# I’m out of drive space! --- Any suggestions on a Thunderbolt RAID enclosure?



## KMA (Jun 24, 2021)

Oops. I bought some new libraries again, and now I’m out of space (again), both on my system drive and my external SSD drives.

I’m considering a TB3/TB4 RAID enclosure for my solid state drives. It's got to be compatible with my older Thunderbolt 2 Macs (via an adapter) as well as whatever TB3/TB4 machine I wind up buying in the near future. The main purpose is sample streaming, so speed is important. Low fan noise would be a nice bonus. And it'll be my first RAID.

The OWC Thunderbay series is looking good at the moment.

Does anyone have any suggestions or warnings?

Thanks!


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## soundslike72 (Jun 25, 2021)

I'm using an OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 (TB3 connection) with 4 x 1TB SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration, and that works really well. I've actually disabled the fan altogether since the SSD's don't really get hot in that enclosure. I've used it both on both TB3 and TB2 connections (with Apple's adapter) without any problems.


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## Cuelist (Jun 25, 2021)

Second that. If you are staying with solid state drives, the OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 is hard to beat. Well built, fast enough, and being able to easily turn off the internal fan is a great feature.


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## storyteller (Jun 25, 2021)

I have two TB3 Minis, one TB2 Mini, and one TBIV. I use the minis for sample drives. They are really great enclosures! Here is what you need to know when it comes to voice counts with the Minis...

Non-Raid will give you more voice counts with typical buffer settings before the audio breaks up than a multiple disk raided volume (tested with Samsung 870s)... and that is just measuring one non-raided SSD vs. a 2 SSD, 3 SSD, or 4 SSD raid 0 config. Since you can already get more performance from one SSD without raid, that means that running multiple SSDs simultaneously in the enclosure will produce even greater voice counts than the raid config can output.

Next, the controllers in any available 4 bay enclosure limit the potential bandwidth to around 1500 MB/s. That doesn't matter if you are using a Blackmagic dock, or an OWC enclosure - they both have the same bandwidth limitations. So, if a single Samsung 870 SSD can give you 560 MB/s read throughput, this means that when you max out the performance of each drive in the enclosure simultaneously, you won't achieve the full disk potential of four disks. That would be over 2200 MB/s. Instead, you can only achieve about 340 MB/s per drive since it will average out the performance if all drives are being used simultaneously. Real world with composing, you likely wouldn't crush all four discs simultaneously. This is more of a stress-test for performance.

Overall, if you are confident your CPU will not crap out before the SSD voice counts get that high (unlikely since the CPU will bottleneck first), then you may want to consider using only 2 or 3 discs per enclosure. More expensive? Yes. But that does maximize the potential of the SSDs. Also, if you spread SSDs across multiple enclosures, you would not want to daisy chain them if possible. That same bandwidth limitation affects all daisy-chained devices. So, for example, the iMacs have two thunderbolt ports. They SHARE the same bus.... meaning 40gbps total bandwidth between the two ports. But, if you want to fully saturate the bus, two Samsung 870 drives per enclosure, per port will dive you 2200MB/s. Daisy chained on one port, it will still limit you to 1500MB/s. Seems strange, but it is good to know... Mac Pros have multiple TB busses, which means multiple 40gbps ports compared to the iMac which has one 40gbps bus.

Lastly... during testing for my current studio overhaul, I debated on going with the fastest internal NVMes available for Mac Pros, or maxing out the internal NVMes that come in Apple's latest iMac rather than adding more SATA SSDs. I tested this thing thoroughly and discovered that - surprisingly - the Samsung 870s reform better via TB3 than internal NVMes when it comes to voice counts and drop outs. The NVMes had more clicks and pops which persisted during stress-testing the drives. The 870s would click/pop the first time it played a note during a stressed performance, but seemed to cache the sample more efficiently and would not click/pop again during a performance. With the lowest buffer settings, the NVMe might have the edge... but with real world buffer settings to maximize playback of high voice counts, the 870s performed better every single time by a margin of a couple hundred voices.

The TB3 Minis vs the TB2 minis are very similar in total performance due to that controller limitation of 1350 MB/s... but the TB3 is definitely the smarter pick. Use the $50 apple TB3->TB2 adapter for backwards compatibility. Hope this helps.


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## Kent (Jun 25, 2021)

I used to use this back in the day, but gave it away when I got a computer that could handle many internal SSDs. Loved it though!


