As part of my transition to replace my ageing and failing Mac Pro 5,1 cheese-grater and replace it with a Mac mini 2018, there were a number of challenges I needed to find solutions to, one of which was where to put all my hard drives, some of which were inside my Mac Pro and others that were in an external eSATA chassis. My final choice was to go for an OWC ThunderBay 8. In this article I will explain the challenges, the options I looked at and why I chose the Thunderbay 8.

The Challenges

In replacing my Mac Pro 5,1 for a Mac mini 2018, one of the challenges I needed to resolve was what to do with all my hard drives.

In my cheese-grater, I had 5 drives, 4 in the bays in the Mac Pro and one in the spare slot under the DVD drive (remember those).

1. Angelbird 512GB SSD - Primary Boot Drive

2. Time Machine Backup - 8TB

3. Work Drive 4TB - This is where my working Pro Tools Projects reside

4. Storage 2 3TB - This drive started out as the drives on which my sound effects library and samples were kept, but it also became where all my video projects were kept too

5. Crucial 512GB SSD which was a clone of the Angelbird so I always had a working clone of my boot drive in case it failed, a practice I developed when all my drives were spinning rust drives.

Then I had an external eSATA connected 5 slot drive bay, which was home for some more drives.

1. Backup Drive 8TB - This is where I put safety copies of audio and video projects

2. SSD Backup Drive - This was a 1TB spinning rust drive split into two partitions so that I had a further backup of my boot drives. This was to provide a copy of the previous version of the drive when I undertook an OS upgrade.

There had been more drives in here in previous iterations of my set up but several rationalisations had slimmed down the number of drives in this chassis.

If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It

My first idea was to retain the 5 slot drive bay, after all, it was working fine, but the problem is that it depended on having an eSATA card in a PCIe slot, which I wouldn’t have in the Mac mini. I did look at some esata adaptors or converting the unit to Thunderbolt or USB but following extensive research, I was not confident it would all work reliably.

So the eSATA chassis would have to go and I would need to replace it with something I could connect directly to the Mac mini, via USB-c, which meant it could be either Thunderbolt 3 or USB-3.

I then did a review of all my drives, what was on each of them, what I was using them for and how long I had them for. What it showed is that the only SSDs I had were my Angelbird boot drive and my Crucial 512GB SSD backup boot drive. All my other drives were spinning rust drives, at least one of which was coming to the end of its life, as I was getting reminders from Tech Tool Pro that there were too many bad blocks.

Over successive Black Friday and other sales, I have been collecting SSD drives when they came up for silly prices to the extent that I had 2 x 2TB and 2 x1TB SSD drives from Crucial and Samsung. In reviewing my use of my drives, Storage 2 was a case of too many eggs in one basket, as what had started out as a Samples and Sound Effects storage drive had grown into a video media drive as well.

Looking at my SSD drive collection I decided to split the contents of Storage 2 into 3 SSD drives…

1. Sound Effects - Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB

2. Samples - Crucial BX500 1TB

3. Video Media - Crucial BX500 2TB

My 4TB Western Digital Work Drive became a Crucial MX500 2TB drive and I chose to retain my 8TB Backup drive as I had only recently replaced it and as a backup/archive drive, it wasn’t necessary to pay the SSD premium for an 8TB drive. My 8TB Time Machine drive was the drive that was failing so I took the opportunity to replace to with a 12 TB Toshiba spinning rust drive. Lastly I retained my Angelbird SSD and repurposed it as my backup boot drive. So all in all I needed an enclosure that could accommodate at least 7 drives, and to handle a mix of 2.5” SSDs and 3.5” spinning rust drives.

Having established I needed a Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3 enclosure with at least 7 slots, I turned to 2 well-known computer supply companies here in the UK as well as looking at what was available on Amazon. There were a number of options but again I wasn’t confident that they would work reliably.

OWC To The Rescue

Then I remembered OWC. I had used OWC over 10 years ago back in the days of Firewire drives and needing enclosures with the Oxford 911 chip in them for a large UK broadcaster and OWC were one of not very many, that supplied 2.5” enclosures with Oxford 911 chips in them. Even though they are the wrong side of the pond for me based in the UK, their expertise and track record, were again, more important to me than price or location. I knew that they understand Apple devices and even better they confirm the compatibility of each product and which Mac computer it will work with, giving me the confidence that if I bought it it would work, first time.

I looked at the OWC product range and I found the perfect match in the OWC ThunderBay 8.

What OWC Say About The ThunderBay 8

The ThunderBay 8 offers eight drive bays for either 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch HDDs or SSDs in any combination for up to 144TB of capacity. The ThunderBay 8 is like a high-performance personal data centre that offers multiple configuration options to suit ever-expanding storage needs. Photo, film and video editors can take advantage of the largest capacity desktop RAID storage solution we’ve ever offered to handle the voracious drive space appetite of RAW, 4K, large format, and VR workflows.

• Pro-grade transfer speeds: up to 2,586MB/s real-world-tested speed with Thunderbolt 3 (Thunderbolt 2/Thunderbolt backwards compatible)

• Massive capacity: store up to 144TB of critical footage, images, and files

• Eight hot-swappable universal drive bays: mix or match 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HDDs and SSDs (no adapter needed)

• Includes SoftRAID: robust software for creating, monitoring, and managing advanced RAID sets

• Create a data centre: daisy-chain six units together for up to 768TB of capacity

• Deployment ready: preconfigured solutions undergo rigorous multi-hour drive burn-in

• See more + save a Thunderbolt port: add a 4K display via DisplayPort

• Worry-free: up to 5 Year OWC Limited Warranty

OWC ThunderBay Pricing

• ThunderBay 4 DIY Enclosure- Add your own RAID software $499

• ThunderBay 8 DIY Enclosure- Add your own RAID software $649

• ThunderBay 4 DIY Enclosure with SoftRAID XT — RAID 0/1/4/5/1+0 (10) or JBOD $599

• ThunderBay 8 DIY Enclosure with SoftRAID XT — RAID 0/1/4/5/1+0 (10) or JBOD $749

What We Say About The ThunderBay 8 Enclosure From OWC

This is proper Enterprise-grade stuff, made up to a spec and not down to a price, unlike a lot of the units I had been looking at, with brand names I had never heard of. With their reputation and my experience I knew I could trust OWC to deliver a product, I could trust to work, first time.

