OWC ThunderBay 4

Name: OWC ThunderBay 4, four-bay drive enclosure with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready w/cable
Brand: OWC
SKU: OWCTB2IVKIT0GB
Price: 349 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.83 (80 reviews)

4-bay Professional-Grade Enclosure

Dual Thunderbolt 2 | RAID Ready | 4 Drive Bays | Mac

The Speed You Need

Fits both 2.5" and 3.5" drives
Incredible Thunderbolt 2 throughput
Plug and play RAID-ready
Up to 733MB/s read / 742MB/s write RAID 0 performance ¹

Empower your creative production workflow with this super-fast, 4-Bay, RAID-ready drive with dual Thunderbolt ports. Add vast amounts of high-performance storage with ThunderBay 4. Utilize each of the four internal drives independently, or use the software RAID of your choice to setup a multi-drive array for high-performance or data-redundancy.

Edit, Experiment, Create, Design

With ThunderBay's performance capabilities you can complete projects faster, have more time to experiment, and push your creations to the next level.

Enhance editing capabilities in video apps like Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid Media Composer. Empower greater audio production capabilities in audio apps like Avid Pro Tools and Logic Pro X. Edit large photos in apps like Adobe Photoshop, and browse large photo libraries in apps like Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom. Simply put, you can do more with a ThunderBay 4 enhanced workflow, and with a RAID 5 array you get data redundancy on top of great performance!

Certified and Tested

Each ThunderBay undergoes OWC's multi-hour drive "burn-in" performance certification procedure prior to shipping. This ensures your ThunderBay arrives operating properly and ready for demanding use.

Includes SoftRAID: Easy and Complete Drive Management

Now you can quickly access and robustly protect your data with SoftRAID XT. SoftRAID easy setup 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

Flexible: create RAID 0 and 1 volumes with SoftRAID Lite XT (Windows and Mac)
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
Cross-platform ready: SoftRAID Lite includes built-in MacDrive technology that lets you  read/write SoftRAID RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays and use them interchangeably with Windows and macOS computers
Outperforms: up to 86% faster than AppleRAID
Thorough: full TRIM support improves internal and external SSD performance in all RAID levels
Risk-free: 30-day free trial of fully functional application

Gallery

3 Year OWC Solution Limited Warranty
48 Hour Warranty Service
1 Year Level 1 Data Recovery Service

4 drive bays plus so much more.

Time-Tested Cooling
Built on OWC's time-tested enclosure cooling technology, ThunderBay utilizes an open "flow-thru" vented design with an oversized 92 mm, low-turbulence, noise-quieting fan to keep the drives running cool and reliably. Multi-Drive

Multi-Drive
Daisy-chain up to six ThunderBays for massive storage capabilities and increased performance, or connect multiple ThunderBays to multiple Thunderbolt 2 ports to achieve exponential speed capabilities. Vibration Dampened

Vibration Dampened
ThunderBay's drive isolating design reduces sonic resonance, and is aided by over-sized, rugged, vibration-absorbing, non-skid feet. DisplayPort 1.2

DisplayPort 1.2 Support
Dual Thunderbolt ports let you connect the display of your choice that your computer can support, including 4K displays. Thunderbolt Cable

OWC Thunderbolt Cable
ThunderBay comes with an OWC one-meter certified Thunderbolt cable, with other lengths from 0.5 meter to 30 meters available separately.

1. Read and write speeds of sequential, incompressible data.

INCLUDES
GALLERY
SPECS

BENCHMARKS
Reviews
VIDEOS
RATINGS

Includes

OWC ThunderBay 4 high performance hard drive enclosure
SoftRAID Lite XT (Mac and Windows)
Thunderbolt cable
UL-certified 3-prong power cable
2 keys for front panel lock
ThunderBay 4 Assembly Manual & User Guide (Download Only)
SoftRAID Lite XT Quick Start Guide
ThunderBay 4 Quick Start Guide

Gallery

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Product Specifications

Mechanisms Supported

Four 3.5" SATA hard drives
Four 2.5" SATA hard drives or SSDs

Chipset

Thunderbolt 2

Interfaces Supported

Thunderbolt 2

JBOD / RAID Support

JBOD: Utilize each of the four drives independently
RAID: Use any Software RAID of your choice to setup the ThunderBay 4 for multi-drive performance or data redundancy.

Port Configuration

Thunderbolt – (2) Thunderbolt 2 ports

Max Data Transfer Rate

Thunderbolt 2 – 20Gb/sec

Port/Interface Bootability

It can be used as a Thunderbolt startup drive on Macs running Mac OS X.