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## babylonwaves (Jun 25, 2021)

@KMA 
I have 2 TB Minis and an OWC Express 4M2 (with an Apple USBC > TB adapter). The 4M2 is smaller and cheaper than the TBs. The performance is great and in difference to @storyteller I don't get pops and clicks. I use Samsung EVOs in the TBs and Sabrent Rockets in the 4M2.
You can exchange the fan in the TB against a Noctua Silent fan, that makes a lot of sense and it is easy to do. As for the 4M2 enclosure I haven't found a really silent fan but also there you can find models which are less noisy. I probably wouldn't want to put any of the two right in front of me when doing music.
HTH


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## storyteller (Jun 25, 2021)

babylonwaves said:


> @KMA
> I have 2 TB Minis and an OWC Express 4M2 (with an Apple USBC > TB adapter). The 4M2 is smaller and cheaper than the TBs. The performance is great and in difference to @storyteller I don't get pops and clicks. I use Samsung EVOs in the TBs and Sabrent Rockets in the 4M2.
> You can exchange the fan in the TB against a Noctua Silent fan, that makes a lot of sense and it is easy to do. As for the 4M2 enclosure I haven't found a really silent fan but also there you can find models which are less noisy. I probably wouldn't want to put any of the two right in front of me when doing music.
> HTH


Just to clarify, the pops and clicks are at the upper end of the stress testing I did. Both types of drives are exceptional!  Glad to hear a good success story with the 4m2. I've seen some good feedback on it and some others that have had issues with it... but that could be related to a number of variables like drive choice, heat buildup, etc.


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## Wunderhorn (Jun 25, 2021)

For external solutions I recommend simple drive bays unless, for some reason you really need a RAID (The advantage for a RAID system for samples is debatable).
The advantage of drive bays is that they are inexpensive and have no fan (no noise) which is something you don't need for SSDs anyway unless you do a crazy amount of video editing.


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## Noeticus (Jun 25, 2021)

Does anyone know how loud the fan is on the "*OWC ThunderBay 8"?*


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

soundslike72 said:


> I'm using an OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 (TB3 connection) with 4 x 1TB SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration, and that works really well. I've actually disabled the fan altogether since the SSD's don't really get hot in that enclosure. I've used it both on both TB3 and TB2 connections (with Apple's adapter) without any problems.


The Mini is my top contender so far. Turning off the fan is a lovely bonus.

Are you using SoftRaid, or something else? It looks to me like SoftRaid is always in the background, so I'm interested in how much of an impact it would have on system resources.


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## darkogav (Jun 26, 2021)

soundslike72 said:


> I'm using an OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 (TB3 connection) with 4 x 1TB SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration, and that works really well. I've actually disabled the fan altogether since the SSD's don't really get hot in that enclosure. I've used it both on both TB3 and TB2 connections (with Apple's adapter) without any problems.


raid 0 means if one drive dies, you lose all data.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

babylonwaves said:


> @KMA
> I have 2 TB Minis and an OWC Express 4M2 (with an Apple USBC > TB adapter). The 4M2 is smaller and cheaper than the TBs. The performance is great and in difference to @storyteller I don't get pops and clicks. I use Samsung EVOs in the TBs and Sabrent Rockets in the 4M2.
> You can exchange the fan in the TB against a Noctua Silent fan, that makes a lot of sense and it is easy to do. As for the 4M2 enclosure I haven't found a really silent fan but also there you can find models which are less noisy. I probably wouldn't want to put any of the two right in front of me when doing music.
> HTH


I hadn't considered the 4M2 because I'll be populating the enclosure with a bunch of my existing SATA SSDs, but I can see myself going this route in the future.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

storyteller said:


> I have two TB3 Minis, one TB2 Mini, and one TBIV. I use the minis for sample drives. They are really great enclosures! Here is what you need to know when it comes to voice counts with the Minis...
> 
> Non-Raid will give you more voice counts with typical buffer settings before the audio breaks up than a multiple disk raided volume (tested with Samsung 870s)... and that is just measuring one non-raided SSD vs. a 2 SSD, 3 SSD, or 4 SSD raid 0 config. Since you can already get more performance from one SSD without raid, that means that running multiple SSDs simultaneously in the enclosure will produce even greater voice counts than the raid config can output.
> 
> ...


