OWC ThunderBay 8 review: should you buy one?

[@AlloffroadAu]

Considering any OWC Raid, just be aware that the TCO is much higher than you may think. Here is an example of the 16TB OWC Thunderbay? It's crucial to look beyond the initial purchase price of AU$2,249.99. Many aren't aware of the additional costs tied to software licensing. After the first 3 years, you'll face a renewal fee for SoftRaid of US$149, followed by an annual charge of US$79 from the 4th year onwards, for 7 years. Assuming an exchange rate of 1 US$ = 1.4 AU$ (do verify with the current rate for accuracy), the total cost of ownership over 10 years approximates to AU$3,232.79. This sum encompasses the initial outlay plus the software expenses across a decade. Be mindful of these ongoing costs before making your decision.

[@Bdjdjsjsdbxnsiwnf]

Thanks mate, i'm on Australia and this post saved me some hours looking at this product

[@grayanderson9800]

Any suggestions for an alternative for soft raid if you already have mistakenly purchased a owc device 🤦🤦🤦

[@mattyrossfilms]

Been down a rabbit hole for 3 days researching NAS and DAS and it's been super stressful. Thank God I found your video. Exactly what I'm looking for and brilliant explanation of everything. Superb. It is annoying you can't add to the network and the fan is noisy but I've started working with ProRes raw and this is gonna be the best option for me. Many thanks again, I'll sleep better tonight. 👍

[@PelicanNorth]

Great review! I have used a Thunderbay 8 for about 6 months, and I am happy with the setup. I am a solo creator, so NAS was overkill. DAS is right for me. A few thoughts: 1. I chose a 3-drive RAID 0 setup, with 3 18TB drives, connected to my Mac Studio. This balances speed vs. risk. Fast read / write: (748 Write / 778 Read). 

I then have two 18 TB drives in slots 4 and 5 as non-RAID single-drive backups for the RAID: I use Carbon Copy Cloner to auto-backup projects to those drives. If the RAID fails, or SoftRAID fails, I can then pull the non-RAID drives and simply access the files from my bare-drive dock. I came to the conclusion that this is better than RAID 5, because the re-build time for RAID 5 can be very long - a big risk if I am on deadline. 

I have an unused 18TB drive as a cold spare. I did run a full 3-pass HDD certification process on my new 18TB Seagate Exos X18 18TB Enterprise HDD’s - took almost 6 days to complete! 

 I run two single drives from an old RAID configuration as spinning archive drives in slots 6 and 7. I will replace those and put in cold storage as newer archive needs come along. 
 2. I also use Backblaze for cloud backup, but TB’s of video files can take weeks. So,

I also put all media files for current client projects on another drive stored separate from the RAID box. Project files (FCP for me) are backed up to the cloud. 
 3. The front door is sloppy engineering - I have spent too much time trying to get the door back on, and the key is a joke. 

 Mac computers have tight USB connections. OWC USB C slots are dangerously loose, so buy and use their USB “Clingon.” The Thunderbay 8 has the screw hole pre-drilled, so they actually work, unlike the old Thunderbay 4 where the Clingon has to rely on double stick tape and is not reliable there. 
 4. I put the Thunderbay 8 on the floor and have the exhaust fan ejecting air into an Auralex foam panel to dampen the reflected noise. Helps a lot. 

Also, you can buy a quieter Noctua NF-A9 fan for less than $20. Replacement time is about 10 minutes. Helps some, but not a huge change. I am considering buying an optical Thunderbolt cable and moving the unit out of my office altogether. 
 5. SoftRAID has been stable lately, but in the past a new release has caused big headaches. Do not upgrade until a new version has been out for a while - let others find the problems first. But of course that is standard advice for any new software release.

[@dominey]

Great feedback! Thanks Jim. I actually have some old acoustic tiles and was thinking about making an egg crate or box to put around the ThunderBay.

[@tesla4771]

how do you open the case to replace the fan?

[@PelicanNorth]

@@tesla4771 I think there are just 4 small screws on the back of the unit that hold the fan in. The hardest part is getting the connection clip off, then getting your fingers in mostly blind to plug in the new one. It should take less than 15 minutes. Except double that because everything takes longer than I think.

[@poppys33d]

@@PelicanNorth I have a Thunderbay 8 on the way. If it's like my existing Thunderbay 4, it will be a simple case of just using a Noctua NF-A9 with the ULN (ultra-low noise adaptor) to make these enclosures essentially silent. That's how I've been running my Thunderbays for years.

[@PelicanNorth]

@@poppys33d Thanks for this note. When I replaced the fan earlier this year with the Noctua NF-A9 I was rushed and did not take time to understand what the ULN adapter could do, so I left it in the box. Your note prompted me to try it - just installed a few minutes ago. What a difference! At about 4 feet away under my desk, the TB 8 is now only faintly audible if listen for it. With 7 spinning 18TB HDD's, I can still feel exhaust air, but it is barely warm. It doesn't seem the like the lower rpm will be a problem with temp control.

