Product Description
OWC ThunderBay 4
4.0TB 4-bay external drive
Dual Thunderbolt 2 | RAID Ready | 4 Drive Bays | Mac
The Speed You Need
- Four 3.5″ drive bays for up to 24TB
- Incredible Thunderbolt 2 performance
- Plug and play RAID-ready
- Up to 790MB/s read / 777MB/s write RAID 0 performance.
Empower your creative production workflow with this super-fast, 4-Bay, RAID-ready drive with dual Thunderbolt ports. Add vast amounts of high-performance storage with ThunderBay 4. Utilize each of the four internal drives independently, or use the software RAID of your choice to setup a multi-drive array for high-performance or data-redundancy.
Edit, Experiment, Create, Design
With ThunderBay’s performance capabilities you can complete projects faster, have more time to experiment, and push your creations to the next level.
Enhance editing capabilities in video apps like Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid Media Composer. Empower greater audio production capabilities in audio apps like Avid Pro Tools and Logic Pro X. Edit large photos in apps like Adobe Photoshop, and browse large photo libraries in apps like Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom. Simply put, you can do more with a ThunderBay 4 enhanced workflow, and with a RAID 5 array you get data redundancy on top of great performance!
Certified and Tested
Each ThunderBay undergoes OWC’s multi-hour drive “burn-in” performance certification procedure prior to shipping. This ensures your ThunderBay arrives operating properly and ready for demanding use.
Monitoring + Notifications
Software RAID easily lets you setup drive monitoring and e-mail notifications to keep you informed about your ThunderBay’s performance and drive health. Helping you to maintain mission critical workflows.
Better than Hardware RAID Performance
ThunderBay 4 with SoftRAID offers faster performance than many competing 4 or even 5-bay hardware RAID external drives – benefiting from modern processors that are both fast and designed for exceptionally high-performance RAID management with no real-world impact on apps or tasks.
Flexible + Robust
SoftRAID is extremely flexible and can easily be updated, reconfigured and used across multiple enclosures to provide an amazing amount of robust options to empower you to make the most of your ThunderBay workflow.
Backed by OWC
Should you ever have a question or troubleshooting need, you can rely on OWC’s award-winning U.S. based support for both the ThunderBay 4 drive and SoftRAID software.
4 drive bays plus so much more.
Time-Tested Cooling
Built on OWC’s time-tested enclosure cooling technology, ThunderBay utilizes an open “flow-thru” vented design with an oversized 92 mm, low-turbulence, noise-quieting fan to keep the drives running cool and reliably.
Multi-Drive
Daisy-chain up to six ThunderBays for massive storage capabilities and increased performance, or connect multiple ThunderBays to multiple Thunderbolt 2 ports to achieve exponential speed capabilities.
Vibration Dampened
ThunderBay’s drive isolating design reduces sonic resonance, and is aided by over-sized, rugged, vibration-absorbing, non-skid feet.
DisplayPort 1.2 Support
Dual Thunderbolt ports let you connect the display of your choice that your computer can support, including 4K displays.
OWC Thunderbolt Cable
ThunderBay comes with an OWC one-meter certified Thunderbolt cable, with other lengths from 0.5 meter to 30 meters available separately.
Software
Includes
- OWC ThunderBay 4 High-performance 4-bay Thunderbolt 2 interface drive
- SoftRAID 5
- High-Quality, Certified, Double-Shielded 1-Meter Thunderbolt cable
- External UL listed 3-prong power cable
- 2 keys for front panel lock
- User guide
- Utility software bundle for Mac
- OWC 3-Year Solution Limited Warranty with 48-Hour Turnaround Time
- Complimentary 1-Year, Level-1 Data Recovery
Gallery
360 Gallery
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Product Specifications
Chipset
Interfaces Supported
JBOD / RAID Support
- JBOD: Utilize each of the four drives independently
- RAID: Use the included software RAID or one of your choice to setup the ThunderBay 4 for multi-drive performance or data redundancy.
- SoftRAID 5 Support Page
Standard Mechanism
Drive Rotation Speed
Drive Cache Size
- 32MB per drive, 128MB total for the solution
Port Configuration
- Thunderbolt – (2) Thunderbolt 2 ports
Format
- Comes pre-formatted for SoftRAID and configured as a RAID 5 volume.*
- *If utilizing on a Mac with OS X 10.8.5 or earlier, the SoftRAID software must be installed prior.
Max Data Transfer Rate
Port/Interface Bootability
- It can be used as a Thunderbolt startup drive on Macs running Mac OS X.
System Requirements
- Any Mac with a Thunderbolt port running OS X 10.9 or later.
- Boot Camp is not supported. The Thunderbolt certification process does not include Macs running Windows through Boot Camp.
Software Included
Power Supply
- Internal UL Listed U.S./International Auto Switching 100 ~ 240v, 50/60Hz input, 12 Volt 16.66 Amp output Power Supply (power cords for International use sold separately).
