Best Video Editing Storage Solution - OWC Thunderbay

[@donross7820]

The dream setup is OWC 4M2 enclosure with 4 of the Samsung 990 PRO 4 Tb and Apple Raid software. Compare the total price for my 16 Tb Raid 0 which gets 2800 r/w with the prices on OWC Thunderbay. Actually, I have 2 of these setups and I love them! No noise and minimal warmth to the touch.

[@EvanSchneider]

Oh yeah those are the best. But it’s definitely a trade off for high capacity.

[@JohnSmith-zl8rz]

There’s an Apple raid software 😮???

[@charminbaer2323]

@@donross7820 I have 2 Thunderbay enclosures, one is a mini. Once I fill up one of the drives and I’m ready to upgrade, I’m making the jump to NVMe RAID. Hopefully prices keep dropping and capacity keeps going up.

[@charminbaer2323]

I have two Thunderbay 4 drives, one is a mini. The mini is 8TB, 4x2TB 2.5" SSDs, in RAID 0. SSDs are more reliable than HDDs and faster, so I don't mind it being RAID 0 because the second Thunderbay is a clone of the first one at 16TB. I also have everything backed up in the cloud with BackBlaze. I bought the Thunderbay drives used for around $100 each, so definitely doing this on a budget. If you're working with video, especially RAW uncompressed 4K or higher, you shouldn't even be using HDD's. in your RAID setup, you should be using SSD's, even SATA. SSDs but preferably NVMe in RAID 0.

[@fmarinosfromafar9512]

Thanks so much for getting back to me on this, Evan. That's good to hear - they were always a dependable storage system back in my old studio. I'll start keeping an eye out for one!

[@videogameschanneltwo]

Great overview! I’m thinking about purchasing a OWC Thunderbay 4 for content archiving and pulling footage especially for highlight reels and guides. I found your insights helpful!

[@BrianMarcWhittaker]

That’s a lot of storage! I should probably get a RAID 5 to work from. They’re 7200rpm, but I’m sure that’s fine for how much storage I can get as opposed to small SSDs. I’m considering this and/or a NAS. I guess I can buy and expand as I go.

[@EvanSchneider]

RAIDs are great and simple, NAS setups can get more complicated when you start setting them up on a network. RAID 5 is what I would recommend for most people though.

[@joeyedwin]

This is great - thanks for all the info!

[@cmaciasjimenez]

Can you buy the bay with said half of the drives and keep buying more later to fill it or does it require some kind of new installation when upgrading the disk capacity?

[@GenerationXNews]

fantastic advice! Thanks, brother! This is just the solution I was looking for!

[@EvanSchneider]

Great to hear!

[@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll]

In 8 raids isn't only one drive failure tolerance a bit low? I would suspect people use raid 6 with two redundancies no?

[@EvanSchneider]

Not really. It warns you if it predicts a failure, giving enough time to replace it. If one drive actually went down, I would just stop using the whole raid, unplug it, and wait until I replace that drive to use it again.

[@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll]

@@EvanSchneider fair but that is only predicted failure. A disk can fail at any time without a SMART warning.

[@blasepivovar]

So fun! Just had a chance to watch. I actually have a video planned about my budget backup storage / workflow but this setup is the dream 😲

[@REVIEWSONTHERUN]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing it. ✌️

[@jaywbus]

I lost the key to my raid thunder bay :/ thanks fore the video! Love my gigabit internet for online backups :)

[@nworafairley4888]

How did you get the data off of your old drives onto the new?

[@ToxicGaming-mk4bi]

Query: I currently possess two server PCs, each equipped with 2 TB NVMe storage, totaling 4 TB of fast storage utilized by our team of 20 editors for direct editing. This setup significantly reduces data transfer time. I'm contemplating upgrading to 4x 4 TB NVMe drives, expanding our storage capacity from 4 TB to 16 TB at an estimated cost of $1000. Is this the optimal course, or should I consider investing in a NAS? Our primary concern is maintaining fast storage accessibility for the entire team to work collaboratively.