[@SamEckholm]

Needed this video! Thank you so much for the great explanation.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

You are one of the few people that actually say that the fan is noisy. Most people say that it’s quiet (reviews of the thunderbay 4) that they can’t hear it. I have the thing and it’s super noisy, I change the fan for the quiet one (paying extra ), and still super noisy, I will say the there is no difference between them. There is no intelligence on the box, so even if you are doing nothing with the box the fans will be at full speed (again the 4 , don’t know about the 8)Thanks for telling the truth. I disagree, on the other hand, with the key. One can put the key in a safe place, and avoid children getting inside the box.

[@vidfolio]

It's noisy as fuck

[@DanSZiegler]

Thanks so much for the video. And a thanks to all the folks who posted their tips and advice in the comments. I had actually just ordered and received a Synology NAS, but after learning about DAS here, I'm sending that back and just ordered the 4-bay Thunderbay. I will set it up with four 16TB Seagate IronWold Pro drives. I also ordered the quieter fan that I will install right up front. Thanks again for the great content you provide! I was already a subscriber, and As I will be the only one using the extra drive space for my photography, I think the Synology NAS was overkill. I don't think I would use most of the software they offer. And, I do want the extra speed that the direct Thunderbolt connection will offer.

[@RetirementTravelers]

Such a well done video! Thank you. We are looking for a solution and this helped teach us.

[@JonnyHavens]

Hands down the best video on the subject for my particular use case. Thank you for taking something I was super intimidated by and making me feel confident about it!

[@LeonardUlrich]

THANK YOU for taking the time to make this honest, real world, unbiased video. This is probably the drive I am going to get. I have been spoiled by my Promise Pegasus 2 R8 which is sadly no longer supported by Promise, or Apple silicon.

[@BabyBackManiac]

I had the same problem you did. The fan was terrible. It wasn’t even the volume…it was the pitch. I’ve had a lot of noises raids and they never bothered me but this one was terrible. If I didn’t have it in the bedroom, I might have been able to fight through it but after a couple of nights I had to send it back. Fortunately OWC was great. I was very bummed because I’ve read great things.

[@PelicanNorth]

I replaced the fan in my Thunderbay 8 with a $18 Noctua NF-A9 fan. Really easy to do. It is better, especially the pitch. Then, I put a 12"x12" Auralex foam panel on the wall to which the fan ejects towards. That helps even more, as reflected sound is a big part of the problem in any room.

[@BabyBackManiac]

@@PelicanNorth brilliant. Thx for this.

[@AmorLucisPhotography]

I have the OWC 4-bay formatted as RAID 5. I can't complain, and the speed is fine for raw editing. That said, the SoftRAID software does give me mixed messages that OWC service desk seem to be unable to explain (the disk show "no errors" but the volume says it is degraded and needs rebuilding). As for space: my advice is to take as much as you think you are going to need and then *double* it. No one overestimates the amount of space they will need in my experience. Almost everyone (including me) underestimates the space they will need. And if memory serves, you lose your data with RAID 5 if more than one disk fails simultaneously - it does not need *all* of them to fail - if two fail at the same time, you're hooped.

[@woodies11]

Great video! I’m going back to school for a master degree and likely won’t have my own network/LAN to use, so I was looking for a DAS solution to replace (or rather work with) my existing NAS, which I decided to left at home and connect back through a VPN. You already mentioned that RAID is not a backup so this may not be as critical to you but RAID5 is generally not recommended for larger drives (or for anything at all nowadays), especially with 8 drives. Reason being, when a drive fail and you insert a new one in, the RAID software need to read through the rest of the drives to compute and reconstruct the data that was supposed to be on the missing drive. Now, the larger your drives and the more of those drives you have, the more likely is it that you will find some error (URE) within those remaining drives, which may cause the whole thing to fail. There are some studies showing (with math) that the chance of a RAID5 successfully rebuilding a 4TB x 4 array is already under 40%. Also, if you buy all the drives and start using them all at the same time like in your case, all of them will pretty age the same way, so by the time a drive die, the other drives may also be on the verge of death too. Putting the remaining drives through a rebuild may be enough of a stress to break a second or third drive.

[@blaspayri]

Interesting information: what configuration to you have for your DAS?

[@paulzielinski1326]

I concur with Romson. RAID 5 is not preferred, nor is a RAID 50. Also a RAID 5 would only give you the speed of one drive to write, 7 X the read speed. With that many drive I would go with a RAID 6 (double Parity) but still only gives you write speed of X 1 with 6 X read. Or (more costly way) RAID 10. This would give you 8 X Read and 4 X write. And if you have a solid solid backup, RAID 0 would be the fastest, but you will max out at 16Gb speed approx to your PC granted that your drives each have a through put of 210Gb each. Also if you do set up a RAID, you will want the same drive sizes, make and model across all drives. Preferably NAS enterprise drives. This also sound like a software RAID system which is also not recommended. Hardware RAID would be preferred. Sorry for the rant, but I was a systems engineer for 15 years.

