBP would it charge at 60W or 75W?

 

[Joe Rossignol]

any details on speeds WITHOUT being in a RAID mode for SSDs? assuming it does support JBOD and would show as 4 separate drives if setup for that.

Looks to be around 400-500 MB/s.

 

[Michael Scrip]

any details on speeds WITHOUT being in a RAID mode for SSDs? assuming it does support JBOD and would show as 4 separate drives if setup for that.

As Joe said above... separate drives should be the speed of each individual drive.

That's how it usually works in JBOD mode.

 

[lincolntran]

The potentials of the new MacBook Pro are starting to show.

I predict "multiple cables" will be a thing of the past by the end of 2018.......



.....except for a few people on MR of course.

 

[RandomRazer]

any details on speeds WITHOUT being in a RAID mode for SSDs? assuming it does support JBOD and would show as 4 separate drives if setup for that.

what is raid mode in simple terms?

 

[Deemr]

What monitor are they using on that shot. Looks decent.

 

[Joe Rossignol]

what is raid mode in simple terms?

This Thunder3 Quad Mini uses RAID 0, which essentially combines the four drives into one, but there is a risk of data loss as there is no redundancy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlik...li5what_is_raid_and_what_does_it_do_for_your/

Imagine you are storing a song on your computer, but instead of bits and bytes, there are little people in there that sing it back to you. You don't want to lose your song (singers quit all the time), and let's also pretend you want it sung as fast as possible. What do you do? You configure RAID.

• RAID-0: 2 or more people sing alternate words in the song. This is faster because they can breathe, turn the page, etc. while they're waiting for their next turn. If one of them quits, the song will be ruined forever, though. Hopefully you have a backup band!
• RAID-1: 2 or more people sing the song at the same time. If one of them quits, the song will still be sung because everyone else knows all the words, too. You can hire a new singer who will quickly learn the song from everyone else.
• RAID-5: 3 or more people sing alternate words, like RAID-0. But this time, every word in the song has exactly one backup singer. So it's faster and if one quits, someone else can jump in and cover the missing parts. It will take some time to get a new singer up to speed, though, and until the new singer is caught up, if you lose another one you will lose the song!

Replace all references to "singers/bands" and "words" with "hard drives" and "blocks of data", respectively, and you've got RAID. There are more types of RAID but in the past 30 years or so these have been the most popular types. Why, you might ask, doesn't everyone just do RAID 5? Well, singers cost money, and it slows them down just a bit to learn each other's lines.

 

[bartvk]

supporting Power Delivery up to 15W to notebooks that support charging from a 5V/3A power source. 15W is hardly sufficient wattage for the latest MacBook Pro, which fully charges at up to 85W with Apple's own charger.

I routinely sit around 15-20W during regular usage, so as Joe notes, this just isn't sufficient. I wonder why that limit is there. Probably there's some engineering reason -- would the unit get too hot (and thus need a fan) otherwise?

 

[justperry]

Nice looking and bet quite decent, shame it doesn't have for instance a1 USB port.
I also think for this price it should include automatic fan control, I see only one fan switch on the back, on
or Off only.
Price should be a bit south of $300.
[doublepost=1484246377][/doublepost]

I routinely sit around 15-20W during regular usage, so as Joe notes, this just isn't sufficient. I wonder why that limit is there. Probably there's some engineering reason -- would the unit get too hot (and thus need a fan) otherwise?

Weird that power can't actually bypass this device, as in, you connect a 100 watt charger to it and it will be able to deliver that power to the next device even when this device would be off, or any other device.

 

[bsbeamer]

Looks to be around 400-500 MB/s.
View attachment 683252

thanks for the info! this product (or a few of them daisy-chained) could very well make sense for some of my external SSD storage connection needs in the future, especially with what looks to be easily removable/swappable pallets.

anyone know if they're mostly quiet?
[doublepost=1484249393][/doublepost]

As Joe said above... separate drives should be the speed of each individual drive.

That's how it usually works in JBOD mode.

Thanks. Sometimes these type of external units add a bottleneck vs direct attachment, so was not 100% sure. Looks to be interesting.

 

[kwikdeth]

This Thunder3 Quad Mini uses RAID 0, which essentially combines the four drives into one, but there is a risk of data loss as there is no redundancy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlik...li5what_is_raid_and_what_does_it_do_for_your/

That is one of the best layman's explanations for RAID I have ever read.

 

[Joe Rossignol]

thanks for the info! this product (or a few of them daisy-chained) could very well make sense for some of my external SSD storage connection needs in the future, especially with what looks to be easily removable/swappable pallets.

anyone know if they're mostly quiet?

Tech specs say fan is 23 dB(A). There's a sound clip of a 25 dB(A) fan at bottom of this chart: http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/tecar.html

Read some online comments equating it to a "loud whisper."

Can't say for sure.

 

[voyager77]

What monitor are they using on that shot. Looks decent.

It looks like a Dell P2415Q. It's a 24" - 4K screen. I have one of those and it's good for the price.

 

[Dsching]

what is raid mode in simple terms?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Usually used for speed or data safety.

 

[btrach144]

Why hasn't anyone made a TB3 NVMe enclosure. I can imagine 2 Samsung 960 Pro in RAID 1. Blazing fast speed and redundancy.

 

[Lunchb0x8]

This Thunder3 Quad Mini uses RAID 0, which essentially combines the four drives into one, but there is a risk of data loss as there is no redundancy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlik...li5what_is_raid_and_what_does_it_do_for_your/

This is the best ELI5 for RAID I have ever read.

As a storage, server, network engineer, this will make my job a lot easier when explaining RAID to customers and junior technicians!

Thank you!

 

[compete12]

What's the speed after daisy-chaining it thru 3 dongles?

 

[okboy]

Curious if anyone knows or has tested what happens when multiple power sources are plugged into a USB Power delivery enabled system.

For example the 4K LG USB Type C Monitor that delivers 60W of power and this disk array that delivers 15W, if they were both plugged into a 15 inch MBP would it charge at 60W or 75W?

A Youtuber plugged in 4 Macbook Pro USB-C power supplies and it immediately stopped charging and lost the ability to be charged. Effectively it broke. Not sure if that applies to 15E extra power or not.

 

[koruki]

why raid0 for those speeds, you can easily get these speeds on a single Samsung 960 M.2, you can get an external M.2 enclosure and be hitting 3500MBps.

 

[Mr Dobey]

Why hasn't anyone made a TB3 NVMe enclosure. I can imagine 2 Samsung 960 Pro in RAID 1. Blazing fast speed and redundancy.

Akitio makes a 2500MBs TB3 PCIE drive. I would love to see a RAID 0 setup which would in theory max out TB3

 

[Ollyp]

what is raid mode in simple terms?

This should help explain...
http://bfy.tw/9S3Z

 

[moonjelly]

Curious if anyone knows or has tested what happens when multiple power sources are plugged into a USB Power delivery enabled system.

For example the 4K LG USB Type C Monitor that delivers 60W of power and this disk array that delivers 15W, if they were both plugged into a 15 inch MBP would it charge at 60W or 75W?

The Mac chooses the one with the most output.

 

[itsLouieV]

geez, I feel like a raid array (or something better then jbod) is in my near future... I wish drobo would make enclosures this sexy.