Review: OWC ThunderBay 8 Offers High-Volume, High-Performance Mac Storage

[x86dude]

There is no inherent difference between software raid and hardware raid.
It is just the difference in quality of individual products.

On larger commercial servers, software raid is very good. Typically software raid will be used for root (OS) disks and a pair of hardware raid arrays will be used for application data. These may in turn be mirrored with software raid.

Software raid is a low priority for Apple and OWC so that’s what you get.

Raid 5 is fine ; just have hot spare disks, but this is just as true for raid 0+1 (raid 10).

 

[Powerbooky]

As someone who's gone through a whopping four OWC Mercury Elite RAIDs in the past two years or so (one was DOA on arrival, two had power supplies that failed, and I've had issues where it disconnects if you so much as look as it funny or it loses the volume and has to rebuilt when the computer goes to sleep) I sadly can't recommend people buy their products anymore, certainly not anything that uses their SoftRAID solution. An 8-bay RAID from them to me is an even more expensive product to migrate my data off.

So far I use SoftRAID on my old cheese MacPro for its internal HDD's and it works fine. No rebuilding yet. I would have preferred hardware RAID though, but at the time too expensive for me.
For backup/archive online/offline I have a couple of Drobo's. These units haven't failed (yet). Except one time when I had formatted one unit volume EXT3, that Drobo didn't like that.

Assuming it's bootable.

Single drives without SoftRAID, probably yes. But not with SoftRAID 6 or higher (no boot code).

I see clunky 8 TB mechanical drives and see throughputs that don't remotely match with typical SATA drives' read/write speeds - honest question, what am I totally missing?

It could be the controller inside that isn't able to handle the possible throughput?

Soon MBPs will have larger SSD capacity and these hugely imperfect RAID systems will be finally obsolete.

Maybe, as internal drives get larger, so do external ones. With larger storage people tend to store even more.
And RAID (or similar systems) will still be there as you don't want everything stored on one little chip. If that one fails...?

 

[HDFan]

1. 6/8 bay DAS box with Tbolt 3 40gb,

vs

2. 6/8 bay NAS box with 10GbE,

My hardware RAID 8 bay runs ~1520 MB/s or ~12000 Mbps R/W via thunderbolt The DAS box in a fast RAID thunderbolt configuration would be the fastest.

My 6 bay NAS connect via thunderbolt runs 501 MBs write/1066 MBs read so it would probably not be throttled by 10 GbE.

hey like it because it is CHEAP. It cost nothing to manufacture software,

Its not the manufacturing costs, it is cost of developing the product and supporting it with software fixes. Good Developers are expensive.

"additional OWC drive trays (sold separately)". I can't find out how many are included,

Mine were included.

There is no inherent difference between software raid and hardware raid.

Maybe as far as functionality but as I mentioned above software raid may be more configurable but it is subject to software failures and requires more maintenance. Hardware raid from good vendors is hands off. It either works or doesn't and a good vendors' hardware will be reliable over a period of multiple software updates, which in the case of SoftRaid is at least 3 major ones: 5>6>7.

 

[spnc]

Maybe, as internal drives get larger, so do external ones. With larger storage people tend to store even more.
And RAID (or similar systems) will still be there as you don't want everything stored on one little chip. If that one fails...?

I want everything stored on my MBP locally:

- because I have TimeMachine and Dropbox my data is absolutely backed and safe at all times, whereas relying solely on a RAID system is unsafe (in case it crashes, burns or there's a burglary in your flat)
- because speed is an issue with RAID, whereas MBP speed is instant and my Dropbox works instantly with it, whereas RAID are not as fast and btw Dropbox is planning on ditching external drive support soon (because of a fight with Apple)

Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users | The Dropbox Community

In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that...

www.dropboxforum.com

- because I want everything stored under the same index, for the sake of convenience, instead of having to search through different devices
- because I need the highest speed (6/7k mbps) that local MBP APFS SSD provides vs. poor speeds provided by RAID or SanDisk v2 Pro USB dongle (max 2k mbps for both, as of 2023)
- because as a music producer/designer of high res content etc. I need to access large files/librairies in real time and can't afford the decrease in speed and higher latency which results of using non-local SSD disks

So get to work Apple and finally release 16/24TB options for MBP!

 

[jimthing]

My hardware RAID 8 bay runs ~1520 MB/s or ~12000 Mbps R/W via thunderbolt The DAS box in a fast RAID thunderbolt configuration would be the fastest.

My 6 bay NAS connect via thunderbolt runs 501 MBs write/1066 MBs read so it would probably not be throttled by 10 GbE.

