OWC ThunderBay 4 Four-Bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID Array Enclosure (RAID 5 Edition)

The OWC ThunderBay 4 Four-Bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID Array Enclosure (RAID 5 Edition) adds the capabilities of Thunderbolt 2 speeds and storoage to your mac. The RAID has four bays that each support a hard drive or SSD in a RAID 5 configuration. It supports RAID 0, 1, 4, and 1+0 and JBOD. 

The ThunderBay 4 will provide you with plenty of space to store files such as music, photos, movies, and documents. It also allows you to operate a production workflow with 2K and 4K video in Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid Media Composer, audio in Avid Pro Tools and Logic Pro X, and photos in Adobe Photoshop, Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom. As this array comes configured as a RAID 5, it features read speeds up to 580 MB/s and write speeds up to 569 MB/s. RAID 5 helps to increase performance, while also reserving one of the drives for data redundancy. If reconfigured as a RAID 0, the ThunderBay 4 features read speeds up to 878 MB/s and write speeds up to 924 MB/s.

The ThunderBay 4 comes with two Thunderbolt 2 ports that provide bi-directional data transfer rates of 20 Gb/s. Dual Thunderbolt 2 ports allow you to daisy-chain up to six devices such as additional ThunderBays, 4K displays, and more. To help ensure a smooth operating environment, the array uses a 92mm nosie-quieting fan.

The ThunderBay 4 is compatible with Mac OS 10.9 and later. It may be used as a boot drive, but does not support Boot Camp and operates using a 100-240 VAC power supply that runs at 50/60 Hz. Included with this ThunderBay 4 array is SoftRAID 5 for Thunderbay, a 3.3' / 1.0m Thunderbolt cable, an 3-prong power cable, 2 keys for the front panel lock, and a Mac compatible software bundle.

Please bear in mind that while users are free to select drives of their choice for this RAID, variable spin drives, such as WD Red and WD Green, are not recommended. The issue with variable spin drives is that because the drives could potentially be spinning at different speeds, this could lead to constant rebuilds within the RAID, as it could think that one or more drives are not in operation. While WD Red and WD Green drives are specifically being mentioned, please bear in mind that variable speed drives also manufactured by other companies, such as Seagate, are also not recommended.

Cooling
ThunderBay utilizes an open "flow-thru" vented design with a 92mm, 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
The Thunderbolt ports also support DisplayPort 1.2 that allows daisy-chaining displays through the drive

SoftRAID 5 for ThunderBay
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 pre-configured 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
Data Backup 3 is a software utility for Mac that allows you to backup, restore and synchronize your valuable data with minimal effort

Intech SpeedTools Utilities
SpeedTools Utilities is designed to offer fast, easy, and automated Mac disk repair and maintenance. This utility software has the ability to optimize and tune your Mac system for optimal performance in a matter of minutes