[@587583922]

@@paulzielinski1326 Software RAID is better these days for basically everything other than ESXi. It's actually always been better in the *nix world.

[@mattyrossfilms]

@@paulzielinski1326 good intel cheers Paul. What would you recommend instead of Raid 5? I was thinking perhaps Raid 1. Wondering what would be the best way to back everything up also considering the total storage would be huuuuge. I guess Backblaze but I'd rather have another physical copy. Thanks in advance.

[@yo-panda]

Woooo you said Backblaze!!!!!! The whole reason I don't use nas. You know if the drive supports running multiple raids in mirroring instead of a single big raid 5? Running multiple smaller raids makes upgrading drivers easier in the future.

[@alzibaba]

Great overview, thank you! I've been using a Thunderbay 4 for some time now, and there's one other caveat I've come across: at times if I've left a video project open while I've been called away for a while, I've come back to find the OWC drive has disconnected, all my media is now unlinked, and when I restart the drive, it somehow gets a new name (with a _1 or _2 added to the original which seems impossible to change) so if using Resolve, which I do, you have to add the new named drive into your linked media sources, then relink everything. A big hassle. The learning for me is to always close the project and disconnect the drive if not in use for a while. I'd love a quieter fan, but other than these downsides it's been a great DAS.

[@joooeforlong]

Thanks for this video. My main concern is not being able to easily expand the volume. I am considering getting one and using it in a JBOD configuration and creating redundancy via Backblaze or mirrored to another enclosure. I want to buy 20tb drives so that I can have the most storage possible by the end, but I am not able to afford 8 20tb drives out of the gate. Do you know if the issue with adding drives applies to JBOD as well, or is it only with RAID that it works that way? And if you want to add storage to you own system, what is your plan---are you just stuck with your 42tb of storage unless you somehow rebuild the entire thing after adding a drive? This seems like a waste of 4 bays even though I know you could still add drives that will function as separate storage. This is what confuses me about these systems.

[@marcusslade9804]

Teriffic video and having just found you may I say, some lovely photographic work too. Count me subscribed. Small world too: I just got my new Mac Studio (had to wait nearly four months for delivery) and I have an older Drobo 5D as well (still works just fine but, yes, I’m aware of their bankruptcy filing). I’ve largely ruled out going the NAS route but have been thinking going the Thunderbay DAS route. Having addressed the issue of not being able to add more drives when the time becomes necessary (like you can with the Drobo), I’m curious why you didn’t go with a Thunderbay 4 (perhaps using 16TB drives?) or what is the plan with your Thunderbay 8 with the three vacant bays? A future video? Nicely done. Thanks.

[@mikedocherty6160]

@marcusslade9804 Are you say you can now add larger drives to an existing SoftRAID XT raid and it expand the size like on a drobo? Im looking to make the jump from DROBO because of the bankruptcy filing.

[@cvdavis]

Great review. The comments people have made, also helps give even more input.

[@jigsound]

Thanks for mentioning Backblaze! 👍 It seems to be the only affordable cloud backup option for tens of TBs of storage...

[@dominey]

Glad to help! Personal backup is very affordable. I have about 16TB of data there.

[@ChadNodland]

@@dominey I'm looking at migrating from my drobo to a thunderbay, as you have done. I have a huge amount of data uploaded to Backblaze, as you apparently do too. As part of the migration, can you preserve your Backblaze back-up by simply giving your thunderbay drive the same volume name (or names) as your drobo data has? If so, do the Thunderbay volumes have to be the same size as the Drobo volumes? I really don't want to have to re-upload 20TB of data to Backblaze after migrating that amount of data to a new device. Thanks for any thoughts on this.

[@domipro123]

@@ChadNodland Very good question... would like to know Todd Dominey's thoughts too, as I'm in the same boat!

[@ianjones5526]

Awesome review-really appreciate you putting this together. Cheers!

[@paulreinstein5645]

wow, fantastic review/introduction to the ThunderBay 8. my only concern is the noise. i'll have to think about that one. thanks.

[@RyanSiemers]

Thank you for the caveats. It feels very difficult to actually hear about downsides. Considering this isn't hot-swappable or easily expandable, kind of makes it a deal breaker for me. I guess I'm just spoiled by my Drobo.. Sadly... with their bankruptcy I think they are going the way of the dodo.