This has always been my thinking. Even 10GbE NAS's are much slower than 40Gb TB3 DAS's (hw or sw based), and their OS has to be managed separately too. If the DAS is connected to an always on fast CPU/GPU Mac with file sharing turned on, surely it turns the external DAS box efficiently into a NAS by proxy – or am I missing something a NAS offers here?
Not to mention the countless users with Time Machine backup problems over ethernet to NAS's, et al.

So sure NAS's offer loads of bells and whistles for those that need them separate from a computer, but for straightforward external mass storage, if you can afford an optical TB3 cable to store away in a cupboard for quietness, a DAS solution is likely easier to deal with surely?

The only problems people face is what DAS boxes are actually available out there; compared to the myriads of NAS's being sold, there are hardly any (affordable?) 4-8 bay DAS boxes (hw or sw). Synology just don't do DAS, and QNAP's DAS's are limited.

What hardware DAS RAID box do you use then? Any suggestions gladly welcomed. 🙂

 

[ImaxGuy]

I wish OWC would use quieter (more expensive) fans. I have no complaint about my Thunderbay Mini, except that I had to replace its fan with a Noctua unit so that I could share a room with it.

No complaint about SoftRAID, either. Particularly impressive that I got two major upgrades of the bundled copy for free.

Agreed. I replaced the fan in my Thunderbay 8 with a $22.00 CDN Noctua and it was MUCH quieter than either Thunderbay 8 or the 4 that I upgraded from. Still can't entirely get around the noise of 8 7200RPM drives whirring & clicking away, but that's what a $225 3m Apple thunderbolt 4 cable and a closet are for

 

[badgerbadgerx2]

I want everything stored on my MBP locally:
- because I need the highest speed (6/7k mbps) that local MBP APFS SSD provides vs. poor speeds provided by RAID or SanDisk v2 Pro USB dongle (max 2k mbps for both, as of 2023)
So get to work Apple and finally release 16/24TB options for MBP!

How did you operate before 8TB and 6000 MB/s drives existed?? Not hard to add an external 8TB Thunderbolt NVMe with 2500 MB/s R/Ws. that's a single device. Or get multiple, one for each client. 250 GB transfer in a minute or so? thats not slow. With a good NVMe drvie. Prob with those prebuilt Sandsik/samsung/whatever is they use cheap drives. Throw in something good, like a Sabrent Rocket with good SLC cache and it will never throttle.

 

[HDFan]

a DAS solution is likely easier to deal with surely?

Yes, as compared to a NAS.

QNAP's DAS's are limited.

Didn't know they offered RAID DAS enclosures. Thanks.

 

[HDFan]

there are hardly any (affordable?) 4-8 bay DAS boxes (hw or sw)

Depends upon how you define affordable. Mobius 5-Bay FireWire 800, eSATA, USB 3.0 RAID Enclosure is $259 but is limited to USB-3 speeds of ~2 Mbps. OWCs' thunderbay 4 is $479 (I think, website went down as I went back to confirm the number). You pay $240 extra for Thunderbolt and maybe a higher quality product.

There are 4 bay RAID devices as low as $169 for a USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps). One unit I looked at that price had terrible reviews. You get what you pay for.

 

[jimthing]

Depends upon how you define affordable. Mobius 5-Bay FireWire 800, eSATA, USB 3.0 RAID Enclosure is $259 but is limited to USB-3 speeds of ~2 Mbps. OWCs' thunderbay 4 is $479 (I think, website went down as I went back to confirm the number). You pay $240 extra for Thunderbolt and maybe a higher quality product.

There are 4 bay RAID devices as low as $169 for a USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps). One unit I looked at that price had terrible reviews. You get what you pay for.

Sorry I meant decent Thunderbolt 3 DAS's, rather than cheaper USB-only ones.

The only hardware ones I know of are:

- Promise "Pegasus".
- LaCie (Seagate's brand) "Big" models.
- SanDisk Pro [prev. G-Tech] (WD's brand), essentially the "G-Raid" 2-bay models.

The Promise and Lacie 4-8 bay units are all very expensive per TB, as they have to be bought with enterprise HDDs (you can't buy them drive-less) and they use overly expensive HDDs in them, which for mass storage isn't necessary (backups you'll have obviously! As RAID ain't backup.)

The LaCie and SanDisk Pro 2-bay units also come with enterprise drives, but the cost per TB is around half that of the larger units (in the larger storage size units), making them good off-the-shelf purchases for backups rather than for main storage units. But of course they're only 2-bays, so can't do RAID 5/6 like the bigger ones (hence cheaper per TB cost), and are only around half/third the speed.

Seemingly these hardware RAID DAS's have very tight HDD tolerances, that they often need compatible HDDs that have to be used. With manufacturers testing certain models of HDD in their units that are the only ones they give their blessing to (Promise even do a HDD compatibility PDF list). And obviously LaCie support Seagates IronWolf Pro drives only, with SanDisk supporting WD Pro drives only, for their respective owners brands.