External Case Dimensions
- 9.65″(D) x 5.31″(W) x 6.96″(H)
- 245.11mm x 134.87mm x 176.78mm
Enclosure Weight (no accessories)
- Approximately 8.6 pounds (3.9kg)
Product Manual
Operating Environment:
Temperature
- (operating) 5°C – 42°C (41°F – 107°F)
- (non-operating) -40°C – 65°C (-40°F – 149°F)
Relative Humidity
- (operating) 8% – 90% RH (Non-condensing)
- (non-operating) 5% – 95% RH (Non-condensing)
Shock
- 65G 2mS; (non-operating) 175G 2mS
Vibration
- (operating) 1.0G (5 – 300Hz)
- (non-operating) 5.0G (5 – 500Hz)
Support
Includes OWC’s award-winning U.S. based support for both the ThunderBay 4 drive and SoftRAID software.
Warranty
3 Year OWC Solution Limited Warranty
The best warranty is one you never have to use, but should the need occur – OWC is proud to provide a superior level of support and
warranty coverage to our customers. Even when not used, we understand the peace of mind afforded by a longer warranty period. OWC’s industry
leading coverage is a testament to our confidence in the reliability of the solutions that we offer. OWC solutions are engineered to demanding
quality standards in order to deliver the most reliable, highest performance available on the market in each storage category.
View more information about the 3 Year OWC Solution Limited Warranty
Note: Do not disassemble or otherwise open your OWC solution prior to the conclusion of the 3 Year OWC Solution Limited Warranty period. Doing so will void the
remainder of the OWC warranty.
Manufacturer provided specifications for Other World Computing p/n TB2SRT12.0S UPC#: 812437020564
Software
SoftRAID 5
OWC has partnered with SoftRAID to bring software RAID 5 to the Mac. SoftRAID combines advanced RAID modes,
fast performance, monitoring, e-mail notification, and fast rebuild capabilities that only software RAID can
deliver. ThunderBay 4 models with drives come preconfigured in RAID 5, and are plug and play ready with OS X 10.9 or later.
Advanced features such as drive notification and monitoring require SoftRAID installation.
Prosoft Engineering® Data Backup 3 for Mac OS X v10.2.8 or later
Backup Made Easy. Data Backup makes it easy to backup to FireWire and USB drives, network drives, CDs
and even DVDs. Make schedules so you don’t need to ‘think’ about backing up… It does it for you.
A $59.00 Value!
Intech® SpeedTools Utilities™
Intech SpeedTools consists of a suite of utilities managed by an application which controls the launching, documentation and version control of each
individual component utility, such as Disk Defrag and QuickBack. An easy-to-use installation and removal application is provided to make installation
a snap, yet powerful enough to allow you to customize which utility component set you would like to create.
An $89.95 Value!
Benchmarks
Click any of the benchmarks below to view the results.
RAID 5 (Stripe with Parity) Test Results
RAID 0 (Stripe) Test Results
Reviews
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“Does great with lots of footage, handles 4K footage with ease … copying over data is lightning fast, and its’s whisper silent … a terrific Thunderbolt solution”
— Shane Ross, Little Frog in High Def
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“The performance is outstanding … speeds are exceptional … the Thunderbay itself is an efficient unit that does not get in the way of performance.”
— Lloyd Chambers, DigLloyd – Mac Performance Guide
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“With four bays and configurations in 4TB to 16TB capacities, this should give any prosumer the amount of storage they need with ample performance to get the job done.”
— Tyler Bernath, TweakTown
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“OWC’s ThunderBay IV delivers impressive performance at a much lower price point than much of the competition … a great choice for professionals who want large storage capacities without having to forfeit speed.”
— Albert Filice, Macworld
4.5/5 rating
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“… an amazing product that can meet the needs of the professional who needs high-performance storage, as well as anyone who is looking for a versatile method of storage and backup.”
— Tom Nelson, About.com
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“OWC’s ThunderBay 4 brings to the market capacities that have yet to be seen in such a compact medium, as well as the performance and data security that only RAID 5 can provide!”
— Les Tokar, The SSD Review
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“Performance and pricing are both excellent, which makes the ThunderBay 4 a great solution for any Mac owner looking to add external storage to any modern Mac.”
— Jordan Golson, Tech republic.com
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“I remember when I spent $20,000 to buy 20 GB of storage. Now, we can get far more storage, with far better performance, for about $100 per terabyte … I like what I see … Congratulations, OWC.”
— Larry Jordan, Larry Jordan.Biz
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” … a perfect companion for the serious video editor … quite the workhorse for me as it churns through editorial without missing a beat …”
— Scott Simmons, Pro Video Coalition
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“It’s affordable, fast, reliable, and gives any modern Mac access to fast, huge storage … recommended for video editors”
— Iain Anderson, macProVideo
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“Now we can do RAID5 via software and save substantially.”
— Allan Tepper, Pro Video Coalition
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“… come(s) with a quiet cooling fan and locking front panel for easy access to the drive mounting brackets.”
— Rob-Art Morgan, Bare Feats
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“With power, price and performance on its side, the ThunderBay 4 is a beast of a desktop hard disk. Rating: 4/5”
— Stuart Andrews, PC Pro UK
Reviews
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