# OWC Thunderblade 8tb or OWC Express 4m2 with 4*2tb SSD... ?



## pierredolyprod (Oct 31, 2019)

Anybody using any of this configuration for streaming samples on thunderbolt 3 ?
(for exemple on an iMac i9 or iMac Pro)


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## ChoPraTs (Aug 31, 2020)

I would like to know the same. Any experiences with these configurations?


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## gst98 (Aug 31, 2020)

I've been heavily considering the 4m2, but there were a couple of things that put me off. The maximum speed is 2800mb/s, and that is only with it fully loaded. If you only use 2 of the slots its not going to get that speed. 
Price wise, amazon just had the WD black series 2tb SSDs for £300, so in the UK it would under £1500 for the full thing, compared to £2100 for the thunderblade.

When you fully load the 4m2, you are already limiting the WD or Samsung evo SSDs becuase their maximum speeds exceed the bandwith of the 4m2. But, at least in this case, you can update the case and keep the SSDs. I'm not sure if you can remove the SSDs frm the thunderblade.

Overall, both of them have okay speed for todays standards, but doesn't seem so great given the high price. and it seems like there will be a new generation of SSDs with faster speeds starting to come out in the not too distant future, to go along with PCIe4.

Apples 8tb SSD is a bit more expensive at £2600 but is much faster. And the OWC SSD for the mac pro does 6000 mb/s and is only £2000.


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## ChoPraTs (Aug 31, 2020)

Thank you gst98.

I've an iMac so I'm only interested in Thunderbolt 3 drives, preferible enclosures to mount SSD drives in it, like the OWC Express 4m2. Another alternatives that I'm considering should at least have a second Thunderbolt 3 port to let daisy chain with other drives in the future, like the OWC Thunderblade.

I'm planning an upgradable configuration of 8 TB for sample libraries. Not necessarily purchasing all the storage now, but having the option to expand it in the future.

Another option is to go for the old OWC Thunderbay Mini and install 4x2TB or 2x4TB SATA SSD drives into it.

I've read a lot here and other sites about the differences between SATA SSDs vs SSD NVME drives. I conclude that the improvement is not very noticeable when playing VST instruments, but considerable important when loading big orchestral templates.

I've also in consideration that the NVME configuration is, probably, an investment thinking in the future. The SATA configuration is noticeable cheaper and enough for today, but not sure for how many years it will still being enough.

On the other hand, I've read that the OWC Express 4m2 (and also the OWC Thunderblade) are only working at full speed with Raid 0 configurations. In fact, I think the Thunderblade comes from factory already configurated as Raid 0. In JBOD configurations, seems that the improvement over SATA drives is minimal. And about this, I've also read here and some other forums that Raid 0 is not necessary for our purposes of storing and playing sample libraries (some users even consider it harmful).

So, although the NVME drives are the future, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to spend a lot of money on them right now and if should be counterproductive using them in a Raid 0 configuration.

Because of that, I would like to know about experiences of other composers using this NVME configurations, if the are using them with Raid 0 to store and load samples and maybe share with us if they are happy with their acquisitions and recommend this models or not.


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## gst98 (Aug 31, 2020)

I would recomend to stay away from SATA at this point. If you want a TB3 drive, you are paying a lot of money becasue the thunderbolt controller chip is very expensive. For that price you are taking advantage that you can load an SSD that has up to 4000mb/s read speed. 

SATA SSDs get nowhere near this number (600 mb/s maximum), so its a complete wast of money to go TB3. If you want to do it inexpensively and use SATA, you do not need thunderbolt. Things like the samsung T5 and T7 are great if you want to do this. USB3.1 gen 2 is capable of 1000mb/s which is well above what SATA can do, so you want to look for a USB3.1 gen 2 SATA SSD if you want something less expensive. 

I still use a Samsung T5 for some samples, and yeah for loading sample libaries into kontakt, SATA speeds are still fast and perfeclty acceptable. But, an NVMe is still 5 times faster. My view point is that NVMe drives are really not expensive anymore, and really not much more than their SATA equivelant. The bit that is expensive is the Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.

If you want bulk NVMe, there isn't anything better value as an enclure than the OWC 4m2. Even thought the speed could be improved a bit, it is still very fast.


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## ChoPraTs (Sep 1, 2020)

Yes, Thunderbolt 3 is expensive compared to USB 3.1, but it has some other benefits.

In this case that I would like to achieve until 8 TB of SSD, Thunberbolt let me connect different devices in daisy chain, you can connect multiple disks or devices in the same port without losing performance. Or use until 4 SSD drives in the same enclousure, like the OWC Thunderbay Mini and still having the option to connect more devices in the same port.

