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Anyone here using an OWC Thunderbay enclosure?
- Thread starter odinsride
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A couple of questions and comments here.
I'm setting up an iMac Retina with a Thunderbay 4, the 12TB version with four Toshiba DT01AC300 drives, plus a fifth drive outside the box. So far, I'm impressed with the design and performance.
One of the phone reps at OWC told me that the current Thunderbays were shipping with low noise Zalman fans. But my unit arrived with a fan made by Yen Sun Technology, model FD129225LB-N (the label shows "Y.S.Tech"). The fan is just loud enough to be distracting if the unit is on my desk. Does anyone know if the Zalman is quieter?
When the iMac sleeps, the Thunderbay goes into an idle mode with fan and drives off. But even if the iMac is still asleep, the Thunderbay occasionally wakes up and spins its fan for a few seconds. Is this normal?
It seems that many of the people buying Thunderbay plan to run it in RAID-0 or RAID-5. They get terrific benchmark speeds, but I wonder how many of these people really need that speed. It might make sense if you want a big scratch disk for Photoshop, or if you are editing high-end video. But I suspect that these transfer rates are overkill for most other applications, and won't result in improved productivity.
I ordered my iMac with the 1TB SSD. It will be used for Photoshop and software development. I will keep the system, apps, scratch, cache, and editing versions of image files on the SSD. Finished images will be moved off the SSD to an archive in a RAID-1 set. The RAID-1 will contain three disks, two of which will be in the Thunderbay, and a third will be kept offsite. The disks will be rotated; when the offsite disk is swapped into the enclosure it will be automatically brought into sync. This arrangement was suggested by a tech support rep at SoftRAID as most appropriate for my needs. It provides both fault tolerance and backup for the archive. RAID-1 is not as fast as RAID-5, but it is more secure. The data transfer rate will be around 180MB/sec, which should be more than adequate.
The other two disks in the Thunderbay will be used for Time Machine and SuperDuper backups of the iMac's SSD. Important files on the SSD and RAID-1 archive will also saved in the cloud (Backblaze).
Comments or suggestions about this plan would be appreciated, and I would be interested in learning how others are dealing with these issues.
I'm setting up an iMac Retina with a Thunderbay 4, the 12TB version with four Toshiba DT01AC300 drives, plus a fifth drive outside the box. So far, I'm impressed with the design and performance.
One of the phone reps at OWC told me that the current Thunderbays were shipping with low noise Zalman fans. But my unit arrived with a fan made by Yen Sun Technology, model FD129225LB-N (the label shows "Y.S.Tech"). The fan is just loud enough to be distracting if the unit is on my desk. Does anyone know if the Zalman is quieter?
When the iMac sleeps, the Thunderbay goes into an idle mode with fan and drives off. But even if the iMac is still asleep, the Thunderbay occasionally wakes up and spins its fan for a few seconds. Is this normal?
It seems that many of the people buying Thunderbay plan to run it in RAID-0 or RAID-5. They get terrific benchmark speeds, but I wonder how many of these people really need that speed. It might make sense if you want a big scratch disk for Photoshop, or if you are editing high-end video. But I suspect that these transfer rates are overkill for most other applications, and won't result in improved productivity.
I ordered my iMac with the 1TB SSD. It will be used for Photoshop and software development. I will keep the system, apps, scratch, cache, and editing versions of image files on the SSD. Finished images will be moved off the SSD to an archive in a RAID-1 set. The RAID-1 will contain three disks, two of which will be in the Thunderbay, and a third will be kept offsite. The disks will be rotated; when the offsite disk is swapped into the enclosure it will be automatically brought into sync. This arrangement was suggested by a tech support rep at SoftRAID as most appropriate for my needs. It provides both fault tolerance and backup for the archive. RAID-1 is not as fast as RAID-5, but it is more secure. The data transfer rate will be around 180MB/sec, which should be more than adequate.
The other two disks in the Thunderbay will be used for Time Machine and SuperDuper backups of the iMac's SSD. Important files on the SSD and RAID-1 archive will also saved in the cloud (Backblaze).
Comments or suggestions about this plan would be appreciated, and I would be interested in learning how others are dealing with these issues.
