OWC Thunderbay 4 enclosures - sleep issue

[radiohead007]

Fyi for folks getting their new minis and using this enclosure route to house their hard drives (or have one of the effected models). I received my enclosure today (and my new Mini). But turns out there is a known sleep issue with the enclosure, and I got a note indicating that drives may "drop" when computer is trying to sleep. Annoying. I contacted their chat support and they could not commit a fix by date.

Has anyone faced any issues and are folks forcing their drives not to sleep in the OS setting?

Here is the link they pointed me to: http://go.owcdigital.com/thunderbay_sleep
Verbatim here:

THUNDERBAY (THUNDERBOLT 3 MODELS): DRIVE SLEEP ISSUE

RELEVANT PART NUMBERS:

• OWCTB36LRTxxx
• OWCTB36SRTxxx
• OWCTB36LRKIT0
• OWCTB36SRKIT0
  
• OWCTB3SRTxxxx
• OWCTB3IVTxxxx
• OWCTB3SRKIT0GB
• OWCTB3IVKIT0GB

Please note that we have recently verified an issue that may impact your ThunderBay use, if you are using 'sleep' or 'low power' settings with your computer.

If your OS is set to spin down connected drives during sleep or low-power mode, afterward when you wake the computer up, you may find that the connection to the ThunderBay drive(s) will drop. We are working towards a solution for this but in the meantime, there are steps you can take to avoid this issue.

For users of macOS, follow these steps:

1. Open System Preferences.

2. Click the Energy Saver icon.

3. By default the 'Put hard disks to sleep when possible' option will be selected. Uncheck this option.

• Note this will impact all connected drives, not just the ThunderBay.
• If you are using a laptop, you will need to click the "Battery" button and make the same change for battery-based operation as well.

 

[ktcifone]

2018 mini was enough expense. Cant imagine replacing my tb2 thunderbay 4, just yet even though the 6 looks nice.
Not having any connection issues, but good to know.
I usually leave this disabled anyway better to keep the drives spinning then stop and start frequently.

 

[harriska2]

I have 5400 green drives in my pc and am pretty sure I turned off sleep. Those drives are fast, have no reconnection issues or spin up slowness, and are 3-5 years old.

 

[radiohead007]

I have 5400 green drives in my pc and am pretty sure I turned off sleep. Those drives are fast, have no reconnection issues or spin up slowness, and are 3-5 years old.

The hardest part is the noise.. Stocked it with my 3 7200 rpm drives and 1 ssd. It's louder than my older 2008 mac pro that housed the same drives.

Also wonder about the unnecessary energy use 365/24 hr for constantly spinning drives.

 

[fandsw]

I've had our new TB4 hooked up to our new MM18 since Tuesday, and when the MM goes to sleep, the TB4 goes to sleep. When I wake the MM, the TB4 comes right up with it, no problems so far. The only thing I had to do was turn off the Power Nap setting on the MM, as it would wake every couple of hours or so for 30-60 seconds, waking up the TB4 with it.....and waking up SWMBO!!!

 

[WilliamG]

2018 mini was enough expense. Cant imagine replacing my tb2 thunderbay 4, just yet even though the 6 looks nice.
Not having any connection issues, but good to know.
I usually leave this disabled anyway better to keep the drives spinning then stop and start frequently.

I have a bunch of TB2 Thunderbays. You wouldn’t need to replace them - just get the TB2 to TB3 adapter.

 

[harriska2]

The hardest part is the noise.. Stocked it with my 3 7200 rpm drives and 1 ssd. It's louder than my older 2008 mac pro that housed the same drives.

Also wonder about the unnecessary energy use 365/24 hr for constantly spinning drives.

Yeah, I ought to stick a meter on it to see energy use and report back. My 5400 rpm drives are pretty quiet.

 

[ktcifone]

I have a bunch of TB2 Thunderbays. You wouldn’t need to replace them - just get the TB2 to TB3 adapter.

I have a tb2 array already, spindles running for 3 years approaching end of warranty.

 

[harriska2]

I have a tb2 array already, spindles running for 3 years approaching end of warranty.

I’m curious as to whether the thunderbay is overkill (expensive) if one doesn’t want to use raid but use time machine syncing instead. I’m coming from windows pc and syncbackpro which has worked great for the past 7 years.

 

[fandsw]

I’m curious as to whether the thunderbay is overkill (expensive) if one doesn’t want to use raid but use time machine syncing instead. I’m coming from windows pc and syncbackpro which has worked great for the past 7 years.

I'm not using my TB4 in RAID, as a matter of fact I bought the non-SoftRAID version. Connected to my MM i7/32GB/1TB I have 4 6TB drives in my TB4 that I used to have in my NAS that I'm now selling. One drive is my Media Prime drive(Videos/Movies/Photos), a Media Backup (daily CC clone of Media Prime), a Data Vault (daily CC clone of 1TB Main Drive User files), and a Time Machine. Works for me and gives me plenty of data redundancy, as well as keeping a monthly backup on 2 external drive that I keep at my office at work.

 

[ktcifone]

I’m curious as to whether the thunderbay is overkill (expensive) if one doesn’t want to use raid but use time machine syncing instead. I’m coming from windows pc and syncbackpro which has worked great for the past 7 years.

Its overkill but have been burned before with hardware failures.
if you want performance use local SSD, if you want availability go cloud.
If you want a mixture of both local use the Thunderbolt RAID.

 

[radiohead007]

Just fyi since I raised this thread.. got an RMA for the thunderbay4 and went instead with the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad (USB-C 3.1 Gen 2). No known issues with putting drives to sleep. And a whole lot QUIETER (45-50 db versus Thunderbay4's 60 db, as measured with an iPhone app about an inch in front of the enclosure). Will post detailed findings in a separate thread if it's useful for folks here.