I don't know if this should be possible with USB 3... For example, what would happen if I try to connect 4 Samsung T5 to the same USB port of my iMac using a hub? Will they lose performance?

On the other hand, in some cases the price difference is not so much. For example, if I but 4x Samsung T5 SSD drives of 2 TB (to get the 8 TB configurations) the total cost in my country where each disk costs 309 € it will be 1.236 €. With a OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini (about 350 €) and 2x Samsung 860 EVO SSD of 4 TB (466 € each) the total cost is only 1.282 €. Less than 50 € difference.

If we finally consider the option of putting the disks in Raid 0, it is another point for Thunderbolt connection. With the OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini we have this possibility and should be possible to achieve until 1346 MB/s transfer. Of course is not NVME, but better than a single SSD SATA drive.

A similar configuration with the OWC Express 4M2 (300 €) and 4x 970 EVO Plus 2 TB M.2 NVMe (444 € each), costs at this moment a total of 2.077 €. It's about 700 € more, a big difference. Yes, we can achieve until 2800 MB/s read transfer, but only using Raid 0. If not, the performance with this enclosure is just a little better than a SATA drive.

The OWC Thunderblade 8 TB costs in my country 2.265 €. 200 € more than the OWC Express configuration. And it comes preconfigured also in Raid 0.

All things considered, in the configurations exposed above, the difference between USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3 is just 50 €. The difference from a Thunderbolt 3 SATA configuration to a Thunderbolt 3 NVME is, at least, 700 €.

Another option is to think in another brands of SSDs like Crucial, Scandisk or Sabrent whose costs will surely be lower than the Samsung ones, but possibly also its performance.


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## gst98 (Sep 1, 2020)

So my samsung T5 gets just over 500mb/s plugged directly into my MBP. So with the TB3 port bandwidth being 4000mb/s you should theoretically be able to plug 8 samsung T5 drives into a single port before you see any bottlenecking (provided the hub to connect them all doesn't limit before hand).

Why would you want to daisy chain thunderbolt? Do you need more tha 8tb of SSD? A single TB3 encoure for SSD in the UK is about £150, where as it is £270 for the OWC 4m2 which is a 4-in-1 enclosure. So if you want more than 1 SSD it makes sense to get the 4m2. (even if it might be a bit slower).

The limit of a 3.1USB is 1000mb/s, meaning you can have 4 3.1SSDs plugged into a single TB3 port on your mac. In theory.

I wouldn't recomend the OWC thunderbay mini, it's very slow by todays standards and when you consider the price its very bad value for money. The OWC 4m2 is much better, its still not amazing but its the best solution right now I think. Because its a littel slow by todays standards I have a feeling there will be something faster coming soon.

Also if you want 2tb NVMe SSDs, the Samsung EVOs are not the best for value for money. In the UK they are £400, where as western digital just went on sale for £306. They have almost identical specs.

You also need to be careful when comparing the USB3.1 and thunderbolt 3 as you were above. The OWC stuff (even though it is thunderbolt 3) does not get near the bandwidth limit of thunderbolt 3 (it is about 70% of it). And thunderbolt 4 which is about to come out on the new macs will be 6000mb/s.


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## Thudinthenight (Sep 1, 2020)

How many Kontakt instances do you need to be running simultaneously in order to max out a USB 3.0 connected external SSD? I tested out my current template (~40 Kontakt instances) with all tracks playing chords simultaneously (not musically useful) and it peaked out at around 50MB/s read on the initial play through. I'm guessing I'd have capacity for around 400-500 tracks using this same benchmark before disk speed became a problem. I know some people have templates with thousands of tracks but at that point you're running a network of computers anyway.

I'm currently using a Crucial MX500 1TB drive in an external USB3.1 enclosure, and the SATA interface is the bottleneck.


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## gst98 (Sep 1, 2020)

Thudinthenight said:


> How many Kontakt instances do you need to be running simultaneously in order to max out a USB 3.0 connected external SSD? I tested out my current template (~40 Kontakt instances) with all tracks playing chords simultaneously (not musically useful) and it peaked out at around 50MB/s read on the initial play through. I'm guessing I'd have capacity for around 400-500 tracks using this same benchmark before disk speed became a problem. I know some people have templates with thousands of tracks but at that point you're running a network of computers anyway.



I think that would depend entirely on the situation. I would just pay attention to Kontakts I/O meter, as well as your DAW meter and see if you have a problem. The bandwidth of 3.0 is 640mb/s. But it depends on each library you are using and how big it is, how much you are streaming from disk vs how much loaded into RAM etc.