I'm going for 2 x 3TB drives in RAID 0 for my main files storage which should give me a fast 6TB. I'm then going to add a 6TB WD green drive for backing that up nightly with CCC.
In the fourth bay I'll put a Samsung 840 EVO 256GB and make a bootable clone of the Mac OS partition on that - again backed up regularly with CCC. (I have a 512GB internal SSD which I will split into a MAC OS and Bootcamp partitions)
As well as being fast, the advantage of this setup for me is that if a drive fails, whether its one of the RAID 0's or the system, I'll have no downtime at all. As I work on my Mac all day every day this is important.
I've also got a 4TB firewire drive and a 1TB USB 3 drive that I currently use for backups of my 2008 Mac pro. I will keep using these as a 2nd backup which I keep elsewhere (the 4TB for files and the 1TB for system) until my actual files used go above the capacity of the 4TB. At that point I'll probably get a dual bay Mercury enclosure and put another 6TB disk in there and another SSD to cover files and system.
I'm currently using Backblaze for cloud backups but I might shift to CrashPlan. I like their ability to backup to a trusted computer offsite. I have an old friend who is also a graphic designer and lives a few minutes away - I might keep my 2nd backup at his house and backup to that with CrashPlan - let him do the same at mine of course.
William G is right that all drives fail. But it is also true that some drives fail much more regularly than others. In Backblaze's test of thousands of drives, HGST drives had an average annual failure rate of 0.7%. Seagate's rate was 15.7% - that's a huge difference.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/
At least that is what I was going to do....
I've just realised that Raid 5 continues to operate as a striped array (but without redundancy) after a single drive failure.
2 x 3TB RAID 0 plus a 6TB backup gives me 6TB of usable space and costs about £400 for drives
3 x 3TB RAID 5 gives me 6TB of usable space and costs about £300 for drives - but I then have to buy SoftRaid which costs £123 to get the RAID 5... so it still ends up a little more expensive. I might be able to get a discount from OWC though - but I am buying the thunder bay from MegaMac as I'm in the UK - not sure if they'd give me the discount or not.
Hmmm
Not sure RAID 5 gives me an advantage here... any thoughts? what is speed difference between RAID 5 and RAID 0 - is there one?
Can anyone confirm if the Thunderbay allows you to use 3 drives as RAID 5 and keep the fourth for something else? if not, RAID5 is not an option for me at all.
I've just realised that Raid 5 continues to operate as a striped array (but without redundancy) after a single drive failure.
2 x 3TB RAID 0 plus a 6TB backup gives me 6TB of usable space and costs about £400 for drives
3 x 3TB RAID 5 gives me 6TB of usable space and costs about £300 for drives - but I then have to buy SoftRaid which costs £123 to get the RAID 5... so it still ends up a little more expensive. I might be able to get a discount from OWC though - but I am buying the thunder bay from MegaMac as I'm in the UK - not sure if they'd give me the discount or not.
Hmmm
Not sure RAID 5 gives me an advantage here... any thoughts? what is speed difference between RAID 5 and RAID 0 - is there one?
Can anyone confirm if the Thunderbay allows you to use 3 drives as RAID 5 and keep the fourth for something else? if not, RAID5 is not an option for me at all.
I'm not an expert in this stuff, but here is what I understand, for whatever it's worth. For the same number of disks, RAID 0 will be faster than RAID 5. For example, a RAID 0 built from 4 striped disks, will be faster than a RAID 5 built from 4 disks. This is because part of every disk in the RAID 5 will be used for parity data, and the driver has to spend part of the time processing this parity data. Google will lead to several reviews of Thunderbay which compare various RAID configurations, and report data transfer rates for each. A good place to start is Lloyd Chambers' site.
Your choice should be motivated by your priorities for speed, storage capacity, and fault tolerance. There are tradeoffs between these.