System Requirements

Any Mac with a Thunderbolt port running OS X 10.9 or later.
Any PC running Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or later with a Thunderbolt port. Driver required for proper installation. (3.3 MB ZIP)
Boot Camp is not supported. The Thunderbolt certification process does not include Macs running Windows through Boot Camp.

Power Supply

Internal UL Listed U.S./International Auto Switching 100 ~ 240v, 50/60Hz input, 12 Volt 16.66 Amp output Power Supply (power cords for International use sold separately).

Product Manual

OWC ThunderBay 4 Assembly Manual & User Guide (1.3 MB PDF)

External Case Dimensions

9.65″(D) x 5.31″(W) x 6.96″(H)
245.11mm x 134.87mm x 176.78mm

Enclosure Weight (no accessories)

Approximately 8.6 pounds (3.9kg)

Operating Environment:

Temperature

(operating) 5°C – 42°C (41°F – 107°F)
(non-operating) -40°C – 65°C (-40°F – 149°F)

Relative Humidity

(operating) 8% – 90% RH (Non-condensing)
(non-operating) 5% – 95% RH (Non-condensing)

Shock

65G 2mS; (non-operating) 175G 2mS

Vibration

(operating) 1.0G (5 – 300Hz)
(non-operating) 5.0G (5 – 500Hz)

Warranty

1 Year OWC Enclosure Limited Warranty

The best warranty is one you never have to use, but should the need occur – OWC is proud to provide a superior level of support and warranty coverage to our customers. Even when not used, we understand the peace of mind afforded by a longer warranty period. OWC's industry leading coverage is a testament to our confidence in the reliability of the solutions that we offer. OWC solutions are engineered to demanding quality standards in order to deliver the most reliable, highest performance available on the market in each storage category.

View more information about the 1 Year OWC Enclosure Limited Warranty

Manufacturer provided specifications for Other World Computing p/n TB2IVKIT0GB UPC#: 812437020410

Benchmarks

Click any of the benchmarks below to view the results.

macOS RAID 0 Test Results

Reviews

Videos

Customer Ratings

Write a Review 4.8 / 5 76 out of 80 (95%) reviewers would recommend this product

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Verified Buyer Top 100 Contributor

Reviewer: McBob Location: Conover NC Age: Over 65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 Reliable Drive enclosure August 31, 2020 I have a Raid 5 setup with four internal drives. It has been functioning perfectly for six years. It just works nicely.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from (*) OWC ThunderBay IV, four-bay drive enclosure with dual Thunderbolt ports, RAID-ready Enclosure. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer Top 250 Contributor

Reviewer: JimR Location: Elkhorn, NE Age: Over 65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Well Built, Runs GREAT! July 4, 2020 I had “hands-on” briefly with a previous purchase, promptly returned. The OWC enclosure has a higher price that is worth every penny of difference. The OWC enclosure reveals higher quality design and assembly. It’s solid and works perfectly. I called OWC tech support to change from RAID (single volume) to separate volumes. The agent answered promptly and solved my issue on the first call. I couldn’t be more satisfied. :)

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 32.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready Solution. Customer Videos:

Reviewer: Rugged

Rating: 5/5 Amazing System December 31, 2019 I've had this system for years now and it is bullet proof. No crashing, no issues, quiet. One of the best pieces of equipment I own. No I don't work for OWC, but I'm sure glad they are in business. I have no hesitation in recommending them.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 32.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: BobTheOldMacProUser Location: Michigan Age: Over 65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 Has been a perfect enclosure October 28, 2019 I have had this enclosure running continuously (almost), for 9 months, and it has been perfect in every way: Quiet, absolutely dependable, and sleeps or turns off and on automatically with my late 2013 Mac Pro. I'm using it simply as a box of 4 separate drives (JBOD). It dependably, and without me giving it a thought, is running one drive for TimeMachine, another drive to clone my working drive, and one SSD as a bootable Mac HD. It is nearly silent in a closed cabinet (that has ventilation in the back). I know my work is all 2x backed up and safe. I highly recommend it for use with the late 2013 Mac Pro.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Notcheeky Location: Sacramento Age: Over 65 Experience Level: Home User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Speedy January 28, 2018 This product has been superseded by a ThunderBay with thunderbolt 3, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents. I'm using it with an iMac with thunderbolt 3 so an Apple $49 adapter is necessary. Since Thunderbolt 2 is faster than my hard drives I don't have any penalty for thunderbolt 2. I access data on the drives in the bay without any delay as though they were internally mounted. My setup is such that the enclosure is a bit close to me, so the fan noise is noticeable, but really not bad at all. The bay is actually heavy and very substantial, despite its compact size.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: BryanL Location: Bluff City, TN Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Fantastic! December 25, 2017 I have two of the ThunderBay boxes, one I've had for quite a while and I just bought another a few weeks back.