[@EvanSchneider]

If fast storage is top priority, I'd keep it how you've been doing it. Maybe setup an archival/backup NAS for when speed isn't a priority but capacity is.

[@ToxicGaming-mk4bi]

@@EvanSchneider got it thanks!

[@artaylo01]

Will the Ironwolf Pros work with an OWC Thunderbay 4 from 2017?

[@garrycore]

Hi Evan, It's been four months since you released this video; great video by the way. Are you satisfied with your ability to edit 4K video? I'm in the same position like many others trying to decide between a DAS or NAS solution. One more thing, would you care to share any additional thoughts or concerns regarding the Thunderbay. Thanks, I look forward to your response.

[@BuzzJones]

Thanks, I been trying to find out how to transfer all my Video Editing Projects, Folders, Files, Library's, ect, on my old Hard drives to the Thunderbay 4 or 8. That is the only thing holding me back from buying the Thunderbay, I do not know how to transfer my Final Cut stuff over without losing my video files (the dreaded Red screens) and Relinking has always been unsuccessful as I do not know where all those files & folders are over my 11 Hard Drives. Just wondered if ya have anything on that or if ya know what to look for in doing that ??

[@Liorcohen-bd6gc]

Thanks :) which file system format do you use?

[@BOXmediaTV]

Great video 🎥👍 How noisy is the OWC box? When doing my research it seemed like a very attractive option and price point I opted for the GRAID shuttle 4

[@EvanSchneider]

It's more dependent on the drives you put in it. But it does not have any sort of noise suppression. With these drives, you hear a chirp every once in a while but it's relatively quiet under my desk and doesn't bother me. GRAID Shuttle 4 is probably quieter, but much more expensive.

[@tscontrollers]

the fan is on all the time and is quite loud. This is a common complaint of this unit. Ive put a slightly quieter fan in mine.

[@roamtravelpr540]

Hi Evan. I am a one-man shooter and travel a lot. I have a library of around 22tb that I regularly go back on to pitch and quote things. Besides an OFF site NAS for archives I was contemplating a DAS to take with me in Raid 5... taking it on and off planes etc. Would you recommend DAS's like these for that kind of travel or will the vibrations and movement totally disrupt the drives? I currently lug over 12 external 2.5" drives in my backpack in RAID 1 to reference old footage. Thanks!

[@EvanSchneider]

Dang that's a lot to carry with you! I don't think the movement would really affect this thing very much as it's built like a tank, but the chassis is extremely heavy solid metal and I can't imagine having a great time traveling with it haha. If I were you I would consider a Thunderbay mini with NVME drives in RAID5 for travel. Much lighter, insanely fast, makes offloading footage an absolute breeze until you get home and can offload it onto another DAS or backup NAS.

[@VQTPiano]

Thank you for your video sharing. I have a quick question about the drive needs to be the same amount of terabytes or could it be mixed with different amounts to be able to use Raid 5? Thank you

[@EvanSchneider]

They all have to be the same capacity to be part of the same raid array. You could have two separate raids within one Thunderbay though, if that makes sense. For instance in a Thunderbay 8 you could have 6 of the drives in a raid5 array and 2 in a raid 0 array.

[@VQTPiano]

Thank you for your help@@EvanSchneider

[@fmarinosfromafar9512]

Hi Evan, thanks for this video, really interesting as I begin to look at DAS/NAS options. Tangentally related, I'm just wondering how your Pegasus' are holding up? Are they connected to Apple Silicon Macs? I've read there can be some firmware issues on these, especially for the Thunderbolt2 R2s on the recent macOSs, that's all. We used them back in the day in a post studio I was at and they were great, and now that they're coming down in price on the used market I'm thinking about one for mostly home/family media and data. Thanks in advance for any insights you may have!

[@EvanSchneider]

The Pegasus RAIDs are holding up great! No software issues, I just make sure to wait to upgrade my OS until it's supported. Still highly recommend picking one up.

[@4darin5]

@EvanSchneider great video 🔥 would you recommend mixing different drive sizes in a Raid 5 set up?