RAID 0 is really living dangerously. If any one drive fails, the entire array is hosed. RAID 0 is a good choice when working on large data files that must be streamed really fast, and where the data is transitory, or easily recovered from backup. People editing high-end video (multi-cam, 4K, etc.) are the natural customers for RAID 0. It's also a good choice for a Photoshop scratch volume, although if your boot drive is an SSD, it might be a better place for the scratch. If your data is in smaller chunks (requiring random access, lots of seeks) like a database, a programming project, or a multi-track audio recording with lots of samples, a RAID 0 might not provide much benefit, and might actually work less well than other options.
RAID 5 provides a speed boost, relative to a single drive, and the parity data provides a measure of fault tolerance. If one drive fails, you can run in a degraded state (slower, and with no tolerance for an additional drive failure) . When you replace the failed drive, the RAID rebuilds itself. That's the theory. But the rebuild can fail. Read this for more information. The vulnerability of RAID 5 to rebuild failures is a subject of debate. But some IT pros are choosing RAID 6 (which requires an additional disk) to be on the safe side.
I'm using an SSD for my boot volume, apps, and working documents. The Thunderbay will hold my local backups and archive. For the disks in the Thunderbay my priority is data safety rather than speed. So I will use a RAID 1 mirror. This is more secure against faults than RAID 0 or 5. The RAID 1 will run at roughly the same speed as the member disks: 180MB/s, certainly fast enough for my needs. If I needed more speed, and the best fault tolerance, I would use a RAID 1+0.
For any of these RAID options, a separate backup is really required (preferably off site).
The RAID-5 is about as fast as RAID-0 for "read" with the same number of disks, but the "write" is slower. Of course, for the same number of disks, the total capacity is less with RAID-5 by the capacity of one of the disks.
You can do RAID-5 with 3 disks and use the other bay for something else with the ThunderBay enclosure. You still lose 1 disks's worth of capacity and it will be slower than a 4-disk array.
My 2 solutions here, each with Thunderbay IV enclosures:
iMac #1 with internal 760 GB SSD:
4 ea. 3 TB disk drives in RAID-5 organized into 3 volumes using SoftRAID5:
-- 1TB daily CCC clone of internal SSD and is bootable if needed
-- 3 TB archive data and media files
-- 5 TB TimeMachine historic backup for quick DAS access
TimeMachine also does full backups to 2 different remote NAS systems.
RiMac #2 with internal 1 TB SSD:
-- 500 GB SSD for Windows 8
-- spare at the moment
-- 4 TB hard disk: 1 TB SSD Clone, 3 TB archive data and media files
-- 6 TB hard disk Time Machine backup
TimeMachine also does full backups to 2 different remote NAS systems.
(No RAID as having troubles getting Windows to coexist with external RAID disks in ThunderBay IV)
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When I was going to order I called in and asked about the fan and was told that it would be a quiet Zalman model.
I only have one hard drive installed for now and the fan is way too loud. I checked and mine seems to be some no name fan inside. I called customer service and the lady told me that if it's too loud then that's tough and they are using several brands of fans and they are quiet enough for most people.
How are people liking the fan that others have suggested now that they've had them installed for a bit?
I only have one hard drive installed for now and the fan is way too loud. I checked and mine seems to be some no name fan inside. I called customer service and the lady told me that if it's too loud then that's tough and they are using several brands of fans and they are quiet enough for most people.
How are people liking the fan that others have suggested now that they've had them installed for a bit?
I too was assured by OWC Customer Support that I would receive both my ThunderBay IV enclosures with the new Zalman Ultra Quiet Fan because the order date was well past the transition date for fans. However, I did not receive the Zalman in either enclosure! They were instead using Y.S.Tech FD129225MB fans. These are the same fans as delivered in my much older OWC Qx2 RAID5 enclosures which were also too loud.
I purchased the "upgrade" Zalman fan from OWC for one of the enclosures and I think it made a big improvement in the noise level coming from the enclosure (I use very low noise disk drives, but I pulled them for a noise test).
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Zalman/ZMF2PLUSSF/
Other posters here have also recommended the Noctua NF-B9 fan as being very low noise in the ThunderBay. I haven't tried them yet myself.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014I9K30/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
William G and everyone else: thank you so much for taking the time to post your observations and tests! It's very appreciated!! I've been mulling over the many different storage options for a month or two as I get ready to move forward with investing in a large storage array. I've been leaning towards the Thunderbay 4 RAID 5 edition with 20 TBs. Everyone's observations and ideas have really helped me decide what configuration will work best for my needs.