The first box is used as a box of discs while the second is setup as a raid5 box with 4 - 6tb Toshiba X300 drives.

Performance of either is superb.

The quality of the ThinderBay boxes is absolutely top notch, a very class act product.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Unixjedi Location: Trophy Club,TX Age: 45-54 Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 4 years still going December 4, 2017 Never had an issue with any OWC products or refurbs. This is no exception. It has been a workhorse. Just realize that you will need to purchase the Softraid at some point. It is good and less hassle that sinking around with the Public domain.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 8.0TB OWC ThunderBay IV, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt ports, RAID-ready JBOD Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: ptevh Location: Montreal, Quebec Age: 35-44 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Amazing enclosure, easy to set up and very quiet November 6, 2017 I recently purchased this OWC Thunderbay 4 with 4 1 TB drives and I am very suprised at the noise level. The speed is also a huge plus seing that it uses Thunderbolt port. Very pleased..will sure buy OWC products again.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 4.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Rossphoto Location: RI Age: Over 65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Great product September 5, 2017 The website video made this easy to setup and it works beautifully. Well designed and made. And quiet.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: ProducerGuy Location: Scottsdale Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 3-4 months

Rating: 5/5 Speed Needed for Power-Editors September 4, 2017 I've never had any issues with OWC-branded external drives and this one is no different.

The build quality is amazing, setup is painless and the R/W speeds are FAST. I chose to purchase my own drives (which have far more cache than anything OWC offers) and my read/write speeds with an 8TB Raid 0 array at 1/3 full averages 720MB per sec. Awesome.

Totally recommended.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from (*) OWC ThunderBay 4, four-bay drive enclosure with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready w/cable. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Edmo3 Location: Brampton, Ontario Age: 45-54 Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 Love these things July 20, 2017 This is my third of these beasties. I have two in an 8disc RAID-4 array and this one has four SSDs RAID-5.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Varejao Location: Northern Virginia Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Perfect solution for moving from a tower Mac Pro... June 26, 2017 If you are moving to an 2017 iMac (or any other Thunderbolt 2 or 3 computer) from a 2006-2010 Mac Pro, and had the internal drive bays filled with SATA drives, then this Thunderbolt enclosure is a perfect solution for bringing your old drives with you. (Note - you will need a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter if you have Tbolt3).

The bay allows for mounting of drives using sleds similar to those in the 2008 Mac Pro, where you simply screw the drive to the sled, and slide it into the bay. The cabling is done automatically.

The bay itself is well-integrated with MacOS, and supports sleep and other features faultlessly. I've been running for a week with the drive bay attached, and not had a single hiccup.

Highly recommended.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: oldfart58 Location: Flyover Country Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Works like a charm. June 23, 2017 I am using the ThunderBay with an SSD in the first bay as a boot drive, and the other 3 bays with 3.5" HDs as back-ups. This is on the original 21.5 inch Retina iMac, which came saddled with a 5200rpm drive. Night and day. The iMac now works like it is supposed to (no beach balls), and I have that three-drive back-up.

The ThunderBay is nearly silent, runs cool, and was ultimately simple to set up. Highly recommended.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Dean1157 Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 4/5 Great product, noisy however June 10, 2017 I love this product! Being able to connect via one Thunderbolt 2 cable is awesome. My only complaint is it is a little loud. Louder that having my Mac Pro mid 2010 tower sitting in the same place. I now keep it under the counter with some sound proof designed foam surrounding it but still with air able to come in and out from above. If you could only quiet that fan down I would rate it a five!

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: EditChuck Location: Chicagoland, IL Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 Love This Tough Little RAID! May 21, 2017 This is my second Thunderbolt 4 RAID from OWC. I loved the first one so much for my video editing needs that I bought a second. All by itself in RAID 5 mode, it's great for HD material. In RAID 0 it handles 4K in Premiere with decent results. My plan is to do an 8 drive RAID 0 stripe for the most demanding 4K projects.

It has been on the road with me to and a number of fast turnaround, high profile editing projects for major broadcast networks. An impressive, sturdy performer!