My very basic research thus far has been that RAID 0 is more suited to larger files and non-RAID is better suited to smaller files (sample streaming). What you've posted seems to align with that thinking.

Your suggestions on throughput are interesting as well. You've given me a lot to think about.

Thanks for all of this!


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

darkogav said:


> raid 0 means if one drive dies, you lose all data.


True.
But if you're ruthless about backups (like I am), you'll be ok.


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## soundslike72 (Jun 26, 2021)

KMA said:


> The Mini is my top contender so far. Turning off the fan is a lovely bonus.
> 
> Are you using SoftRaid, or something else? It looks to me like SoftRaid is always in the background, so I'm interested in how much of an impact it would have on system resources.


I am using Softraid, and never noticed a performance hit worth mentioning from having that run in the background. This was on a Mac mini 2018 i7. I'm storing all my sample libraries on this disk, and even though I have an online backup of everything, I've considered using one of the other RAID levels (4 or 5 I think), to be able to recreate data locally, should one of the drives fail. This will lower the performance a bit, but it will still be plenty fast for what I'm using it for. The bottleneck in sample loading lies more in Kontakt and other music software.


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## Soundbed (Jun 26, 2021)

I use the TB3 mini, fan is too loud but I guess you can replace or disable it for SSDs. Plan to get a 4M2 next.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

Soundbed said:


> I use the TB3 mini, fan is too loud but I guess you can replace or disable it for SSDs. Plan to get a 4M2 next.


I would be using all SSDs, so I'd be comfy turning the fan off.

Are you using a RAID?


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

soundslike72 said:


> I've actually disabled the fan altogether since the SSD's don't really get hot in that enclosure.


How do you disable the fan?
Is it software, or are you opening up the unit and disconnecting it manually?


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## Noeticus (Jun 26, 2021)

SSDs do got hotter as the amount of data pushed increases. 

Apparently they use energy to work.


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## darkogav (Jun 26, 2021)

KMA said:


> True.
> But if you're ruthless about backups (like I am), you'll be ok.


backups are only as good as restores. every place i have worked at, we only discover how bad the backup strategy was when it was time to restore the backup.


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## babylonwaves (Jun 26, 2021)

KMA said:


> My very basic research thus far has been that RAID 0 is more suited to larger files and non-RAID is better suited to smaller files (sample streaming). What you've posted seems to align with that thinking.


my thunderbays are RAID0, the the 4M2 is a JBOD and I can't see that I loose performance. Okay, the NVME stuff is quicker than the SATA SSDs but all that is so fast that I've never ran into a streaming based bottleneck anyway. As for loading times, it doesn't matter either because Kontakt for instance spends the lion share on expanding the compressed files. AFAIK everything > 100mb/s doesn't make a change (but I could be wrong with this number).
the nice thing about a JBOD is that I can add discs without reformatting the whole thing. BTW if you want to make a RAID X use what macOS offers and not SoftRAID. this way you can take you RAID elsewhere and connect it to another Mac without installing SoftRAID.

HTH


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## soundslike72 (Jun 26, 2021)

KMA said:


> How do you disable the fan?
> Is it software, or are you opening up the unit and disconnecting it manually?


I opened it up and disconnected the cable to the fan.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

soundslike72 said:


> I opened it up and disconnected the cable to the fan.


Simple enough.
As long as I'm not voiding the warranty, I'll do the same.


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## Soundbed (Jun 26, 2021)

KMA said:


> I would be using all SSDs, so I'd be comfy turning the fan off.
> 
> Are you using a RAID?


Actually I use JBOD and backup online.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

babylonwaves said:


> my thunderbays are RAID0, the the 4M2 is a JBOD and I can't see that I loose performance. Okay, the NVME stuff is quicker than the SATA SSDs but all that is so fast that I've never ran into a streaming based bottleneck anyway. As for loading times, it doesn't matter either because Kontakt for instance spends the lion share on expanding the compressed files. AFAIK everything > 100mb/s doesn't make a change (but I could be wrong with this number).
> the nice thing about a JBOD is that I can add discs without reformatting the whole thing. BTW if you want to make a RAID X use what macOS offers and not SoftRAID. this way you can take you RAID elsewhere and connect it to another Mac without installing SoftRAID.
> 
> HTH


The more research I do, it seems JBOD is the way for me. I'll save my RAID experimentation for down the road.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

darkogav said:


> backups are only as good as restores. every place i have worked at, we only discover how bad the backup strategy was when it was time to restore the backup.