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## ChoPraTs (Sep 1, 2020)

gst98 said:


> Why would you want to daisy chain thunderbolt? Do you need more tha 8tb of SSD?



Well, not now but... who knows! Maybe in the future... hehe.

My iMac has only 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports (and I think both are the same bus). At this moment I already have an Akitio ThunderQuad X enclosure connected to one of them, with 2 HDD drives for storage of pictures, movies, backups... and 2 other drives (one of them is SSD) for samples, libraries and audio files for my projects. In the other Thunderbolt 3 port I've an external 4K display connected.

At this moment I have some libraries in a SSD drive and others into a 7200 drive, both into the Akitio ThunderQuad X. But I'm not full happy with the perfomance. The 2TB SSD installed into the Akitio ThunderQuad X is a Crucial MX300 SSD and in my tests it only reads at 280-300 MB/s (the samples into the HDD load even more slow). When I load a template with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, for example, it takes a lot of time although its entirely into my SSD drive and I've to wait several seconds each time that I want to change to a new mic position. 

So, the idea is to move all my samples to SSDs drives, and reserve those drives into the Akitio to save projects, backups and other files that I don't need to load fast.

At this point, I'm planning to change my configuration and I'm deciding which option is most interesting for me at this moment. I need to save money for a few months more, but I'm already thinking about it. At this moment, the options are:

1. The "cheapest" option: to spend about 1.200 € with 4x 2TB SSD Sata Drives and a OWC Thunderbay Mini. I think it will be a big improvement of my today's setup, but I'm only interested to go for Samsung EVO drives in this configuration, which I think are faster than any other brand and very good value as I've read in multiple posts. With this configuration I could save all my libraries into SSD drives and even maybe do a Raid 0 configuration with them if necessary. And I hope I could work faster with the BBC Orchestra into this configuration.

2. The "thinking in future" configuration: to spend between 1.500 € or 2000 € and go for NVME drives. For this setup I think it should be necessary the mentioned OWC Express 4M2 that I can combine with different brands of NVME, depending on how much money can I spend. At this moment, each Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2 TB is 444 €, while Crucial P5 2TB is 375 € and ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB is 310 €. Not sure if I will notice a lot of difference between those different models, but there's a big difference when buying 4 of them, almost 500 €. Anyway, the aspect that worries me the most about this setup is that I have read a lot of comments of people complaining about the extremely loud noise of the fan of the OWC Express, which I think is a very bad thing for any musician/composer/producer. And the worst thing: it seems that there isn't a better alternative for the same price.

3. The "very expensive but probably the most secure" option: to spend about 2.200 € in the OWC Thunderblade 8 TB. It seems to be the fastest Thunderbolt 3 drive existing today out there, NVME, absolutely silent, with enough space for store my current and future libraries... and if someday (I hope after many, many years) I need more space, I can daisy chain another to it. But... I repeat to myself: it's very expensive!

So, my thinking (maybe the thinking of my wallet) is: is it really worth paying 500 € more or even 1000 € more at this moment to go for NVME drives?


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## David Kudell (Sep 1, 2020)

I researched this a lot and it’s just not worth the cost for NVme with the sizes of today’s libraries. A regular SSD is plenty fast enough. I have the OWC Sata dock with 2 SSDs in it I also have a couple more USB-C Glyph SSDs. But I don’t like how those each use a USB-C port.

The ideal scenario is to get a Blackmagic multi dock which accepts 4 SATA SSDs, then you can get 4 4TB SSD in there using only 1 USB-C port (or you can set it to use 2 ports if you want more speed).


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## jononotbono (Sep 1, 2020)

I’ve been using an OWC Thunderbay 8 with Samsung 860 Evo 4tb and 2tb SSDs over TB3. Works very well. The Thunderbays are excellent and very stable.


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## gst98 (Sep 2, 2020)

If you want to spend less, go USB3.1 SATA. They are overpriced for what they are at this point, and it sucks that they still charge so much, but it is what is. they are still more than fast enough for samples.

If you want faster go TB3 NVMe. More expensive but its somewhat futureproof.
I wouldn't bother using TB3 with SATA, its redundant and probably a waste of money and will not improve performance of SATA.

If you don't need all 8tb right now, buy a few tb now and wait a bit because there are gonna be big changes over the next year or so to SSDs. Also if you want to save money, dont buy 2tb SSDs. In the UK samsung evos are £129 for 1tb, but £400 for 2tb. Thats a huge difference.