[@EvanSchneider]

Thank you. No, each drive must be identical in size (and brand, probably) to be configured in a raid array.

[@4darin5]

@@EvanSchneidergotcha! Thanks for the response.

[@JohnSmith-zl8rz]

Online backup? Backblaze ?

[@EnzoWildFun]

How could that possible to get writing speed up to 1000MB/s on a Raid 5 array using HDDs?

[@EvanSchneider]

Totally possible with an 8-bay with a Thunderbolt 2 connection straight to the Mac Studio. I just tested it again to make sure I had the right screen grab. With the Thunderbay 8, IronWolf Pro drives, I get about 1350 MB/s write and 1600 MB/s read.

[@EnzoWildFun]

@@EvanSchneider impossible, because single Ironwolf Pro maximum speed is 250MB/s, even Raid 0 can achieve only 500MB/s. How come over 1000MB/s. I have done testing on M1, and it did show over 1000MB/s. But I have found it was because of the cache. You should test with large size file, says over 1TB. Adjust the size in the testing software.

[@EnzoWildFun]

@@EvanSchneider Or, use a real file to do the testing. Use few TB size of file, and do the transfer. You can view the transfer speed on Mac performance monitor app, under the disk performance section.

[@mparves3530]

SSD KING STON GOOD FOR HIGH SPEED?? ❤

[@AliRenae09]

Thanks for sharing! Is it possible for a cloud service like Backblaze to be backing up what you put on the RAID if you were to get all SSDs? I really want the SSD speed but still want somewhere separate to back up (my rule of thumb is that it doesn't exist if it's not in 2 separate places!)

[@EvanSchneider]

Backblaze is nice and convenient but forces you to keep drives plugged in at least every once in a while. I find that enough of an annoyance to not use their service. If you want backups, I'd simply back up to cheap external drives and keep them in a separate location.

[@properginko]

Evan, what about noise with 8 drives inside? Do fans turn on when you start using each HDD or are they all on?

[@JimEdds]

How did you get your data from the 3TB RAID 5 setup if two drives were going to fail? Copied it somewhere else then dump it back to the new RAID? Also, those Iron wolf drives are loud in a RAID. Enterprise drives are quieter what I have found

[@EvanSchneider]

I had extra space on my other two Pegasus2 RAIDs to copy the files off of the Thunderbay. The 2 drives hadn't failed yet, they were just predicted to fail. I don't think they're that loud, I have it under my desk and it doesn't bother me. You could also run a longer optical USB-C cable to a closet or further away. I trust these drives more for video editing.

[@JimEdds]

@@EvanSchneider I thought maybe that is what you might have done. I had a 5 year old Thunderbay 4 enclosure fail recently. The drives were fine, the box not so much. I moved 24 TB to a second ThunderBay 4 and just bought a new enclosure. I've always thought 8 drives should be RAID 6 but SoftRaid doesn't support 6 unfortunately. That's always keep my from getting the ThunderBay 8. At RAID 5 I could use the big speed boost though. Raid 5 on ThunderBay 4 probably getting 350-600MB/sec depending on how full the drive is. Softriad is the software you love and hate- the latter when there is a kernel panic like with the Thunderblades not long ago. Thankfully I just reformatted them with Apple Raid 0. Thanks for the video, subscribed.

[@marclattoni1959]

Sadly, the mini 4 bay thunderbolt 3 (4 SSD drives, RAID 5) in the screen shot no longer seems to exist.

[@WelcomeBackTommy]

Were you doing those speed tests with your drive configured as raid 0 or raid 5? That was extremely fast!

[@EvanSchneider]

RAID 5! Yes, really nice speeds!

[@WelcomeBackTommy]

@@EvanSchneider Just curious, were there any settings you changed to get those speeds? I just purchased the same drive and I'm averaging 575r/750w using RAID 5 and the cluster size at 64kb

[@BryanMiraflor]

@@EvanSchneiderraid 5 with those speeds?! What were your settings in SoftRaid? Or did you use a different raid program?