I gotta tell you, the only thing that annoys me is how OWC is approaching the issue with their fan. I don't like the way they are telling people one thing and then doing something completely different. Folks here have provided some great fan replacement options for $20, but this one blatant and obvious issue with OWC could possibly leave one questioning OWC's integrity and quality control for a product they are marketing as a professional-level enclosure. I can't help but wonder why OWC is saying one thing, but then providing a different product then what's advertised. Hopefully this is just an honest mistake with a product that is otherwise very good in all other areas.
Bryan
I gotta tell you, the only thing that annoys me is how OWC is approaching the issue with their fan. I don't like the way they are telling people one thing and then doing something completely different. Folks here have provided some great fan replacement options for $20, but this one blatant and obvious issue with OWC could possibly leave one questioning OWC's integrity and quality control for a product they are marketing as a professional-level enclosure. I can't help but wonder why OWC is saying one thing, but then providing a different product then what's advertised. Hopefully this is just an honest mistake with a product that is otherwise very good in all other areas.
Bryan
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The Noctua NF-B9 is absolutely amazing. I honestly can't imagine is hearing it over the sound of room noise or a quiet iMac or anything else. I also received the crappy Y.S. Tech fan, and it was out within 2 minutes of receiving the Thunderbay 4, replaced by the Noctua.
I also think it's a crock that OWC says it comes with a fan that it obviously doesn't come with. Here's a picture of the one I pulled from my Thunderbay 4.
Attachments
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Thanks William. Your observations have been enormously helpful.
Do you feel like the Noctua fan provides the same level (or proper level) of cooling power? I realize this is kind of a silly question because I'm sure you would have already voiced any concerns if you had any, but I just want to make sure all of the bases are covered.
Thanks!
Bryan
Do you feel like the Noctua fan provides the same level (or proper level) of cooling power? I realize this is kind of a silly question because I'm sure you would have already voiced any concerns if you had any, but I just want to make sure all of the bases are covered.
Thanks!
Bryan
Honestly? Yes. I run it at the lowest RPM setting (1000rpm) with the included cable, and the drives run extremely cool. Before I disabled the iStat Menus S.M.A.R.T. tools in OS X, (because it was interfering with drive-sleep protocols at the OS-level - the drives would keep sleeping and instantly waking up!), all four of my drives were all at between 31-35C. That's certainly cool enough for me.
Also, remember the entire iMac is cooled sufficiently by one fan that spins at 1200rpm under normal conditions. And that's entire computer - GPU, CPU, PSU, RAM, screen etc... The Thunderbay 4 feels very cool to the touch even when the drives are working hard and I don't see heat being an issue in the long run at all. I'd wager if you had a drive failure it would be nothing to do with heat.
Good luck!
Glad to hear that the replacement fans are a good option, but it's just so disappointing that OWC is treating their customers this way. I expect better when spending over $400 on an empty enclosure!
I Tweeted to them earlier and have not gotten a response so I plan on just leaving a review for the enclosure mentioning the fan issue and how I and others were assured we'd be getting the Zalman fan and then told to deal. Maybe that will get their attention?
I Tweeted to them earlier and have not gotten a response so I plan on just leaving a review for the enclosure mentioning the fan issue and how I and others were assured we'd be getting the Zalman fan and then told to deal. Maybe that will get their attention?
very functional
I have one for my 2013 MacPro and it's superb. I have four 4TB drives in it and use them for backup and Time Machine. It's reasonably quiet and with Thunderbolt 1 still quite fast. There are many ways to configure the drives. I do not use RAID.
I have one for my 2013 MacPro and it's superb. I have four 4TB drives in it and use them for backup and Time Machine. It's reasonably quiet and with Thunderbolt 1 still quite fast. There are many ways to configure the drives. I do not use RAID.
I just got off the phone with OWC. I explained that, during my pre-sale inquiry, another rep told me that units were shipping with the Zalman fans, but that my unit arrived with a Y.S.Tech fan. The guy with whom I spoke today says that he will forward my information to the appropriate people and that they will make things right.
