OWC's Ultra-Fast Portable SSD for Thunderbolt 3 Macs Now Available With Up to 4TB of Storage

[ElderMacMan]

I’ve had an Envoy Pro FX 2TB since my purchase of an M1 iMac to handle my TimeMachine backups. Prepped it easily and it has (crossed fingers) worked flawlessly. OWC products have always served me well. My Mercury Elite AL Pro has massive file collection I feared I had lost when I accidentally wiped my old 2011 MacMini. Once I got a CalDigit hub a could transfer via older cables. I am elderly and clueless sometimes, but I know dependability when I see it.

 

[dinobear]

OWC has a great 8tb SDD as well (1000 MB/s). Would recommend. There aren't many 8tb ssd options out there.

For backups, I use 18tb mechanical drive. Backups don't really need speed.

 

[R3k]

If I can buy a MacBook with 8 TB internal SSD storage, I should be able to buy an external drive with 16 TB.

Here yo go

OWC 16.0TB ThunderBlade: Ultimate Thunderbolt NVMe SSD

Experience 2622MB/s speeds with the 16.0TB OWC ThunderBlade NVMe SSD. Rugged, portable, and perfect for video editors and creative professionals.

eshop.macsales.com

 

[HMI]

I bought a few of the lowest capacity (240GB) versions a while back for a project that needed speed but not high capacity. Testing showed them as pretty fast in reading but doing only half that in writing. Replaced the Aura blades inside with Samsung and things are much better.

Can you please provide more details?

 

[svish]

Should be a good SSD. But costly.

 

[macduke]

I really need one of these. My SSD that I use for Lightroom keeps filling up and I keep having to dump off older photos, which I don't like doing, because then they're gone from the catalog I have synced with the cloud so I can't look at or edit any older photos on my iPad Pro, which is one of my favorite productivity things to do on iPad. It's made for that with the highly calibrated mini-LED display and Apple Pencil for adjusting sliders and brushing.

Why won't Samsung release a 4TB version of the T7? I have a 2TB T5 from like 2018 and they haven't increased the capacity in 4 years. What is going on? I don't need the fastest SSD in the world for this use case, but it has been rock solid and works well with my iPad Pro. Samsung makes some of the best SSDs in the world, but I might have to go with one of those SanDisk ones on Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale.

 

[jdb8167]

Can't you just use Disk Utility on the Mac to Raid the individual drives? I would think you could and not use the software they provide.

Probably. But I started using SoftRAID after Apple removed their RAID software for a few MacOS versions. It’s back now but the lack of commitment was disturbing.

Anyway, SoftRAID is better and gives more RAID levels than Apple’s 0 and 1 like RAID 5.

 

[Damian83]

2800 its far from being ultra fast... samsung x5 its on the market from over 5 years and performs like this owc. Whats the point of buying it? Now the hyper ssd’s are the pcie 4x thats even cheaper if u buy separately case and ssd. Owc woke up a little late...

 

[rpmurray]

Can you please provide more details?

What kind of details? Blackmagic Disk Speed Test or AmorphousDiskMark screenshots? Instructions on how to take apart an Envoy FX and install a new blade? Something else?

 

[seek3r]

It's surprising to me how long it's taking SSD drives to catch up to mechanical drives in terms of storage (and price).

without the chip shortage since 2020 I'd bet they'd be half their price today, that's how they were trending. Black Friday sales (in the US) should be interesting this year with chip makers finally catching up a bit

 

[Ethosik]

I haven’t had great experiences with the DIY method. I got the OWC Envoy Express and a Sabrent NVME enclosure. Both with a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. And I’m only able to get 1.3GB/s speeds.

Is this item worth it for the speeds?

 

[HMI]

What kind of details? Blackmagic Disk Speed Test or AmorphousDiskMark screenshots? Instructions on how to take apart an Envoy FX and install a new blade? Something else?

#3, please!

 

[H_D]

I have the 4TB Envoy Pro & the 8 TB Thunderblade. Both really work without problems, don't get too hot, and the 8 TB really almost is «on» around the clock. I don't use Softraid – I happen to think that a device with that kind of price tag should include a full version of a software it needs to run – but the Apple-Soft-RAID works just as well (and through various incarnations of MacOS!).

They co-exist with a couple of 2 TB Samsungs (for CCC-Backups), a 48 TB LaCie Big6, a 32 TB LaCie 2BigDoc and a 40 TB Terramaster without any problems whatsoever so far, really suprisingly solid (thank god!). OWC-Support here in Germany has been okay, not ideal, but workable.

The Terramaster, btw, so far turns out to be a GREAT alternative to the 2BigDock by Lacie, especially as you don't need Seagates iffy RAID-Manager, it just works with HW-Raid, supereasy to set up and so far works fine, cool to the touch, quite silent, 2x20 TB disks are no problem – I was really suprised/impressed. Also beautiful pre-sale-support online that really answered any question I had, which kind of has become the exception to the rule.

Both OWCs have been ideal for FinalCut and PSD/Lightroom stuff and also Dropbox so far, not nearly as quick as Apples internal M1Studio-Flash, of course, but the RAID makes the Thunderblade really as fast you can wish for with external these days.