[@jaimeduncan6167]

Yes, I have a Drobo too, but this box is far faster. It's a shame that Drobo never wanted to invest until it was too late. Do you remember how long they take to move from a 16TB max volume? And then the support total disaster. The internet is full of horror stories, but if you count how many is clear most people did not have problems. But when people have problems and the company does not help or worse people get mad. Comunication was in general abismal. Even in the last days of the company (the 8D just disappeared). Today NAS devices from both. SYNOLOGY and. QNAP allows you to grow as you need. It won't be as transparent as the Drobo, but you can do it. My mac studio has a 10gbit ethernet, my PC does not but I use it just for work so no big media files. The NAS supports virtualization and more. If one needs a not so noisy faster than this one and how swappable. direct attached storage today we have to pay for Promise, Lacie or Areca (super noisy). Personally, my Drobo is the local copy. When. it dies or later this year I will add a NAS.

[@alex.velasco]

Perfect review for my needs. Thank you 🙏🏽

[@garybrenner2801]

Hi Todd, I just came across this video & I'm really glad I did! I have no experience in setting up or using external drives or RAID systems & had/have many questions. I've been trying to buy a Drobo for a long time now because I was told they were easy to use & had some great features. But I guess they're not available now, (or maybe anymore period). I like the idea of DAS as opposed to NAS & didn't know what options I had for a Windows laptop. I thought Thunder Bay units were only available for MACs. Also, thanks for the BackBlaze recommendation. Anyway, you cleared up a lot of my questions so far. I did subscribe to your channel & look forward to more videos. Thanks so much!

[@dominey]

Awesome! Glad this was helpful!

[@jaimeduncan6167]

if you don't need the bandwidth I will recommend you go with the NAS. This box has zero intelligence (not even to control the fan) costs $899 with the software, and you can't not even increase the size of the volume by adding drives or by changing drive sizes. you need to backup delete and restore. Both Synology and Qnap will let you do both. The NAS has far more options, software to deduplicate, to backup in the cloud, to backup to a drive, to access remotely. You can all sorts of software, is basically a Linux box with a super-friendly interface. Price a QNAP TS-h973AX with a quad-core AMD processor, 32GB of RAM 10gbit ethernet (about 900MB/s to a Mac) 5 3.5" and 4 2.5" bays costs 1140$ (B &H) you pay $200 more to have a full computer. I used to buy robots when the price of NAS was higher and performance to low to be useful. I have two OWC thunderbays.I was planning to buy this box, but at current prices, it does not make sense for most people.

[@garybrenner2801]

@@jaimeduncan6167 Thanks for the advice Jaime!

[@Ronin6x]

I've purchased three Drobos within the last six years, only one is working now. I have one OWC ThunderBay 4 which I bought six years ago and it still runs. Purchase a SanDisk Professional 24TB G-RAID 2 Enterprise-class 2-Bay drive and debating to buy a Thunderbay 8.......

[@chrisweeksnz]

OWC in the past have been okay with customer's replacing the fan in Thunderbays with Noctua fans and still honoring the warranty. I have 2 x thunderbay 4's and made them effectively silent using this method. Not what everyone will want to do, but may provide relief for those who want/need the silence 😊

[@markvelber8664]

This is belong to a museum mate 😂😂😂😂😂

[@natesmithphotography5925]

Hi there, thanks for the video. I'm looking to move from drobo, you had mentioned it's difficult to increase the volume size with the thunderbay. Is there a way to do it at all without reformatting everything?

[@mdd1963]

8 large drives, one fails, begin 24-32 hour rebuild, what could go wrong there? :)

[@rgarlinyc]

Thanks - I have an OWC 4 Bay DAS and Backblaze is perfect for it. Upgrading to Studio and Thunderbolt 4 soon - so have to upgrade by DAS enclosure too...

[@TillThenPlease]

This was a super useful video! Thank you!!

[@orinmazzoni]

one other question, if I understood this correctly your locked into 56tb? All other drives act as independant hard drives? Can you merge the last 4 at once and have just two source drives?

[@20centurymodern]

With regards to it not being a backup, to add to your thoughts, it’s always good to have an external backup or even better, use software that allow you to create memory stamps so if a drive was to get couriered and it copies over that corrupted data via RAID 5 then the redundancy is useless

[@dominey]

Interesting - What software do you use for this?

[@20centurymodern]

@@dominey I use Synology hyper backup that allows for a multitude of options, including multi versioning. On PC check out free file sync, it too has a multiplicity of options for backup including versioning

[@mattyrossfilms]

@@dominey I'd also like to know this!

[@TobiLotta]

what if you want to expand it by adding more hdds over time? how you do that?

[@mrfroopy]

But why aren't you using enterprise class drives?

[@austinh7539]

So helpful! So you use backblaze do you have any trouble with it deleting any content on your cloud? I've heard stories about backblaze deleting stuff from your cloud backup without telling you but I wasn't sure. Just asking because I am considering getting the service. myself.