[@dwightlarks2525]

Hi I'm looking for some ARRI luts for my black magic video assist, as well as footage shot on the original black magic pocket cinema camera OG, Black Magic Cinema Camera 2.5k, Black magic production Camera 4K as well as in BRAW originating from the Lumix S5iix through the Video Assist. Can you recommend us something

[@ryngrillo]

can I buy the owc 4 and just put one ironwolf drve in it and when im rich and have more money like you buy the other 3.... I guess im asking if I could run off of one iron wolf?

[@EvanSchneider]

You could, but when you add another one you have to reformat the first one in order to build a new logical raid array. So it kinda defeats the purpose.

[@ryngrillo]

@@EvanSchneider ahhh thanks so much brother 🙏🏻

[@enriquebarquet]

Hi!, thank you for your video! I have a question; I want to know if I will get faster read and write speeds in my work if I buy an 8-disk bay compared to a 4-disk one in RAID 5?

[@EvanSchneider]

Hi, great question. Using RAID 5 configuration, your write speeds will stay the same, but with 4 drives your read speed will be 3x and with 8 drives your read speed will be 7x. So with the 8-bay you will get a significant gain in read speeds.

[@alexlubensky]

I wouldn't necessarily trust Seagate drives. They are awesome at speed, but their lifespan is the worst I've met yet (I've used WD - green, red, purple, black; HGST, Hitachi, Toshiba, Seagate). Among all the drives I've used for 5+ years they are the only ones that failed, and did it numerous times - I've got three 3TB drives from Seagate (two of which were working in RAID1), and all of them failed. When one of them failed, I've replaced it with another 3tb model from Seagate - and it also failed. I also have a 10tb drive from Seagate that does still work, but I'm hesitant to buy another drive from Seagate since then. Blackblaze had a similar statistics data on the drives I've used, so it does seem that 3TB's were a bad egg in the Seagate lineup, but I've never met any case like this where all of the drives basically failed over a rather short period of time (3-5 years, one died in 2 years). So, I suggest going Toshiba or Hitachi (now HGST) instead for price/performance.

[@billythecat]

Hi. 4:27 the benchmark says read speed 1257MB/s. Does that mean it will be enough if I use Resolve to edit a timeline with 5 layers DNxHR HQX 222MB/s clips off that storage device? And what kind of cable is used to connect it to the computer to achieve that speed? Can you connect to this storage device using the internet?

[@JimEdds]

Use Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to connect for Max speed. I would say yes it would be fast enough but I have not tried it myself. I use ThunderBlade, which is 4x NVMe drives in a RAID 0 config. Expensive but I can edit anything, no delays on my MacStudio. Hope this helps. Get the fastest pipeline to your external storage for best results.

[@DavidBlodgett]

Do you edit off of your newly upgraded thunderbay 8?

[@EvanSchneider]

Every day

[@DavidBlodgett]

@@EvanSchneider Curious as to what are your read and write speeds. I just got a thunder bay 4 and installed 4 22tb version of the drives in your affiliate link. Im getting 736 read and write. DO you think thats plenty for editing in full res 4k. I dont like doing the proxy workflow. Would love your thoughts

[@dongxue5618]

Does that have a big noise from the fan? thanks.

[@EvanSchneider]

No fan noise. Depending on the drives you choose you might hear some “chirping”

[@dongxue5618]

@@EvanSchneider thanks!

[@tscontrollers]

@@EvanSchneider Not true, the fan is on all the time and is quite loud. This is a common complaint of this unit, so not sure why you say that. Ive put a slightly quieter fan in mine.

[@pediashkavar]

So why u didn’t use ssd raid?

[@EvanSchneider]

I wanted high capacity

[@jammapcb]

@@EvanSchneider there is the apex x21 for 3k and fits upto 21 x 8tb m.2, 30gb a second. or around 25k dollars in a singe slow system

[@spybloodjr]

fuck yeah

[@ed-ey1yb]

Thanks for the video, though your most valuable assets are stacked on the jankiest wire stand I've ever seen.

[@dtrelzmusic]

I fucking hate owc!