ThunderBay 8 – Professional Grade 8-Bay Thunderbolt 3 Storage Enclosure

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OWC

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
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