[@dominey]

I think what you may be referring to is their 30 day backup policy. Basically means if a synced file is deleted locally, the backup of that file at Backblaze is there for 30 days, then automatically deleted. You can extend that to 1 year or even forever for a little extra $ per month. I extended mine to a year to be on the safe side.

[@austinh7539]

@@dominey Oh terrific, thank you for clearing that up!

[@dominey]

@@austinh7539 Glad to help!

[@xLordJonx]

I am a Promise user, and those are great systems, but tend to be a bit pricey. Also went down the path of trying CalDigit Storage, but support has been horrible and you cant even use those systems on Apple silicone macs (has to be intel). So I have been looking at OWC as a new option. I think they are great for the price, but man those Write and read speeds really arent that great. Read is sorta typical, but the write on something like a Promise Pegasus 32 is up in the 1800-2500MB at times. Great review, helpful in looking where to go with DAS.

[@BryanMiraflor]

so many horror stories of Thunderbay enclosures on Reddit. makes me not want to buy an OWC enclosure lol

[@felixthecat9347]

Great Video. I was thinking about buying one, and now I'm on the fence. I was hoping that Apple would have bought up Drobo when they filed for bankruptcy; it would have solved a lot of problems.

[@JohnScaneArt]

Very helpful video, I'm considering one of these but I notice that you can buy it with or without their RAID software, is it possible to install your own? How would it work if you don't use their SoftRaid software? Have you tried just using it as an enclosure to house various hard drives?

[@orinmazzoni]

Great review thank you! Why 14tb instead of the max allowed 16?

[@AirshowAddict]

Is it still not able to add a new drive and have it be added to the existing single volume?

[@blaspayri]

thank you so much for this clear and informative video. I was looking for this kind of video, which is from a user that edits video and media, that has really used the system in a real environment and that is also knowledgeable about the intricacies of NAS DAS RAID etc. Video editors tend to be very shy and evasive when explaining their RAID solution, as they have not a deep knowledge of it, and RAID specialists fall into the rabbit hole of getting into technical specifications and getting excited about it, and mostly, they only talk about DAS and not NAS, and they don't have a real experience in media editing. Apparently all the "real" high-end technical resellers and specialists deal with DAS and one starts to wonder if a NAS is a bad solution, when in theory it is the best for video editing.

[@dominey]

FWIW, I fell into the NAS rabbit hole to the point of thinking how to drill a hole in the wall to run Ethernet. 😳 Can’t remember the exact video, but I watched one from someone who built out a NAS for video editing and went the extra mile with cables and drives, and the speeds were…just okay. That and the cost of cloud backup made me stick to DAS.

[@nickavisa]

Wow was this helpful. Thank you.

[@eavesphoto]

I had a thunder bay 4 from OWC. The drive set up a salad. But I cannot stand SoftRAID. SoftRAID XT is buggy and I hate the fact that if I update my operating system within a couple months I’ve got a wait for SoftRAID to come up with a driver. For the amount of money that I spent for my 24 TB. I could’ve added another $500 and got the Pegasus hardware RAID that I have now. I decided on Pegasus after working with one of my photographers here in Chicago that has 2 of their 8 bay RAIDs. They are both thunderbolt two and when we connected to the new Apple studio, we buy the thunderbolt 22 thunderbolt three adapter. The new studio came with a new operating system, and it connected to the Pegasus eBay’s without an issue. Probably because no driver was needed.

[@JaredRaines]

Hi, Todd! Love the setup. I've decided on the Thunderbay 8. If I've already purchased four 14TB WD drives, do I need to select a particular GB amount or do I select the 0GB one, and do it myself? I'm a bit confused.

[@dominey]

You mean when creating the raid? You would let the Softraid app build the RAID for you. RAID 5 is a good compromise of compromise of speed and security, with protection against a single drive failure. Let me know if this doesn’t make sense and I’ll try to help.

[@JaredRaines]

@@dominey thanks! Sorry, let me rephrase. So I bought four 14TB drives. On Amazon, there’s different tiers based on the storage amount. Are they basically saying they’ll include the hard drives with the different tiers, or do I need to buy a certain capacity based on the amount of TB hard drives I bought. I’m inclined to think you just buy the 0TB version, and then you just input the separate hard drives you bought, but I’m not sure. Hopefully I’m explaining this well enough.

[@thecommonstaff8441]

What if u just use it as a hub for separate drives? Will an enclosure failure still risk losing everytging or because your not manipulating it into one volume itll be fine

[@michaelvanarey8013]

Thanks for the video! Hey In your opinion, is this solution good for air travel? I am on a lot of planes while capturing and editing content around the world. Assuming that you're careful, Is this more or less reliable than having a bunch of external 2.5" hard drives? Thanks :)

[@octaveanaugustus307]

The OWC ThunderBay 8 should have been designed with a dual rear fan system (120mm) allowing for a lower rpm rather than the single, small, presumably loud fan that they chose to go with. Also, while ~$800 USD might not be an outrageous price for such a Thunderbolt DAS, you can get a USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps) 8 bay MediaSonic ProBox that will perform very well with spinning rust for less then half the price.