However, I just noticed that this issue may be more complicated than I thought. The fan in my Thunderbay is a Y.S.Tech model FD129225LB-N. Some of the people in this thread are reporting that they received FD129225MB. Check out the spec sheet at the Y.S.Tech website. The LB model is listed as 8dB quieter than the MB. That's a big difference, although the real world difference will depend on operating conditions (fan speed, enclosure design, etc.). In any case, OWC is now shipping a different version of the Y.S.Tech fan. I don't know whether it is as quiet, or maybe even quieter, than the Zalman. OWC is supposed to call me back tomorrow. If I learn anything, I will post to this list.
I have the LB in my new Thunderbay 4 (see my picture above on my second post up). It still wasn't quiet enough for my liking.
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You mean "had the LB"? I thought you installed a Noctua NF-B9, which was much quieter?
I agree Noctua fans are the best. On my PC I changed every possible fan to Noctuas. I only wish they made a wider range of fans -- I would put them in every fan-cooled device I have.
I'd be willing to pay a reasonable mark-up if manufacturers would just do this at assembly time.
Had/have. Yes, I have the Noctua NF-B9 in there now. That's why I was easily able to snap the picture of the LB in my hand.
Hold on, this was just released by OWC-Thunderbay 4 Mini and may change everyone's thinking. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB4MSR0GB/
Thank you for posting this for consideration as it may be a great choice for those who need their array to be portable, such as a traveling professional photographer or someone in a RV. However, for me, the 2.5" drives mean that it can only have a total drive capacity of 8 TB which is not big enough for my future needs. (I'm investing in an array that I hope will serve me well for approx 5 years.)
Now, if the new Thunderbay Mini was as small as they claim in the millimeter measurements listed under the specs, then I would buy one in a heartbeat. According to the measured size in millimeters, the ThunderBay Mini is smaller than my iPhone!
(It looks like someone accidentally put in a decimal point.)Cheers,
Bryan
The full-size can be used with 2.5" drives (with adapters), so it's a more flexible setup. If you don't think you'll ever go larger than 2.5", then this isn't a bad choice, but I'd prefer the flexibility down the road.
I'm a Photographer & Cinematographer and with a busy season next year, I've decided to create a practical workstation.
I've ordered the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display with the following configuration:
4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x8GB
512GB Flash Storage
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5
I've purchased the OWC Thunderbolt Bay 4 Raid 5 Edition along side
- Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive
- WD 4 TB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive - Black
- WD 4 TB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive - Black
- WD 4 TB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive - Black
Im thinking of setting up the 3 x WD 4 TB as Raid 5 for all my photo and video storage and using the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive as a 'scratch disk' for film editing.
What do you guys think of my set up? any feedback will be appreciated or even sharing your own set ups.
I've ordered the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display with the following configuration:
4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x8GB
512GB Flash Storage
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5
I've purchased the OWC Thunderbolt Bay 4 Raid 5 Edition along side
- Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive
- WD 4 TB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive - Black
- WD 4 TB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive - Black
- WD 4 TB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive - Black
Im thinking of setting up the 3 x WD 4 TB as Raid 5 for all my photo and video storage and using the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive as a 'scratch disk' for film editing.
What do you guys think of my set up? any feedback will be appreciated or even sharing your own set ups.
I think you'll find there's not much to be said, really. That setup would work fine, and down the line you can always move that scratch disk externally on Thunderbolt so you can add a 4th drive to the mix.
By "scratch disk", I assume you're using Premiere. Yes a common recommendation is have a dedicated scratch disk.
However -- you really need an on-site 4TB spare drive in case one of your RAID 5 drives fail. You'd then have four physical drives, which enables performance testing of 3 x 4TB vs 4 x 4TB in RAID 5. If it turns out there's no major difference for your workload, use 3 x 4TB plus the SSD.
OTOH if there is a sufficiently big performance difference, use 4 x 4TB and use the SSD in a separate chassis. Of course in this case you'd need to obtain another 4TB drive as an on-site spare.