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Review on πŸ–₯️ OWC ThunderBay 8 RAID 5 Edition 16TB External Drive - 8-Bay Drive with Dual Thunderbolt 3 Ports by Jason Carranza

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Fast transfer of large amounts of storage - there may be problems during installation on Windows 10

Zhenya needs a lot of storage space to back up tons of 4k videos - the project can occupy 100 TB or more. It's impossible to lose all the content, so 100TB needs to be mirrored. I can't spend a whole week making backups just to start over. Thunderbay 8 suited our needs well. I had to contact OWC support to get a license for SoftRaid Lite XT for Windows as they send a license for Mac. They got me a new license key within a few business days. Then came the pleasure of getting my computer to talk to Thunderbay via Thunderbolt. I had to update the bios, change the settings in the bios. Still didn't help, updated the Thunderbolt drivers for my motherboard - Asus Prime x299 Deluxe II - then updated the chipset. Which miraculously came out the same day I updated it. I used the Thunderbolt cable that came with Thunderbay. It's a ridiculously short thing and gets you nowhere but right next to the back of your tower. Not on your desk or anywhere convenient to work with (and I've tried using a different Thunderbolt. I had a /usb c cable and it didn't work.) Still, I'm happy. My demands are minimal. It's not OWC's fault that Windows refuses to be Thunderbolt compatible. The only things OWC could possibly change are: 1. a longer cable (although I see real Thunderbolt cables can cost $75 for a better sized 6ft version, so I understand there might be a there is a commercial reason for the shorter cable it comes with) or if it should come with a 2 footer, offer at least an approved 6 footer as an upgrade/upsell2. quieter case - Thunderbay 8 is much louder than the noise coming from my tower. Unless I'm rendering video on the GPU and the fans are 100% in Afterburner. then the noise is comparable. but there is no way I know of to adjust the fan speed in Thunderbay 8. Or whether turning off the fans would be good for the drives? In any case, there must be a way to reduce the noise. All in all it worked for us. And we'll get another one when this one ends.

Pros
  • Excellent overall performance
Cons
  • There is a negative result