[@TheCynysterMind]

Been looking at the OWC for a bit as a replacement for my Drobo 5D3 There seems to be Z E R O alternatives... The technology that Drobo uses is called Beyond RAID The only thing that comes close is something called UN-RAID but I don't know if it can work as a DAS

[@es__music]

Wait, I saw this on B&H, it's thousands of dollars. I assumed it had the SSD's already in there. Is that the price just for the case?

[@JackieandSascha]

Did I understand that correctly that you can't add another drive to the array later if you run out of storage space? So what do you do if you would run out of space with your 4x14TB drives? You can't just add a 5th one and add it to the RAID5? That seems like a bit bummer. And why would you then buy a 8bay unit if you only install 4 drives with no capability to add storage? I am looking to purchase a replacement for my Drobos as they went under...as you probably know. Thank you for your help.

[@cvdavis]

You can create another separate raid (I think) or use the others as regular drives.

[@blivieriphoto]

Ive been considering a system like this for a while. Still not sure if I should. I have 5 external drives hooked up to my computer. 1 is for my video tutorials and no real photos. Another is a 4TB that I use as a backup to my other 3 1-TB HDs. I don't do vlogs so no real video other than the occasional time lapse or cell phone videos. I'm guessing in another year or 2 I'll need to increase my capacity. Thanks for this video. Ill keep researching and hopefully will have a solution before I run out of space. ☺️

[@jaimeduncan6167]

If you don’t need crazy speeds and you have 10gbe go for a NAS. You can put the NAS far from you (no noise ) and modern NASes from Synology and QNAP allows you to easily expand storage. They also support virtual machines they will help you if you are into IT or to test web design. Synology also offers cloud backup. If money is not and object, you need the speed and you like OWC go with the thunderblade or the Flex it’s quiet and fast. Best resgards

[@blivieriphoto]

@@jaimeduncan6167 Thanks Jaime! No, I don't need crazy speeds. I'll check into the brands you suggested and see what fits. Appreciate the comment!

[@vidfolio]

I bought this, guy from store that sold it told me that I could add drives over time. I apparently cannot according to your story, that is a major bummer because i now have useless 2 bays.

[@annix493]

The way you describe the issue with Volume Expansion at 12:35 is *technically* not correct. The problem itself is with Softraid XT, and as that’s the solution included with the product I think it’s a totally fair criticism of the product - however, you definitely do not need to use the included software. There are many other ways to manage RAID, including things like ZFS which can expand super easily. So in this case it’s an issue with the software, not the actual hardware unit. Not trying to nitpick, overall this was a fantastic, thoughtful and comprehensive review - I just wanted to let this be known in case there’s that one person out there who’s use case requires dynamic volume sizing and really likes the hardware. This all said - for the time and cost of these DAS units, I really think that most people would be better served by a NAS, for redundancy, access, and the bajillion features that come with having a server (specifically one that can run Docker)….these DAS units just seem like you’re paying 90% of the cost for 10% of the features.

[@Zeppy007]

Great video! Just purchased the TerraMaster ThunderBolt D3 5 /Bay unit and it blows the OWC away in every way! I suggest you check it out! I have 25 TeraBytes in the cloud with BackBlaze as well, love them they are the best....Cheers....

[@dglatz01]

Awesome and timely. I was looking into this. Gonna pass for now. Appreciate your thorough and thoughtful review.

[@VELVET462]

are bigger SSD's in combination with Thunderbays a thing now? or still to expensive?

[@gmitchell8672]

Todd, I'm also using a Drobo 5D3 and thinking about moving because of their bankruptcy. I would prefer to stay with a DAS for the same reason as you mentioned about the cloud pricing on a NAS vs DAS. But also like the other advantages of a NAS over DAS. I do a nightly backup of the Drobo to a in house external HD. Then both of them are continually backed up to BackBlaze. I know thats over kill but it don't cost any more so why not. I was thinking why I can't do the same with a NAS. Back it up to the external HD nightly as I do now and then have BackBlaze back that that drive as it dose now. I like the idea of being able to add drives on the Synology or QNap as is done on the Drobo. Anyone here have thoughts?

[@dretwav]

What is the advantage over a NAS drive. I see NAS as much more flexible because the volumes appear on all machines on your network., not just the mac.

[@EKF_FC]

SPEED. TB3 is much faster

[@robotmustache1987]

In my opinion it has loads of drawbacks, the biggest being SOFT RAID! By the way, you can 100% get a NAS that is faster than TB3 plus it’s self contained and available for multiple users local or remote. I wouldn’t recommend this type of drive for anyone now that fast and inexpensive NAS systems are available!

