![]() ![]() ![]() I had no trouble installing drives, initializing the SoftRAID software, and formatting a single RAID 5 volume. 42TB RAID 5 volume comprised of four 14TB drives This is part of the reason why it's important when building a DAS or NAS system to buy more drive space than you need to account for RAID mirroring. SoftRAID XT provides information to help you decide, but for average users, RAID 5 is typically the best compromise of speed and security.Īfter creating a RAID 5 volume with four WD drives, my total disk capacity dropped from 56 TB (14 TB x 4) to 42 TB. If you don't know what that means, these are levels of protection that control how data is split up and written across the drives. SoftRAID XT supports volumes using RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 4, 5 or JBOD. This is third party macOS and Windows software developed in partnership with OWC. Creating a RAID volumeĭrive initialization and formatting is handled through SoftRAID XT. This is great for dual monitor setups, for then a single cable is all that's needed to connect a Mac or PC to the ThunderBay. With the display port and second USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 port, the ThunderBay 8 can power two 4K monitors. Two Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports and one display port You may also connect a second monitor to the display port. One USB port is for connecting the ThunderBay to a single Mac or PC (cable included), while the other may be used to daisy-chain another ThunderBay for more storage, connecting an external drive, peripherals, or a monitor. The back of the ThunderBay 8 has a security lock, display port and two Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports. Western Digital 14TB WD Red Plus NAS drive Connecting the ThunderBay 8 I was tempted to buy faster, more modern SSDs, but their cost would have been prohibitively expensive for my data storage needs. These are 7200rpm drives designed for the rigors of DAS and NAS hardware. Whatever type of drives you choose, the maximum storage capacity of the ThunderBay 8 is 128 TB, which is equal to eight 16 TB drives.įor my ThunderBay, I installed four WD 14TB Red Plus 3.5" NAS drives. This means some drives could be merged to create a RAID protected volume, and other drives (like an SSD) could be used as standalone cache or proxy disks for video. You may also mix SATA and SSD drives, use a subset of drives as a single RAID volume, and mount individual drives as well. There are eight slots for standard 3.5" SATA hard drives and/or 2.5" SSD drives in the ThunderBay 8. It provides similar functionality to a "NAS" (Network Attached Storage device), but connects directly to a Mac or PC instead of being accessed like a server over a local network. This type of hardware is known as a "DAS" - a Direct Attached Storage device. The latter appears as one giant drive that looks and feels like a normal, external hard drive (but with loads of space), and provides protection should a hard drive fail (if configured as RAID 5 - more on that in a minute). Drives may be mounted and used individually, or joined together to form single RAID volumes. The OWC ThunderBay 8 is basically a big box of hard drives. ![]()
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