Malcolm Owen
Mac upgrade specialist OWC has made its ThunderBay 8 Thunderbolt 3-equipped storage appliance available to purchase, giving those with high storage capacity needs a desk-based and compact solution to the problem.
First announced at CES in January, the ThunderBay 8 is a local storage device that can offer vast amounts of capacity. Aimed at video editors and those with high storage requirements, the device is capable of storing up to 128 terabytes of data across eight 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives, more than earlier versions like the ThunderBay 6.
Connecting over its two Thunderbolt 3 ports, the ThunderBay 8 can be daisy-chained alongside five other units for even higher storage needs. A DisplayPort 1.2 connection is also possible through the device, which can power a 4K display.
Taking advantage of the connection, "real-world" transfer speeds of up to 2,586MB/s for writing data are possible on the unit, and up to 2,551MB/s for reading from onboard volumes. SoftRAID is included to provide flexible RAID 0 and 1 volumes, with other RAID configurations possible including RAID 4, 5, 1+0, 6, and 6+.
OWC claims the ThunderBay 8 is deployment-ready, with preconfigured solutions that have undergone multiple hours of burn-in available. It is also plug-and-play without a need for additional drivers, with thumbscrew-equipped release trays for rapid drive swaps.
The storage is packed into a compact enclosure measuring 10.2 inches by 9.4 inches by 7.1 inches, and weighing 16.1 pounds unladen. For security, the front panel is locked with a key, while the back has a security slot for tethering the enclosure in place.
OWC is selling the ThunderBay 8 from $699.99 for the enclosure alone, with drive-equipped versions ranging from $1,219.99 for 16 terabytes, rising to $5,299.99 for the 128-terabyte option. Alternates are also available including enterprise hard drives and with upgraded versions of SoftRAID.
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14 Comments
I haven't been keeping up on these like I should, could you purchase something like this and say, build a RAID 5 or 6, fill it with four 14tb drives now, and then add more 14tb drives down the road to increase capacity? Or do you have to rebuild the RAID?
Don't know, but I do know that my Drobo 8D - also 8 drives and Thunderbolt 3 - allows for a high degree of flexibility with drive types and capacities, without the need for software RAID.
I was able to take a 5D (5 bay Thunderbolt 2) set of drives and simply lever them into the 8D and expand the number of drives without reformatting.
Of course, I did reformat to allow me a single volume capacity > 64 TB, but that process did take a while as I had to backup to and restore from a Synology 1817+.
I'm confused with their 2.5GB read speeds claims. I have a Thunderbolt2 Promise R8 (8-drive) RAID array. Thunderbolt2 is 2.5GB/s. I can get maybe 800MB/s on it. Of course, this is a different brand, but I've seen the same performance with other brands.
Interesting...