The Promise ones are also extremely loud. (I briefly had a 6-bay TB1 one years ago that sounded like a jet engine it was so loud, I got rid of asap after one project!)

Any others out there??

OWC looks to be the only company that offer empty TB3 RAID DAS boxes (using software RAID of course, not hardware RAID)??

There's bugger all mass storage DAS units out there for home/prosumers, from what I can tell. And certainly none that are designed to be more quiet – which is basically what most users want.

 

[glynstanley]

When you need big, fast, direct-connected storage for multi-stream 4K / 8K / 360 video editing.

I've got one of these populated with 4TB SSDs in RAID4, connected to (of all things) an M1 Mini over TB3. 2326 MB/s write, 1964 MB/s read (that's Bytes, not bits). 10GbE is less than half the speed and a NAS doesn't have the benefit of APFS. It gets backed up to LTO every night, just in case.

I wouldn't get one for home use though. Overkill.

I'm a single user. Speed and capacity are my main concerns. I also backup to the cloud. If I backup a DAS, my costs for unlimited data are around $100/year. If I backup a NAS to the cloud, that cost is roughly the same $100 per MONTH. Any suggestions here?

 

[badgerbadgerx2]

I'm a single user. Speed and capacity are my main concerns. I also backup to the cloud. If I backup a DAS, my costs for unlimited data are around $100/year. If I backup a NAS to the cloud, that cost is roughly the same $100 per MONTH. Any suggestions here?

how much speed and capacity? and budget? My capacity is modest, 4 TB is plenty, so I built a NVMe RAID 0 with the Sabrent Dual case. with 2500 MB/s R/W.

NVMe keep dropping, so a pair of 4TB sticks might run $400-500 + $150 for case = 8TB RAID 0.

 

[Ifti]

Cant one just use AppleRAID via Disc Utility instead of SoftRAID?

 

[davegoody]

If I were going to purchase this (I am not) I really would likely steer clear of SoftRAID, and if I needed software RAID would use the built-in software RAID in MacOS. May not be as fully featured, but at least you would be assured of continuing to work after the yearly MacOS version updates, which have broken other software regularly, such as VPNs etc. Imagine the software not being resilient to a MacOS update, not working, and meaning that the RAID was inaccessible. Nightmare scenario. What happens if / when OWC stop supporting the SoftRAID XL software? - You would be totally stuffed potentially.

I note that @jimthing downvoted my post above. Not a problem - but curious as to why? Surely relying on a third-party bit of software working between your OS and storage is a risk, even if you feel it's a small one. I don't get offended by downvotes I must add, just curious as to the reason.

 

[jimthing]

I note that @jimthing downvoted my post above. Not a problem - but curious as to why? Surely relying on a third-party bit of software working between your OS and storage is a risk, even if you feel it's a small one. I don't get offended by downvotes I must add, just curious as to the reason.

While I agree for Raid levels 0 or 1 that Disk Utility may be used, most storing a high amount of data would be more likely to be using a 4+ bay unit for mass long term storage, so users will be using higher Raid levels that DU simply doesn't offer.

Level 5 offers single bay loss redundancy, or possibly the dual bay redundancy of level 6 if they have a bigger bay unit (maybe 6 bays, but typically more likely 8 bays or more), as the rebuild times increase with higher volume drive sizes and more bays making the array's overall volume much larger, and therefore an increase in the chances of a second drive failing during the first drive failure rebuild.

(Although, as Raid isn't backup and you'd have a second box with the data on as well, having to build the main box from a complete array loss and then copy the data from the second backup box back onto it takes a long time (days!) if you have a large amount of data to copy. Which means downtime for your whole storage setup, and may not suit your usage needs.)

Additionally, separate Raid software like SoftRaid is likely to offer more bells and whistles in monitoring features et al. than the more vanilla Disk Utility does, so may be preferable even for level 0 or 1 setups, accordingly.

 

[glynstanley]

how much speed and capacity? and budget? My capacity is modest, 4 TB is plenty, so I built a NVMe RAID 0 with the Sabrent Dual case. with 2500 MB/s R/W.

NVMe keep dropping, so a pair of 4TB sticks might run $400-500 + $150 for case = 8TB RAID 0.

I currently have a Drobo with 3 6TB drives, and 2 4TB drives giving me 18TB of Raid 5 storage. Budget, $1000-1500 or so. Looking for funtionality.

 

[badgerbadgerx2]

Ok, so pleny of budget, whats the end goal? Dream drive? Do you need all 18TB on the daily? Now might be a great time to consolidate...

 

[jimthing]

Ok, so pleny of budget, whats the end goal? Dream drive? Do you need all 18TB on the daily? Now might be a great time to consolidate...