[@EKF_FC]

@@robotmustache1987 In my quick search of 8 bay NAS enclosures (diskless), they cost way more than this. What NAS gives you over 400MB/s read/write speed?

[@robotmustache1987]

Ds2015xs… it’s seven years old and I have been getting 500MB/sec since I first put it in service with 8 5TB enterprise class drives. Pretty much any Synology or Qnap 8 bay system will net you 500+ assuming you get a 10gb either net port on it which most have stock.

[@silvergts1998]

This enclosure can handle larger drives than what you are claiming

[@ethan4842]

So I got a question I kind of want to create my own offline Media Station for like movies and tv shows would you be able to hook this up to a TV and would it play because I'm looking online and it's like saying it's $3,000

[@tomroggero]

Why is it that it only accepts maximum 16TB drives instead of 20?

[@VELVET462]

My Mainboard has TB4, and i just saw somewhere that it will not be backwards compatible, dou you know if this is correct?

[@bnazzaro21]

So I spoke with OWC customer support and they said that you can add hds to your raid setup with the softRaid software. Has anyone been able to confirm or deny any of this?

[@vidfolio]

So, no

[@MegaSunspark]

I've been a Drobo user for a very long time and in view of the company Drobo now gone out of business, I've been eager to find something else to replace my venerable (at least for me anyway) Drobo 4 bay enclosure. I was all excited about OWC unit until you started explaining the limitations of it. Not being able to dynamically expand the RAIDed volume in the OWC unit with new/higher capacity drives as needed is a deal breaker for me. I guess that is a problem with RAIDs in general, unless you use Synology Hybrid Raid, etc. Now that Drobo is out of business, why no one else has come up with something like Drobo Beyond RAID technology of their own is a puzzle. Beyond RAID works so well with Drobo; any size, brand of drive can be added to expand capacity at any time, all you do is add a new drive or remove a lower capacity drive and plug in a higher capacity one in its place, that's it. No reconfiguration, set up or anything on the part of the user. The unit does everything on its own.

[@dominey]

Glad this was helpful! And yes, I totally agree. "Beyond RAID" was really the most magical thing about Drobos. Perhaps now that the company is bankrupt they could license/sell the software.

[@DNKF]

Can we insert 2x 2.5" ssd to single 3.5" slot? Saw some adapter but not sure if they are useful and speed.

[@danjrs]

Hi all. I'm wondering if anyone here who has purchased a ThunderBay can tell me what are best practices in terms of powering off your device? Do you keep the DAS always on (like a NAS) or do you unmount the drive and turn it off at the end of each day? Appreciate any insight you can give.

[@geodude4real]

11:41 - I guess you'd just not use the key then? And leave it unlocked all the time?

[@SinaFarhat]

Nice! I assume that you copied the data from the drobo to the new das unit as the raid software between them doesn't allow for just inserting the old drives.

[@TedBorel]

Yeah- he most likely had to set up the OWC with 4 drives and then transfer from the Drobo on a computer. I too am a former Drobo DAS user and this is the bummer for switching systems. Having a NAS and a DAS that back up to each other and then an offsite backup is the “golden triangle” of backups for me.

[@GhostFrost24]

Hi topp, Want to ask for tip here how correct the exporting video problem cause do to the many software different version video editing but my point here is when exporting a video washing out it doesn't look like the same when in edition out video was look great but after the results it look terrible so how solve this and I do not use Mac most is on windows or nun-mac user.

[@steveGabrail]

have you had any experience with the thunder bay flex 8?

[@vgarguilo]

The fact that you can’t increase the storage after the volume is built is a total deal breaker. I would have NEVER thought OWC would design it like that. How stupid.

[@carusoleather]

I actually asked support about this the other day.. they said it is available in the latest version. Haven’t tried since I don’t have one yet might order. Edit - nope I was wrong and support told me the wrong info. I just got my thunderbay 8 and cannot add a new disk to a raid 5 volume. But you can add larger ones and resize the volume. So stay with the number of drive you want in the volume first.

[@johndarkification]

I just checked with support and they told me that you can add drives after. They said that the rebuild would take a long time but that it was possible. Not sure if this is accurate but thats what they said. Anyone manage to do it?

[@elstcman5]

you sir, get a subscription

[@holdmedear]

Would the disk speed increase if you have 8 HDDs?

[@AKSTUDIOUSA]

Can I use Synalogy as a DAS ? Thanks.

