Owc thunderbay 4 thunderbolt 3 vs hardware NAS

Question

Level 1

32 points

Owc thunderbay 4 thunderbolt 3 vs hardware NAS

Hi my Mac Mini M1 16gb will arrive soon. Meanwhile I need to place my order for a Owc thunderbay 4 thunderbolt 3 but before that I would like to ask your opinions as users of this unit, about your experience and if some of you did choose another solution based on hardware NAS or DAS from Synology, QNAP, Terra Master or even Drobo? I use and like Owc stuff like Mac Pro memory, etc; but never a Raid unit. The big difference here is Raid based only on software; Owc SoftRaid XT; and based on hardware (other brands) and also software that looks to me with lots of apps a more PC style. Will the owc thunderbay 4 thunderbolt 3 steal many resources from the Mac M1 since it is a software only based solution? Is it more open to improvement because of the same fundamental reason?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Stay safe 🙂

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Apr 2, 2021 2:17 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Apr 2, 2021 4:56 AM in response to ateliercunha

First, are you going to populate the enclosures with HDD or SSD?

If you are populating with HDD, Thunderbolt is a waste of money

as it has zero advantage over a USB solution in terms of speed.

Also, unless you use an enclosure that is populated with NVMe

SSDs, you may only see marginal speed improvements over USB.

(NOTE: When I refer to USB I mean all the usb 3 "flavors").

On that note, OWC has stated that at the moment, their Soft Raid

solution was broken by the latest Big Sur update. Give them a call

before making the OWC choice to see if it has been fixed.

One other note as far as local vs, network solution, if the use is

for strictly archive and backup, either solution is fine. But,

if you are copying data back and forth on a daily basis, I

would personally go with the local solution as network transfers

will always take longer because of the TCP/IP and ethernet

protocols and packetizing, i.e. data is not transferred from the

network drive as a continuous of bytes like a local drive.

Reply

Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

93,578 points

Apr 2, 2021 6:51 AM in response to ateliercunha

ateliercunha wrote:

The HDD aspect vs TB3; is it because of the speed limitation of the HDD with its Sata 6GBs speed? The Sata is the bottleneck here?

Yes.

If so an unit with USB C Gen. 2 is enough for my use?

An example:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEQCTSRT00/

SoftRaid XT; I sure with so many devices and users they will update the program to be fully compatible with Big Sur don’t you think so?

Careful with that one.

If you look close at the Spec's, it is not compatible with Catalina or Big Sur and you need to double check with OWC as suggested.

Reply

Answer 3

ateliercunha Author

Level 1

32 points

Apr 2, 2021 2:01 PM in response to woodmeister50

Thank you very much for the clarification.

Please, give an example of those high performance SSDs 🙂 Thanks.

Reply

Answer 4

ateliercunha Author

Level 1

32 points

Apr 2, 2021 6:34 AM in response to woodmeister50

Thanks for your message. I am sorry; forgot to mention the use of HDD. 6 or 8 TB disks each. Raid 5 configuration seems to be a good compromise both for safety and speed.

The goal is to use some disks as scratch disks for photo editing and others for files storage while I close projects and they move from a “to edit” to a “ edited” folder but, need them easy accessible for re-edit sometimes.

This is not a backup of course. Just a working device with an additional layer of safety. I have external backups to this.

So a direct connection as you say makes more sense and not over network. NAS units are usually networking devices. Some DAS are TB 3 and USB C directly connected, but the offer is limited. There is a QNAP TR-004 with USB-C (5Gbs) but I think a OWC alternative (link below) is a bit faster (USB C Gen. 2).

The HDD aspect vs TB3; is it because of the speed limitation of the HDD with its Sata 6GBs speed? The Sata is the bottleneck here?

If so an unit with USB C Gen. 2 is enough for my use?

An example:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEQCTSRT00/

SoftRaid XT; I sure with so many devices and users they will update the program to be fully compatible with Big Sur don’t you think so?

Thanks.

Reply

Answer 5

ateliercunha Author

Level 1

32 points

Apr 2, 2021 7:29 AM in response to den.thed

Looks like below $500,00 the only enclosure compatible with Big Sur is this one:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3SRKIT0GB/

The question is; since there’s a bottleneck inside due to the Sata connection why the presence of units like this one with an external TB3 connection?

Reply

Answer 6

ateliercunha Author

Level 1

32 points

Apr 2, 2021 9:12 AM in response to woodmeister50

Looks like only Big Sur 11.1 is compatible with SoftRide 6:

https://www.softraid.com/whats-new-in-softraid-6/

1SoftRAID XT and Pro work with macOS 10.12 or later and Windows 10. Intel-based Macs require macOS 10.12 or later. M1 Macs require macOS 11.1 or 11.3 and later. macOS 11.3 is currently available as a public beta. SoftRAID is licensed per computer. RAID 4/5/1+0 (10) are currently Mac only at this time.

We must use 11.1 and/or wait for 11.3!?

Why this jump between 11.1 and 11.3? Can anyone kindly explain, please? Thanks.

Reply

Answer 7

den.thed

Level 10

93,578 points

Apr 2, 2021 11:23 AM in response to ateliercunha

ateliercunha wrote:

The question is; since there’s a bottleneck inside due to the Sata connection why the presence of units like this one with an external TB3 connection?

Because it's half the price of a ThunderBay 4 Mini with SSDs.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3QMSRS04TP/

Reply