I also knew that I would need to extend the IO of my Mac mini 2018 so I was also in the market for a Dock. Whilst I was on the OWC site I settled on the USB-C Dock, so that went in the basket too, and then I checked out and a few days later the unit turned upon the doorstep.

It arrived in a box within a box in high-density foam buffers and wrapped, not in plastic, but in a blue woven bag. Once I had unpacked it I found a postcard which explained the purpose of the blue bag…

“At OWC, we’re committed to constant and sustainable technology innovation. That dedication extends into our daily operations with a goal of zero environment waste.

The enclosed blue protective shipping bag holding your ThunderBay 8 storage solution has a dual purpose: it provides an easy, one-time use method to remove the solution from the shipping carton. Afterward, the bag can be repurposed as an environmentally friendly reusable shopping bag.”

All in all, An unexpected surprise.

Supports 3.5” And 2.5” Drives Without Adaptors

Having unpacked it, I set about loading it up with my 5 SSDs and 2 spinning rust drives. One of the reasons I chose the OWC ThunderBay 8 was that the drive carriers could accommodate either a 3.5” drive or 2.5 “ drive without having to resort to adaptors, which I had needed for my previous solutions, both the Mac Pro and the external drive bay. The ThunderBay 8 came with two bags of screws, one for 3.5” drives and one for 2.5” drives and enough of each to attach the 3.5” drives with 6 screws per slot, 3 each side and 4 for each slot for the 2.5” drives. It may not seem like much but it is like getting a toy on Christmas Day without the batteries, but with the ThunderBay 8 OWC had it covered.

Before I mounted all the drives I spent a little time with my label printer labelling the endplates of each of the carriers to identify which drive was which.

In taking this picture, which I did once the device was connected the LEDs are super bright, with the front cover removed hence the blue lenses flare. However, once the cover is on, all is well.

Then it was a matter of connecting it up to my new Mac mini 2018, along with the OWC USB-C Dock and powering it all up. After all the research, and selecting the right enclosure, the installation and powering up was somewhat of an anti-climax. It all just worked, no drama, everything came up and we were good. All the drives popped up on the desktop and all was good.

As I wanted all the drives as separate drives I did not take advantage of the SoftRAID option, but it is there if you need it and can be configured in 0, 1, 4, 5, and 10 RAID modes. If you to know more about the different RAID modes then check out our article Everything You Need To Know About RAID Drives.

In Conclusion

The short answer is “it just works”. I haven’t had any issues with it in the first couple weeks of use, it just does its job. The only niggles are noise-related. Firstly the fan is not silent. The good news is that it is a large fan and the spin speed is slower so the frequency spectrum of the noise is mainly at the low end, but I would say that you wouldn’t want this out in the open when you are recording. For me, it is in my computer cupboard, so it isn’t a problem. The second issue is that the Toshiba 12 TB drive makes a noise when Time Machine is backing up, its the drive being accessed that is noisy but I think the case is acting as a resonator, so I used some packaging to isolate the Thunderbay 8 from the frame that it sits in along with the Mac mini, DVD drive, USB-C Dock and the Avid HDX Desktop chassis. That said, I cannot really blame the ThunderBay 8 for the noise, its the drive that is the source of the noise, but it took more isolation than that provided by the rubber feet to stop the noise transmission.

There you have it. Would I recommend the OWC ThunderBay 8 to anyone? Absolutely, if you need an enterprise-grade drive enclosure to house all your storage then it scores top marks from me. What’s more, if you don’t need 8 bays and 4 is enough then there is the OWC ThunderBay 4 to consider.

A Second Take On Thunderbay 8

For those wanting to take advantage of Thunderbay 8’s astonishing up-to 144TB capacity as a RAID array, the unit comes with a licence for SoftRAID, OWC’s powerful and intuitive RAID utility for macOS and Windows. Selectable RAID levels offer maximum volume capacity, optimal drive performance, data protection, or a combination of attributes.

SoftRAID offers the following features:

• Compatible: Works with macOS 10.12 or later and Windows 10 or later

• Advanced: Create RAID 0/1/4/5/1+0 (10) arrays1

• Protected: SoftRAID Monitor constantly watched your disks and alerts you if problems are detected

• Validated: Volume validation ensures sectors can be read and parity is correct

• Certified: Checks disks before use to ensure they are safe for data storage

• Vigilant: Error prediction helps protect against unexpected failure

• Universal: Built-in OWC MacDrive technology lets you move SoftRAID arrays seamlessly between Macs and PCs

• Risk-free: 14-day trial for fully functional application

Production Expert’s Post Production Editor Damian Kearns adds:

With its colossal storage capacity, typically excellent OWC construction, and scalability, this product is ideal for both archiving sessions and hosting substantial sound effects libraries collections. The modulator design, breathtaking capacity and speed make Thunderbay 8 not only useful for storage; there can be true redundancy for all your critical data.

From these testimonials, it’s pretty clear that post production drives the need for enterprise-class scalable solutions with bomb-proof operation for individuals or small non-networked facitlities.