Does a Thunderbolt2 3.5" 4-bay Mac/Pc diskless enclosure exist?

[orbitalpunk]

I just purchased a new Mac Pro and am trying to find a enclose but it seems near impossible. Im looking for Thunderbolt2, I want to be able to boot onto windows via bootcamp with it, and not come with drives. I have drives already.

I've looked at the following and why they don't work:

OWC Thunderbay 4 - not windows compatible
Drobo - Not Thunderbolt 2
Lacie - no Diskeless optoin
Promise Pegasus2 - no diskeless option anymore
G-SPEED Studio - no diskless option
akitio-thunder2 - support confined you can't boot into windows

The only one that sounds promising is this one but its not out yet.
http://www.caldigit.com/T4/

I'm just surprised this type of product doesn't exist yet.

 

[ColdCase]

Not sure where you saw that the OWC box is not windows compatible. Its just a JBOD. You would need Windows 7 or newer.

Booting into windows on a bootcamp external drive is a mac hardware/driver issue, not a thunderbolt issue. There are several ways to get it to work posted about the net. Thunderbolt works better than other interfaces.

The OWC Thunderbay is a nice box especially since they quieted the fan. I have a couple, been solid as a rock.

 

[orbitalpunk]

on the official specs I o my lists Mac conpstible. Now windows constable. They must be a driver for the raid or thunderbolt controller. The the company doesn't make the drivers then it won't work. Have you ran the thunderbay on windows? Or booted on to it?

 

[ColdCase]

I don't see that on OWC's site. Download the Thunderbay manual from OWC's site and you will have additional info.

An extra driver is not needed for thunderbolt and windows 7, 8 or Mac OSX as its built in to the OS. It just looks like another hard drive to the system. Besides mixing and matching disk formats, you are good to go. There is no RAID function in the Thunderbay, it presents each disk individually to the OS. You need to use a software RAID app, or disk utility to set a RAID up if you like. Dunno how/if software RAID and bootcamp interact, but your question was about thunderbolt not RAIDs I think.

Now there are a few tricks if you want to run bootcamp and want to boot windows from the Thunderbay (or any other Thunderbolt or USB device). Macs bootcamp drivers have to do things to make Windows happy and there are several optional work arounds described on the net to get boot from external device working (google "bootcamp thunderbolt"). There are a couple perhaps annoying issues dealing with sleep and such which may or may not affect you. But these issues are exactly the same as if you were trying to use a single external thunderbolt or USB drive.

I haven't used bootcamp in awhile. But I use Parallels with an external SSD for the virtual machine images. I'm just saying that there are folks that have figured it out, its not anything new.

 

[orbitalpunk]

I don't see that on OWC's site. Download the Thunderbay manual from OWC's site and you will have additional info.

An extra driver is not needed for thunderbolt and windows 7, 8 or Mac OSX as its built in to the OS. It just looks like another hard drive to the system. Besides mixing and matching disk formats, you are good to go. There is no RAID function in the Thunderbay, it presents each disk individually to the OS. You need to use a software RAID app, or disk utility to set a RAID up if you like. Dunno how/if software RAID and bootcamp interact, but your question was about thunderbolt not RAIDs I think.

Now there are a few tricks if you want to run bootcamp and want to boot windows from the Thunderbay (or any other Thunderbolt or USB device). Macs bootcamp drivers have to do things to make Windows happy and there are several optional work arounds described on the net to get boot from external device working (google "bootcamp thunderbolt"). There are a couple perhaps annoying issues dealing with sleep and such which may or may not affect you. But these issues are exactly the same as if you were trying to use a single external thunderbolt or USB drive.

I haven't used bootcamp in awhile. But I use Parallels with an external SSD for the virtual machine images. I'm just saying that there are folks that have figured it out, its not anything new.

I may give it a try then. Thanks for the input. It is interesting that on this thread one guy can see the Thunderbay in Windows and another can. See the second to last post https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1692097/

 

[ColdCase]

Running windows on a Mac via bootcamp can be tricky. If you don't follow the Thunderbolt work around steps exactly, one often gets into strange behavior land. There has been a lot written about the quirks of thunderbolt and bootcamp. It has something to do with how bootcamp provides thunderbolt services to the OS.