[@derJackistweg]

A Software RAID is only that reliable as the Software/Chip it is running on. Plus in that case - a RAID - you need to use the same HDDs (if this Software opperated as usual. There are some different ones like ZFS ect). I personally wouldn´t trust that. If the RAID fails software wise, the data is corrupt. Instead I would choose that in a simple attached storage and use the additional slots as BACKUPS. Note: A RIAD just gives you more speed (RAID 5 in terms of READ, not write) availibility, but NO BACKUP. You will still need a backup in ADDITION.

[@tombouie]

I can get a Synology 8bay NAS for the same cost.

[@587583922]

Using RAID 5 with 14TB drives is asking for problems. It is extremely unlikely that your data will survive a rebuild if it becomes necessary. As much as it sucks to spend 50% of your storage on redundancy, RAID 10 is the only thing that should be used with drives of this capacity due to the likelihood of unrecoverable read errors (which will happen). At this point, even that isn't actually considered "safe" for 20TB drives...you need 3 levels of redundancy...e.g., still RAID 10 but with 3 drives in each mirror group.

[@robotmustache1987]

Two 4K monitors and this drive from one TB3 and you’re probably going to see performance close to a single platter drive. I understand it’s nice to have extra ports but they are all sharing the single TB3 port bandwidth. One monitor alone can saturate TB3! Also, SoftRAID is not what I would call a reliable solution. I would much rather have the drive control itself because not only does SoftRAID consume system resources, if the computer becomes unresponsive it can corrupt data on the drives. One last note, once you get over about 4TB in hard drive capacity RAID 5 setup is basically useless. Recovery will take a very long time (and thanks to SoftRAID your computer will be tied up for days rebuilding) and will most likely fail. If even one bit of data is also corrupt on another drive it’s over and most rebuilds cause a second drive to fail due to the prolonged run time. Minimum RAID 6 and 8 drives if you actually want the data recoverable.

[@EKF_FC]

Ask all the Promise Pegasus2 users if they agree with you. Promise dropped support for the enclosre, and they have had the problem of improperly disconnecting from the computer whenever it sleeps for over a year. now, perfectly good RAIDs are expected to be unusable when the next MacOS doesn't support the old driver. I will never purchase a hardware based RAID again.

[@robotmustache1987]

Pegasus has the same issues as this product! It’s not a NAS, and although it does have an onboard raid controller, that is only as good as the company standing behind it! Drivers, OS update compatibilities all play a roll and add more points of failure in this type of solution. Get a Synology or Qnap. It will be around the same cost but last far longer, and pull the cpu power needed to manage / run the raid off of your working computer. (Not to mention local computer OS updates rendering softRAID unstable etc.) NAS systems just work reliably and that is what most end users are looking for. For clarity, many NAS systems also use software for RAID configurations, the difference is they run on a dedicated processor integrated into the NAS enclosure. This difference makes all the difference in ease of use and reliability!

[@blaspayri]

@@robotmustache1987 thank you for your input. When you say to get a Synology or Qnap, do they have DAS solutions? I've seen mostly DAS solutions for these brands.

[@MisterMister5893]

Does own sell these disk less?

[@klokskap_]

You’re ALWAYS tape one key somewhere hidden on your desk.

[@thomasraden]

In digital photo you do collect a lot of raw files, and it is a lot of megabyte data. I still refuse to erase them, as the raw converters especially from Adobe does squeek out the best in your files.

[@armypilot1]

Not sure why you say this would not be a good backup. What are the odds I lose my computer and backup at the same time? I guess if there is a fire but the DAS will be one of the first things I grab to exit the house. According to back blaze it would take a month to back up my storage. Not acceptable to me. Sinology NAS systems are cheaper than this option. They are UBS 3.2 instead of TB3 but if using only for a Time Machine backup it really does not matter.

[@AlexReining-o3q]

Davis Plain

[@thesoulofmemories]

They are out of they mind, $900 for a simple enclosure??? Ridiculous

[@mondotv4216]

It's not a "simple" enclosure. It's an 8 bay SATA backplane with a Thunderbolt 3 interface. If you compare that to an 8 bay NAS with Thunderbolt (which has a lot more hardware) it's significantly cheaper. Personally, I don't love it. Noisy fan, software RAID and limited by the maximum length you can run Thunderbolt 3/4. I also think RAID 5 is risky once you get up to 8 drives. I prefer RAID 6 which means 2 drives can fail with no data loss.

[@yuriyork8094]

It sounds like Drobo you like better.

[@mondotv4216]

They're no longer in business. Bankrupt.

[@Fluffy2Buffy]

I was on the dev team for these products for years… SoftRAID is simply not a pro solution regardless of the hardware.. In my testing, anything over 4 drives would become a nightmare for the host system to manage.. I reccomend going to a NAS workflow, or having something with a very beefy cpu otherwise half of your performance will always be used managing the RAID and doing things like parity calculations and scrubs. Larry really like pretending to have a pro solution.. one of the many reasons I left

[@JDFloyd]

Weak complaints, plus you seem not to understand how RAID works.