OWC Thunderbolt Dock impressions

[mwchris]

Make sure you pick it up at a place with a liberal return policy, the Belkin unit does not work as well as the OWC unit in most applications... but there are many that have had decent results

I'm curious what about the Belkin gives you the IO you want? There are docks with4 USB ports that work well.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1831181/

Why do you say the Belkin does not work as well? Does the monitor wake from sleep? Does the audio pop while the Mac is asleep?

Quite honestly I have modest needs, and the OWC model has the I/O I really want but it doesn't work. I am tempted by the CalDigit device, but the difference for me, all be it a small one, is the Belkin unit has a rear speaker output as well as a front mounted headphone output. I'm really just going for a small footprint with a clean I/O arrangement, which the OWC and BelKin offer.

 

[ColdCase]

So its mostly a style thing.

The only dock that I know off that doesn't have and audio pop on sleep and wake is the new StarTech TB2. There sometimes is a little pop when restarting the mac rMBP, but not as annoyingly loud as some others. The dock may be a little larger than others but it has a front headphone/audio port and USB3 port with high rate charger on the front, all the other ports are on the back.

 

[iDreamer23]

"Disk wasn't eject properly" error on OWC Thunderbolt2 Dock.

Hello

I recently bought OWC Thunderbolt2 Dock. BTW I have got a problem on it. I use three external USB3.0 based HDD. After I got OWC Thunderbolt2 dock I connected them to OWC Thunderbolt2 Dock and randomly caused "Disk was not eject properly".

And then I pulled out one of disks and directly connected to iMac's built-in USB port. After that the HDD hasn't had the symptom. But, the other HDD still causes this problem.

Please let me know how to solve this issue.

 

[mc deli]

Hello

I recently bought OWC Thunderbolt2 Dock. BTW I have got a problem on it. I use three external USB3.0 based HDD. After I got OWC Thunderbolt2 dock I connected them to OWC Thunderbolt2 Dock and randomly caused "Disk was not eject properly".

And then I pulled out one of disks and directly connected to iMac's built-in USB port. After that the HDD hasn't had the symptom. But, the other HDD still causes this problem.

Please let me know how to solve this issue.

Is your OWC TB2 Dock running hot and is the power cutting out?

I have found one reviewer on B&H Photo with the same problem, and I am having this problem. After a few hours in use the OWC tb2 dock switches on and off intermittently and I lose all connected peripherals temporarily.

OWC support have not helped so far.

Did you find the cause of your problem?

 

[pcgeek12345]

I am looking at picking up this dock, how is it holding up? Have they fixed any of the issues that people ITT are having?

 

[thebro20]

I am looking at picking up this dock, how is it holding up? Have they fixed any of the issues that people ITT are having?

I had a few issues at the start, but I haven't in months. I imagine it was just a software glitch in Mavericks or something. I love the dock!! I'd suggest it to anyone

 

[jayducharme]

I've had mine since it came out. I had only one issue: a month ago it completely stopped working. I unplugged it and let it sit overnight. The next day it was working again and has been working fine since. I also recently got one for work, and it's been running fine.

BTW, when mine stopped working, I did contact OWC about it and they got back to me right away, saying they were willing to take a look at the problem. So the support is there.

 

[dantastic]

I was an early adaptor. The first unit was troublesome to say the least. Contacted support and they just replaced it. Was working just fine ever since.
I think the popping when sleeping issue was resolved in el capitan too btw!
I have seen the 'disk not ejected properly' message as well. I think the ports don't always provide enough power to power a bus powered drive.

I think it's brilliant. It really reduces clutter around the desk.

 

[bcrawfo2]

I got this dock the other day and have some challenges. Hopefully it will help others...maybe others can help me.
I have a mid 2015 MB pro retina. My external display is a Dell u3011 that I connect via mini display port. I got the dock to minimize the physical connections I need to make to my computer and also my USB hub died.
Everything works hunky dory until I open the sound widget under system preferences (just open it, no changes). When I do this, my external monitor goes dark. A few seconds later, it comes back on, I get a pop on the external speakers. This process repeats. If I don't close the sound widget soon, I get a grey screen of death.
I contacted OWC and they didn't have any ideas and are RMAing the dock. Of interest...I use the dock as a stand for my laptop, for two reasons....I thought it might make my laptop run a little cooler and my Apple thunderbolt cable is short (1/2 meter). I wonder if this is making the dock run too hot.
My other hypothesis is....the sound widget refreshes it's list of available devices and that's upsetting something.

 

[ColdCase]

Sounds like the TB bus is being reset. I don't think I've heard of this audio preference panel issue with this dock or any others. Try the replacement dock, if that doesn't work we can make some guesses. The sound port on these docks have a audio to USB converter chip which is then converted to SATA n another chip to interface to thunderbolt. It looks like a USB audio device to the Mac OS. Over heating docks have been known to do funky things.

 

[Boyd01]

Updating this old thread in case it helps someone else….

I just purchased the OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock to add some ports to my 2013 i7/8gb/512gb MacBook Air. Specifically, I needed firewire to connect a Sony professional video deck but also wanted to use an external monitor (which wasn't possible with Apple's Thunderbolt to firewire adapter).

Unfortunately, it's going back. I could not get the video to work reliably no matter what I did. OWC states that you must be running at least 10.9, but I tried first on 10.8.5 to see what happened. The image on the external monitor was a mess, all torn up and flickering. A little Googling found a similar problem and the suggestion was to do a PRAM reset. Tried that and it improved things, the video worked however it would completely cut out at times (screen went black).

So I tried booting from an external drive with a clean install of El Capitan to see if 10.8.5 was the problem. Experienced the exact same issues there, screen was blacking out. Only way to get it working again was disconnecting the thunderbolt from the dock and plugging back in. So I went back to 10.8.5 and the issues were the same. It would work for awhile, like 15 or 20 minutes although there were some annoying quick flashes. But every time it would eventually just go black.

I tried two different monitors with both an HDMI cable and miniDisplayport (thunderbolt) to HDMI adapter. Same issues. The last time I tried unplugging/replugging the thunderbolt cable, it crashed my MBA. So I am giving up, it just doesn't seem to work properly with my 2013 MBA regardless of operating system, cables, monitors or ports. Maybe it performs better on newer Macs? But I'm very disappointed, because it had all the ports I wanted and when it worked, it worked great. But it's just not stable enough for heavy use on my 2013 MBA