ThunderBay 8 – Professional Grade 8-Bay Thunderbolt 3 Storage Enclosure
Like a Data Center on Your Desk
This latest addition to the popular ThunderBay line, introduced in 2014, now offers eight drive bays for either 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch HDDs and/or SSDs in any combination. The OWC ThunderBay 8 is like a high-performance personal data center that offers multiple configuration options to suit ever-expanding storage needs. Photo, film and video editors can take advantage of the largest capacity desktop RAID storage solution we’ve ever offered to handle the voracious drive space appetite of RAW, 4K, large format, and VR workflows.
Conquer High Bandwidth Demands
With Thunderbolt 3 offering real-world transfer rates up to 2586MB/s and the ability to RAID together eight SSDs or HDDs, ThunderBay 8’s rugged, field-tested aluminum design has the under-the-hood horsepower needed to conquer high-bandwidth requirements. You can even configure multiple ThunderBay 8 solutions connected via multiple Thunderbolt 3 ports on your Mac or PC to achieve exponential speed increases. Whatever your set up, when you’re racing against a deadline, ThunderBay 8 puts you in the winner’s circle.
Monstrous Capacity
Need even more capacity? Daisy-chain up to six of these capacity behemoths together for up to a staggering 768TB. Now you can capture vast amounts of footage from multiple cameras or store vast libraries of production work with a unified and reliable storage solution.
Includes SoftRAID: Easy and Complete Drive Management
Now you can quickly access and robustly protect your data with SoftRAID for Mac. SoftRAID makes it a breeze to create RAID volumes by helping you through the entire process. With multiple RAID options, you decide what you’re using your RAID volume for and how much space to allocate to it. It’s that simple to create your preference of speed and/or redundancy for your data volume.
SoftRAID highlights:
- Advanced: Create RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, 1+0 (10) volumes (RAID 6, 6+ coming in soon) and get email notifications for drive and RAID volume health with SoftRAID XT (Mac only)
- Verify: volume validation ensures sectors can be read, parity is correct, and any potential volume failure is minimized
- Certified: drives are validated before use to ensure they are safe for data storage
- Vigilant: predictive warnings help protect against unexpected drive failure
- Outperforms: up to 86% faster than AppleRAID
- Thorough: full TRIM support improves internal and external SSD performance in all RAID levels
Swap and Identify Drives Easily
ThunderBay 8 makes it easy to keep large data sets organized for every project thanks to its eight hot swappable drive bays. Whether you’re using 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch HDDs and/or SSDs, the drives mount in alphabetically labeled trays for easy identification and are secured by a thumb screw. If you want the freedom to access an extensive collection of drives quickly, you can create a drive “bullpen” with additional OWC drive trays (sold separately).
Product Specs
OWC Part Number
- TB38SRKIT0
Mac OS Compatibility
- macOS 10.13 High Sierra
- macOS 10.14 Mojave
- macOS 10.15 Catalina
PC OS Compatibility
- Windows 10 64-bit Edition
- Windows Server 2016
Other Requirements
- Thunderbolt 3 Port
Ports
- (2) Thunderbolt 3 Ports
- (1) DisplayPort
Number of Bays
- (8) 3.5″/2.5″ SATA
Housing Color
- Black
Housing Material
- Aluminum
Hot Swap Support
- Yes
Driver Required
- SoftRAID Only
Security Slot
- Yes
Chipset
- Thunderbolt: (1) Intel JHL6540
- SATA Controller: (2) JMicron JMB-585
RAID Support
- Software (SoftRAID)
RAID Levels Supported
- RAID 0
- RAID 1
- RAID 0+1
- RAID 4
- RAID 5
- JBOD
Data Transfer Rate (Max)
- Thunderbolt 3 : 40 Gb/s (or 5000 MB/s)
Bootable
- Mac Only
Display Support
- Supports up to two 4K displays @ 60Hz or one 5K display @ 60Hz
- Thunderbolt 3: Up to 5K @ 60Hz via a native Thunderbolt 3 display or 4K @ 60Hz via a Thunderbolt display or a USB-C display adapter
- DisplayPort 1.2: Up to 4K @ 60Hz
Power Button
- Yes
Power Supply
- Internal UL-listed universal auto-switching power supply
AC Input
- 3.5A At 115V,
- 1.8A At 230V
DC Output
- +12V, 25A
Wattage
- 300
Cooling Fan
- (1) 92mm cooling fan
Certifications
- CE
- FCC
- VCCI
- RCM
- BSMI
Environment
- Environmental (Operating)
- Temperature 41°F to 95°F (5°C to 35°C)
- Altitude -304.8 m to 3,048.0 m (-1,000 ft to 10,000 ft)
- Shock Varies depending on drive mechanism installed
- Environmental (Non-Operating)
- Temperature -4°F to 140°F (-20°C to 60°C)
- Altitude -304.8 m to 12,192.0 m (-1,000 ft to 40,000 ft)
- Shock Varies depending on drive mechanism installed
Dimensions
- Height: 18.0 cm (7.1 in
- Width: 26.0 cm (10.2 in)
- Length: 24.0 cm (9.4 in)
Weight
- 7.3 kg (16.14 lbs)
Acoustics
- Varies depending on drive mechanism installed