Review on 🖥️ OWC ThunderBay 8 RAID 5 Edition 16TB External Drive - 8-Bay Drive with Dual Thunderbolt 3 Ports by Ben Robinson

I bought this unit to work with a Mac Mini 2020 i7 64GB RAM with external OWC 2TB NVME and filled with 8 x 12TB drives. I also tested connecting to an iMac Pro. Due to the slow speed, I used the included TB3 cable, an Apple branded cable, and another TB3 cable from Amazon to test. Compatibility - I haven't had any issues, but I've read articles from people delaying Catalina support. With Big Sur, I'm concerned about compatibility and support. In hindsight, I would like to use QNAP or a second Synology to ensure OS compatibility. The speed is shocking, it's slower than my Synology ds1819 SHR-1 with a combination of drive sizes from 8TB to 10TB, all 5400 rpm. Compared to Cat. 5e (NOT Cat. 6a) Synology reads and writes faster. I achieved write speeds of 400-550MB/s on the DAS compared to 600-800MB/s on the Synology. Reading on DAS is better BUT it fluctuates wildly between 600-1000.S. The price is $750 versus $950 for the Synology DS1819, which anticipates DAS over Thunderbolt 3 will be faster than NAS over Cat 5e. I didn't want to explore QNAP either. Search faster for less money. no I do not recommend this device if any of these variables are important to your decision. I would invest in a non-macOS device if you need to update to the latest version. I need to postpone the OS update until soft raid is compatible. I was a fool for not thinking about it before buying. I've tried all different optimization dropdowns ranging from server to video to single user. Raid 5.Pro configuration. PriceCon 1 Speed is slower than 2 year old Cat 5e NAS 2 OS incompatibility issues 3 Soft Raid XT upgrade costs $100 to full Soft Raid 4 Rank is 2 million or less for lower speed. 5 Noise - Not bad, but louder than the Synology1 One Star as it actually works and looks great aesthetically. 2 One star for an outstanding package. Comes with a nice bag compared to a disposable bag that feels good. - 1 star for slowness - 1 star for Mac OS compatibility issues - 1 star for slowness. Given that I get 1/3 of the advertised listings and 1/2 of the advertised reads, I get a second star. The device looks great, great packaging and a good website, but the product is of poor quality. Then why don't I return it? I spent a week copying files from two NAS servers and portable hard drives. I really don't have the energy to buy another device, copy data and fight OWC to get this device back. I struggled to get them to support OWC NVME and ended up buying another NVME drive that didn't have buffering issues. The speed of OWCE drops a lot after a few gigs. Amazon has a sub-$200 version that starts with a V for 1TB that works great. Your 64GB of RAM works great on my Mac Mini. I'm really worried it will be the weight of the paper if they can't support future OS drivers so I can contact customer service to see how difficult it would be to return as I have all the original boxes and packing materials. Please note before considering this device as there are more proven solutions on the market. Either hardware raid, or NAS, or cheaper with soft raid. Please note that I submitted this review directly to OWC and was not posted on their website.