System drive gets cloned nightly to 1 of 2 clone disks.
Sample drives get cloned whenever there's a change (usually every couple of months, give or take).
I have hard copies off-site.
It isn't pretty, but it's what I've gotten used to.
I'm interested in a cloud option to clean some of this up.


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## KMA (Jun 26, 2021)

I just ordered the OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini (w/o SoftRAID).

Thanks for your help, everyone!


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## HDJK (Jul 9, 2021)

KMA said:


> I would be using all SSDs, so I'd be comfy turning the fan off.


How do you come to that conclusion? Contemplating my options as well but can't stand noisy things next to me. But I've just had a MP2013 die on me, which *could* be related to the heat issue (yes, the SSD was toast as well, unfortunately replacing it didn't help). So I'm a bit cautious regarding heat, even with SSDs


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## strojo (Jul 9, 2021)

I'd be cautious disabling ANY fans in an enclosure with SSD's. The fans are there for a reason--SSD's run HOT.

At the very least, you can probably replace what's in there with quieter models from companies like Noctua.


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## soundslike72 (Jul 11, 2021)

HDJK said:


> How do you come to that conclusion? Contemplating my options as well but can't stand noisy things next to me. But I've just had a MP2013 die on me, which *could* be related to the heat issue (yes, the SSD was toast as well, unfortunately replacing it didn't help). So I'm a bit cautious regarding heat, even with SSDs


There's quite a difference from an SSD being mounted inside a MacBook Pro with a CPU/GPU that heats up the whole thing, and one (or more) mounted in an external enclosure as e.g. the OWC Thunderbay Mini. Hot air escapes an external enclosure a lot easier than inside a computer, even without a fan. In my case, my 4 external SATA SSDs in the OWC only run very slightly warm, and that's without the fan active. The faster NVME drives tend to run quite a bit hotter than "old school" SATA SSDs, so I wouldn't turn a fan off with those.


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## HDJK (Jul 13, 2021)

soundslike72 said:


> There's quite a difference from an SSD being mounted inside a MacBook Pro with a CPU/GPU that heats up the whole thing, and one (or more) mounted in an external enclosure as e.g. the OWC Thunderbay Mini. Hot air escapes an external enclosure a lot easier than inside a computer, even without a fan. In my case, my 4 external SATA SSDs in the OWC only run very slightly warm, and that's without the fan active. The faster NVME drives tend to run quite a bit hotter than "old school" SATA SSDs, so I wouldn't turn a fan off with those.


Thanks!


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## danwool (Nov 18, 2021)

Apart from size and weight, what's the diff between the Thunderbay Mini and the standard Thunderbay? ...IOW, why would one spend more for the standard one?


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## storyteller (Nov 18, 2021)

danwool said:


> Apart from size and weight, what's the diff between the Thunderbay Mini and the standard Thunderbay? ...IOW, why would one spend more for the standard one?


The mini is much quieter due to the smaller fan and lower heat. You can also unplug the fan on the Mini (at your own risk) without it causing damage to SSDs since they generally run cool. I would hesitate to unplug the fan on the big brother. I believe the standard one comes with Soft Raid 5 still which you wouldn't be using for sample libraries anyways. But they do charge more to include it.

For reference: I currently use 3 TBIV minis (one is thunderbolt 2, two are thunderbolt 3) and 1 TBIV standard (thunderbolt 2) in my studio. I have not unplugged the fans from any, but I did have to change out the fan in the standard TBIV to lower the db.


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## danwool (Nov 18, 2021)

Great. The Mini seems perfect for me. A rare example where the cheaper option is actually preferable. Thanks!


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## storyteller (Nov 18, 2021)

danwool said:


> Great. The Mini seems perfect for me. A rare example where the cheaper option is actually preferable. Thanks!


You are welcome! I didn't say it in my earlier post, but I assume you do know that the mini is only 2.5" hard drives.... which are what SSDs are. The bigger brother accepts the bigger 3.5" spindle drives... That said, the mini is a great deal!


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## danwool (Nov 18, 2021)

Yes, I did know that. I’m all SSDs these days apart from backup drives….but yeah, that’d be a very good reason to get the standard. Thanks again!


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