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 20.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer Top 250 Contributor

Reviewer: Matreya Location: Gold Coast, Australia Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 Excellent Thunderbolt Enclosure January 11, 2017 I have bought 2 of the earlier Thunderbay IVs before this, and have been so impressed with their performance that I bought another, this time the Thunderbay 4. I'm using all 3 in conjunction with SoftRAID, running 3 x RAID5 arrays. The quality of these enclosures is unmatched and it's so easy to add/remove hard drives.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: PhotoGuy2 Location: Philadelphia Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 GREAT! January 9, 2017 I have lusted after one of these and finally did it. 4 6TB drives and it works like a charm. Super easy set up, easy to swap drives, quiet and it just works! No brainer if you need lots of storage. Great product.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 24.0TB OWC ThunderBay 4, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: b407driver Location: Front Range, CO Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Fantastic Thunderbolt solution December 28, 2016 Though a bit pricy. Well designed/constructed, sleeps properly running El Capitan, fan not too loud but seems to cool drives more than adequately. Just wish it came with a longer cord, as it's not a unit you really need convenient access to.

Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Detox Location: Toronto, Canada Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Worked great! November 10, 2016 I consolidated a few external drives in separate USB3 enclosures. It was done with little effort and time - all worked great. Not only did this clean up a mess of cables and wall warts, the speed increase was great rather than the slow USB connections.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Cogset Location: Portland, Maine Age: 55-65 Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Surprised by speed October 19, 2016 The Thunderbay 4 is a very solid and surprisingly fast 4-drive RAID enclosure which , combined with Softraid, makes a extremely powerful combination. I feared Softraid would tax my CPU, but it's not noticeable and is more powerful than most RAID software utilities built into other enclosures (and imminently more upgradeable).

In RAID 5 configuration, I compared the Thunderbay speed to my internal SSD and also an external two-bay RAID 1 thunderbolt-attached drive. The Thunderbay's speed, using the Blackmagic test (347.4 MB/s write and 487.8 MB/s read) was just a hair BETTER than the internal SSD. At the same time, it's about 3x faster than the RAID 1 thunderbolt drive I was using. (see screen shots).

Note: I only have Thunderbolt 1 (on a 2012 Mac Mini Server) so I don't know if Thunderbolt 2 would give a better performance or not.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Griffin86 Location: Canada Age: 25-34 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Wished I bought it sooner! October 12, 2016 I stuffed this with 8TB HDDs and consolidated 4 external hard drives sitting on my desk to this. It's fairly quiet, not distracting. I bought a 10m Thunderbolt cable and put it across the room so I don't notice it.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: ssls6 Location: Dallas, TX Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 3-4 months

Rating: 5/5 Works well, drives sleep, drives wake like expected September 23, 2016 I'm very happy with this unit. I have it connected to a OWC thunderbolt 2 dock and everything works like I expect it too. No complaints.

I would recommend this item to a friend! Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Anonymous Location: Curaçao (Dutch Caribbean) Age: 35-44 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Perfect sollution for storage. August 4, 2016 Quick and easy installation. Fast Thunderbolt connection. 4 drives running simultaneously for back-up and work drives...works perfectly!

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from (*) OWC ThunderBay 4, four-bay drive enclosure with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready w/cable.

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Anonymous Location: Orlando, FL Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 5-6 months

Rating: 5/5 Great option for gaining additional storage space! July 19, 2016 I purchased the OWC ThunderBay 4 to house 4 - 3TB drives, which are connected to my iMac via one ThunderBolt cable. It operates seamlessly. It's very quiet and runs very cool. It automatically sleeps when your Mac sleeps. It's as compact as I can be considering it holds 4 hard drives and fits nicely next to my iMac. I would not hesitate to recommend the ThunderBay 4 to anyone who needs to expand their storage space.

I would recommend this item to a friend!

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Anonymous Location: Knoxville, TN Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 Solid, quiet and compact June 14, 2016 I bought it to hold my data SSD and an enormous SATA drive for holding Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups. Runs silently, hides behind monitors and is easy to open, mount drives and slide them back in and it works.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from (*) OWC ThunderBay 4, four-bay drive enclosure with dual Thunderbolt 2 ports, RAID-ready w/cable.

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OWC Enclosure ThunderBay 4 Mfr P/N: TB2IVKIT0GB OWC SKU: OWCTB2IVKIT0GB High-Performance 4-bay External Drive 1 Year OWC Limited Warranty Ships: Same Day

Reviews (80)

Only ~~$399.99~~OWC Price $349.00

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