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It needs its own power outlet, just fyi in case you missed that. Doable travel capabilities but limiting.

Good point! Definitely limits some use, but can be worked around. Most of the time, in a portable situation, folks that require this kind of speed are utilizing their laptops in a way that requires a power source, so it is not too big of a deal. But still a very good point and I appreciate that you pointed it out!
 
Good point! Definitely limits some use, but can be worked around. Most of the time, in a portable situation, folks that require this kind of speed are utilizing their laptops in a way that requires a power source, so it is not too big of a deal. But still a very good point and I appreciate that you pointed it out!
I'd imagine people use car outlet inverter or portable generators for pure location usage. The rest in hotel rooms ;)
 
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It needs its own power outlet, just fyi in case you missed that. Doable travel capabilities but limiting.
They offer a different smaller version the Envoy XE Pro I believe that just used a single blade drive and is buss powered. Does not have the performance or the capcity of this drive, but is much better suitted for high performance mobile uses.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVPR20/
[doublepost=1515221632][/doublepost]I know Fusion Drives are dieing in the Mac product line. Any reason why they couldn’t be popular in the DAS market.

Take for example a an OWC Thunderbay 4, pair it with one of these external blade SSDs in a fusion volume and you could have an amazingly high performance high capacity fusion drive.
 
Hey one question that just occurred to me, these volumes are configured to use HFS+, why not APFS? They are M.2 SSDs after all, and if I reformat them would that ruin the RAID 0 configuration in this drive, or just improve performance?

Edit: I guess that's two questions.

I just thought the same thing reading the article. I’m curious why Macrumors didn’t ask nor ponder or write about APFS.

Also to consider what if the license that ships with this SSD drive will it be void and non usable if formatted to APFS? Hmm.
 
Gotta love what OWC is doing for mac community that Apple does not do.
Offtopic: Anybody seen any NAS boxes that would use ssd as a cache for slower hdd raid5 storage?
The Drobo 5D products use a mSATA SSD as a cache for the disk drives & I much prefer using Thunderbolt to the Mac that needs the high speed link over NAS access over Gbit Ethernet.
 
I'd imagine people use car outlet inverter or portable generators for pure location usage. The rest in hotel rooms ;)

There are also Powerbanks with built in 120V/230V power outlets.

I just thought the same thing reading the article. I’m curious why Macrumors didn’t ask nor ponder or write about APFS.

Also to consider what if the license that ships with this SSD drive will it be void and non usable if formatted to APFS? Hmm.

Formatting a drive never voids warranty/licences.
 
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I think external SSD's are great. However do they support TRIM?

I have been using the Samsung T5's lately for moving files, up to the 2TB model. However I do not put anything long term on there yet because I am worried about TRIM with long term use of data.
 
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I believe this drive is not meant to be portable. Judging from it's size you -could- bring it with you, but it has feet on the base there to keep it stationary for a reason.
"Luggable" is the term that used to be used - in the old days - for "portable" laptops that you'd rather not. The feet may be there to allow air circulation. That, combined with the finned, aluminium casing suggests that the unit is designed to run hot (or at least warm). I wonder how much that will shorten the life of the SSDs.
 
No video? Come one, you don't expect us to read all that, right?
Please. I just read that in way less time than I'd spend watching some video that shows less information but parcels it out more slowly.
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... the finned, aluminium casing suggests that the unit is designed to run hot (or at least warm). I wonder how much that will shorten the life of the SSDs.
If the unit was designed to "run hot" it would not have the heat-dispersing fins, right? I mean, it generates heat but is apparently engineered to move that heat away from the interior.
 
Hey one question that just occurred to me, these volumes are configured to use HFS+, why not APFS? They are M.2 SSDs after all, and if I reformat them would that ruin the RAID 0 configuration in this drive, or just improve performance?

Edit: I guess that's two questions.

1. Probably to get the broadest possible compatibility in consumer market. APFS should work fine with RAID 0.
2. This will depend on what RAID controller is inside the enclosure.

PS: Just wanted to point out that the reason RAID 0 is setup by default is not primarily for providing stated capacity (as the article says) but actually to provide stated speeds. RAID 0 allows for simultaneous access to all drives which reduces the “drive bottleneck”.
 
1. Probably to get the broadest possible compatibility in consumer market. APFS should work fine with RAID 0.
2. This will depend on what RAID controller is inside the enclosure.

PS: Just wanted to point out that the reason RAID 0 is setup by default is not primarily for providing stated capacity (as the article says) but actually to provide stated speeds. RAID 0 allows for simultaneous access to all drives which reduces the “drive bottleneck”.
Totally understand. Speed is worth more to me than capacity.
 
Personally, I'm not looking for super speed. I'd just like a reasonably priced 4-bay drive enclosure that I can plug natively into my MacBook Pro (USB-C or Thunderbolt). I can easily find USB 3.0 enclosures for less than $150. Oh, how I wish older versions of USB would quickly die away. In any <punmode>case</punmode>, I'd really love to see inexpensive USB-C (or Thunderbolt) drive enclosures become more widely available.
 
That, combined with the finned, aluminium casing suggests that the unit is designed to run hot (or at least warm).

How hot do SSDs get? I've never even bothered to ponder that. I know that if this were filled with spinning platter drives the heat would be terrible, but will SSDs get hot enough for the heat to be a serious issue? Granted, any excess heat is not good for electronics.
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Come on, $1,200 for 1TB is beyond ridiculous.

It's not for you then. It's also not for me. It's a bit steep for my needs, but I would be willing to pay the premium for a single 4TB drive like the ones that Samsung are putting out. I need capacity before I need speed.
 
That’s a lot of money.

Invest in high speed internet, buy Dropbox unlimited, right?

Some businesses or business segments don’t allow online third party storage as an option. Some private businesses have read the fine print on such as Dropbox, Box.net, etc where heir clients need their work fully private privileged negating use externally.
 
Yes! I've been following those tiny Samsung drives closely for years. The problem is my size needs increase before the prices drop. I just can't justify spending that much right now as $500 is already really pushing it. Due to a number of factors our income should be significantly increasing in the coming months, so I might finally be able to put luxuries like this into my budget! Can't wait to move away completely from spinning storage for everything but archives.
 
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Some businesses or business segments don’t allow online third party storage as an option. Some private businesses have read the fine print on such as Dropbox, Box.net, etc where heir clients need their work fully private privileged negating use externally.
Interesting to know. Thanks for that
 
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