Best 4-bay SSD thunderbolt dock to get with iMac?

[twilexia]

I'm considering getting a 4-bay SSD Thunderbolt dock for my imac (late 2015) and am wondering which is the best choice, if anyone has experience with using these, would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Krevnik]

For SSDs, you can probably go with the ThunderBay 4 mini. There's not a lot of selection when it comes to 4-bay enclosures for 2.5" drives. Drobo has one, but the ThunderBay 4 is a bit more flexible (since you can buy it with a SoftRAID license to get RAID5, or use it as a JBOD array).

I've been using the bigger version of it for my 4TB HDDs in a RAID 5 and have no complaints.

 

[hfg]

I have used both the ThunderBay 4 Mini and the full size ThunderBay 4 with my 2015 5K iMac (and 2014 5K as well) and am happy with their convenience and performance. My iMacs have internal max 1TB SSD flash drives, and I used a mix of 2.5" HDD and SSDs in the ThunderBay Mini. I currently have a mix of 2.5" SSD and 3.5" HDD in use and am using the larger ThunderBay 4 for that. I did replace the quiet cooling fans with even quieter ones so I don't notice any extra noise unless I am actively accessing the larger 3.5" hard disks, which are only used for TimeMachine backups.

 

[joema2]

I'm considering getting a 4-bay SSD Thunderbolt dock for my imac (late 2015) and am wondering which is the best choice, if anyone has experience with using these, would love to hear your thoughts.

I have an 8TB SSD Thunderbay 4 Mini in RAID-0 using SoftRAID. I installed 4 x 2TB Samsung EVO 850 cards. It is connected via Thunderbolt 2 to my 2015 iMac. The Blackmagic numbers are 1171 MB/sec write and 1243 MB/sec read. More importantly it has very good random I/O performance which is important for the database operations FCPX does. It is also extremely quiet.

 

[Brian33]

Remember, the late 2015 iMac has Thunderbolt 2, not Thunderbolt 3, ports.

You should seriously consider the Akitio Thunder2 Quad Mini:
https://www.amazon.com/Akitio-TBQM-...1484633767&sr=8-4&keywords=akitio+thunderbolt

That model does not have hardware RAID, but you can use Apple RAID (software RAID) if you need it.

I don't have that exact device, but I do have the Akitio Thunder2 Duo Pro, which I think is fantastic, and an Akitio Neutrino Thunder D3, which is great _except_ for the tiny fan's annoying noise. (But I got that one very cheap on eBay!)

I consider my units to be very well designed and very well manufactured. I read a lot of reviews and the impression I got of reliability (most important to me!) and performance (nice to have) has not been broken by 6 and 9 months of daily use.

(No, don't work there, just really happy with these, especially the Thunder2 Duo Pro.)