Get a Raid box that offers PCIe speeds, add-in several 7GBytes/s M2 NVMe drives. It'll saturate 40Gbit/s TBolt 3/4 connections, but at least you'll be ready for Tbolt 5's 80-100Gbit/s when it arrives! 😉

 

[badgerbadgerx2]

OWC Exxpress 4M2, $249, + four budget 4TB NVMe ($200ish each, you don't need the best, speed is wasted) in a RAID 0 = 16 TB @ $1000.

 

[Traverse]

I wish OWC would use quieter (more expensive) fans. I have no complaint about my Thunderbay Mini, except that I had to replace its fan with a Noctua unit so that I could share a room with it.

No complaint about SoftRAID, either. Particularly impressive that I got two major upgrades of the bundled copy for free.

Are you referring to the Thunderbay 4 mini? It uses a special connector and I have not been able to find a Noctua fan to fit in and I'm not going to solder my own. Did you find one that fit without modification?

 

[WilliamG]

Are you referring to the Thunderbay 4 mini? It uses a special connector and I have not been able to find a Noctua fan to fit in and I'm not going to solder my own. Did you find one that fit without modification?

I solved that problem, actually. Yes, the connector on the mini is proprietary. I replaced the fan with a Noctua with the low noise adapter, which thus has the standard connector coming out the grille into a USB cable which is then plugged in (either to the computer or wall, depending on your preference). Sounds a bit messy, but it's just one extra cable coming out the back of the mini and solves the awful noise problem. Been running two of them like this for years.

 

[Traverse]

I solved that problem, actually. Yes, the connector on the mini is proprietary. I replaced the fan with a Noctua with the low noise adapter, which thus has the standard connector coming out the grille into a USB cable which is then plugged in (either to the computer or wall, depending on your preference). Sounds a bit messy, but it's just one extra cable coming out the back of the mini and solves the awful noise problem. Been running two of them like this for years.

Interesting. Would you be willing to post an image here or DM me? I don't have a fan handy, but I feel like if I tried to run the cable out of the back then you couldn't probably affix the fan to the back of the device - that it only screwed it in with the cable kept internal. Or did you leave off the back covers?

 

[loby]

This is all you need. Cuts the fan speed down to quiet. Just slight air blowing through the unit. If you have SSDs that are generally low in heat, then this will do.

I had someone on this forum say that you really don't even need the fan, but I got this instead and cuts the jet engine fan OWC put in it down to quiet (probably they put it in to save costs). I don't see any difference in speeds or thermal throttling etc. Works great.

Noctua – Na – RC10 – Accessories 3 – Pin Low Noise Adapter [NA – RC10]

OWC use to put Nactura fans in their units, but I guess they want to make more $ profits.

(see attached picture)

 

[zedsdead]

I just bought a Thunderbay 8 to finally replace my aging Drobo 5D (which is having random unmounting issues) and literally just returned it due to all the noise. It otherwise was an excellent device.

 

[WilliamG]

Interesting. Would you be willing to post an image here or DM me? I don't have a fan handy, but I feel like if I tried to run the cable out of the back then you couldn't probably affix the fan to the back of the device - that it only screwed it in with the cable kept internal. Or did you leave off the back covers?

It's simple. You pick up a Noctua fan with the low noise adapter, and then this cable (or whatever alternative. I use this one specifically). This supports two fans, of course, and you plug this into a dual port USB charger if using two Thunderbays or a computer etc. All you're doing is installing the Noctua fan in the exact place the original was, and then running the cable outside the case to this USB cable:

Here's the cable:

CRJ 12V Step-Up USB to Dual PC Fans Power Adapter Cable - 24-inch (60cm), Black Sleeved - Full Fan Speed Adapter for 3-Pin/4-Pin Cooling Fans

The CRJ USB to Dual Fan Power Adapter Cable stands out as the first full-speed USB adapter designed to power computer fans, offering unparalleled flexibility in utilizing almost any fan, PWM controller, or compatible device. Equipped with a high-efficiency voltage step-up module, this cable deliv...

www.amazon.com

And here's the fan with the low noise adapters:

Noctua NF-A6x25 FLX, Premium Quiet Fan, 3-Pin (60mm, Brown)

Featuring advanced aerodynamic design measures such as Flow Acceleration Channels and Noctua’s AAO frame, the NF-A6x25 FLX is a highly optimised, premium quality quiet fan in 60x25mm size. Smooth Commutation Drive technology and Noctua’s reference class SSO2 bearings guarantee superb running smoo...

www.amazon.com

You remove the fan grille on the back of the mini (just 4 screws as I recall) so that the cable can come out through it. Then you put the grille back on. The whole process of installing should only take a couple of minutes