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## gst98 (Sep 2, 2020)

btw, Samsung have just laucnhed the new 980 line, with the pro topping out at 7000mb/s. So this will mean a shifting in prices lower down in the range hopefully, and if you're not in a rush its probably best to wait a little bit and see what happens.


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## rnb_2 (Sep 4, 2020)

I have a 4M2 and like it, but it was just about the only option available when I bought it. I wanted something to get me to 2TB for my photo/video work (this was about 2 years ago), and 2TB SSDs were still very expensive. Unfortunately, the TB2 OWC Thunderbay Mini had gone out of production, and the TB3 version was still far in the future, so the 4M2 was the only economical way to get to the storage goal I had (I didn't want an enclosure made for 3.5" drives). I used 4x500GB 960 Evos in RAID0, and it's worked well enough for my needs.

Given the bandwidth limitations of TB3, any multi-drive NVMe solution is going to be wasting a lot of potential performance with modern drives, so I'd go TB3 Thunderbay Mini. Per-drive costs are lower, and the available TB3 bandwidth matches up better with SATA SSD RAIDs. Yes, it feels a bit "4 years ago", but it's still probably the best option for the money. I'd favor RAID5/6 if you can get by with 6TB of actual storage right now, because you can lose a drive and keep working while waiting for a replacement - if you go with something like a Thunderblade or RAID0, one drive failure puts out of commission or relying on a much slower backup.

One other option is the Dynastor NA611TB3 dual-drive NVMe enclosure, if you can find a local source for it. This at least matches up better with TB3 bandwidth.


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## Anders Wall (Sep 4, 2020)

David Kudell said:


> The ideal scenario is to get a Blackmagic multi dock which accepts 4 SATA SSDs, then you can get 4 4TB SSD in there using only 1 USB-C port (or you can set it to use 2 ports if you want more speed).


You can aslo share the drives between two computers.
If so you get two drives for computer A, two for B.
/Anders


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## ChoPraTs (Sep 9, 2020)

rnb_2 said:


> One other option is the Dynastor NA611TB3 dual-drive NVMe enclosure, if you can find a local source for it. This at least matches up better with TB3 bandwidth.



Thank you!

After reading your message, I was looking for information about Netstor (I didn't know that company) and I saw that it has very interesting products.

Among them I would highlight the NA622TB3, a new product which I think is the direct competitor of the OWC Express 4m2 and for me it seems a better alternative acording to this:

- It also has 4 PCIe slots, like the OWC.
- It's also PC and Mac compatible, like the OWC.
- It has a built-in PCIe switch, so each of the M.2 PCIe slots is able to provide PCIe 3.0 ×2 bandwidth for doubled performance when reading one single M.2 NVMe SSD. Each PCIe slot is 2x rather than the OWC whici is 1x, so if we want use the SSD without raid, it will give better perfomance than the OWC.
- It has 3 configurable velocities for the fan that we can change easly with a switch. I don't know if louder or quiter than the OWC because I think OWC doesn't share this information, but based on feedback from users complaining about the loud noise from the OWC 4m2, I expect the Netstor to be quieter at the lowest speed. According to their manual, the speeds and noise rates are:

Fastest ≈ 26dB @ 5000 RPM
Medium ≈ 18dB @ 3400 RPM
Lowest ≈ 13dB @ 2400 RPM

Do you think is 13dB quiet enough?

The only point against the Netstor is the price, about 500 €. In my country, this is 200 € more than the OWC Express, almost double. But if it's quiet enough, just for this reason maybe it's worth it.



gst98 said:


> Also if you want 2tb NVMe SSDs, the Samsung EVOs are not the best for value for money. In the UK they are £400, where as western digital just went on sale for £306. They have almost identical specs.



This is another thing to considerate. In many reviews and tests the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is the reference and considered one of the best, but I've read very good comments about the ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO. If it's compatible with Mac and a good option for store and load samples of my orchestral libraries, each 2 TB module is 150 € cheaper than the samsung. Buying 4 of them, the difference can achieve until 600 €. A lot of money!


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## rnb_2 (Sep 9, 2020)

@ChoPraTs - glad my mention of Netstor led you to some good information. I was aware of the NA622TB3, but hadn't done much research on it because their distribution in the US is so spotty. For a long time, even the 2-bay unit was only available on Ebay, and while it has now been picked up by one of the major NYC photo/video/audio retailers, the 4-bay device is still Ebay-only (as far as I can find).

Good to hear that the 622 offers more bandwidth than the OWC - that does make it a better match for non-RAID use, and the adjustable fan is a bonus. I have my 4M2 (and my Mac mini + eGPU) under my desk, so I barely hear the various fans involved.


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