The ThunderBay 4 mini is a compact data storage enclosure that you can populate with new or existing 2.5-inch HDDs or SSDs. It’s big on performance and flexibility, yet ThunderBay 4 mini is about the length of a pencil and can weigh as little as 3.1 pounds with drives. The rugged heat-dissipating aluminum enclosure features two Thunderbolt 3 (Thunderbolt 2/Thunderbolt backward compatible) ports for up to 1556MB/s speeds, so you have more than enough bandwidth to handle personal and business backups — all the way up to today's highest resolution audio, photo, and video formats. If you are seeking big RAID performance that's small enough to fit on a desk, in a rack, or on a DIT cart, your wish is now a reality. Speed, size, and convenience — the OWC ThunderBay 4 mini provides everything a demanding workflow requires. With four drive bays, you can mix or match different brand and capacity 2.5-inch SSDs and HDDs. Use mixed drives independently or combine drives as a RAID (requires RAID setup and management software, such as OWC SoftRAID). You can populate this empty enclosure with your own drives, or choose a pre-configured capacity solution to achieve your desired balance of storage, performance, and data redundancy. With the ability to daisy-chain you can add up to five additional ThunderBay 4 mini solutions to create massive storage capacities. Merge them with RAID management software for even more flexibility, capacity, and capability. Or if speed is what you’re after, connect multiple ThunderBay 4 mini solutions to multiple Thunderbolt 3 ports on to achieve exponential speed capabilities.

Top reviews from the United States

Nicholas

5.0 out of 5 stars Great system!

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2023

Verified Purchase

I bought this to expand the storage of my MacBook Pro when I’m working at home. I didn’t setup raid, just using it as an array for four disks and it works perfectly for that. Fast, simple, and quiet. Really happy with it overall, solid product.

If you just want to run an array without raid you can buy it without SoftRaid. If you use a Mac, disk utility can help you setup raid without need for the software, too.

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J64

5.0 out of 5 stars Overall a good value & good speeds

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

Good value for the money & good speeds with SSD SATA drives
The included Softraid software caused VSS snapshots to fail: instead had to setup RAID-0 via Windows11.

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Lady Amazon

1.0 out of 5 stars Item Arrived DOA

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2023

Verified Purchase

Item arrive non functioning, Amazon now only offers UPS pickup option for returns. I have no transportation, so this is a total hassel to return, I also have to now undo all the screws, and put all my hard drives back in other enclosures.

So now I have wasted my time taking my hard drives apart, now, I have to do it all over again, and call an uber to return to a UPS store!

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Alessandro

4.0 out of 5 stars Well built but with a flaw

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2023

Verified Purchase

Very well built, fast, compact, not exactly whisper quiet but certainly not loud.
Just one fundamental design flaw: power LED is always on even when unit is in standby mode. In a dark environment can be rather fastidious.

One person found this helpful

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Javier Gonzalez

5.0 out of 5 stars Plug and play with no drivers needed in MacOS Ventura with a Mac Studio

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

I bought this to replace a makeshift external storage using an ATTO 6gbps HBA and 4 Samsung SSDs. I am currently using a RAID 5 array using OpenZFS in OSX. Testing read and write speed is complicated but my write speed are around 1300-1500 mbps. If you are willing to learn the quirks of OpenZFS and Zeta watch, they provide a free alternative to SoftRAID. The box is not really next to me so I cannot speak to the noise level but I love the size (tiny when compared to the eGPU enclosure I was using previously) and the slightly increased speed when compared to the previous solution I was using.

4 people found this helpful

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Antonio Cipoyone

5.0 out of 5 stars Very easy to setup and use !

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

Excellent product. Very well manufactured. Very easy to setup. i used 4 1 TB SSDs and it was ready to turn on in less than 10 minutes. Originally I used the proprietary SoftRAID from OWC but had a glitch with my Mac Studio and just uninstalled it. I then configured a RAID 0 with Apple Disk Utility and has been working without any glitch at an insane speed !! I'm very happy with this product !

5 people found this helpful

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Villefranche

5.0 out of 5 stars Stable SSD Drives

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2023

Verified Purchase

This setup is working much better than the individual
SSD drives that were unmounting on my Mac Mini

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Paul Martin

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy storage with a reliable case

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

I own several OWC products. They are always reliable and well-built. That is consistent with this product as well. The SSD caddies are easy to remove and install. The connection is flawless and the speed way underrated (which is something OWC usually does).

Highly recommend!

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m

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic bit of quality kit for Thunderbolt computers incl Apple Mac

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

Tested and working 100% in a raid configuration with Apple M2 Macbook and Apple M2 Mac Mini.

APFS file system can do its own arrays so you don't need the softraid product if you use current Apple ARM hardware with APFS filesystems.

There is a fan but it is barely audible

As usual OWC present a quality product.

I did consider their OWC M2 disk array instead but it is well reviewed that has a noisier fan. So this is working abolutely wonderfully on a 3 disk SSD array using Samsung 4TB SSD. Speed of about 1000 MBytes/second sustained measured at the Apple end.

I did not use any Tech support so gave that a 3 star netural rating.

3 people found this helpful

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AnakChan

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Thunderbolt enclosure

Reviewed in Australia on October 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

The OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini TB3 enclosure works great. I have the Akitio Quad X for the past 4 years and needed to mirror and the OWC Thunderbay takes up such a smaller footprint. With the OWC and Akitio side-by-side, I do a software RAID1+0. Whilst I don't benefit of the full speed of the SSD in the OWC vs the HDD in the Akitio, I have my data, at least, redundant now.

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Derik

2.0 out of 5 stars SOFT RAID NOT INCLUDED

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2023

Verified Purchase

All over the marketing it says that a licence to Soft Raid is included. Even the in-the-box paperwork states that the Thunderbay 4 mini includes a Softraid Licence along with cables etc. There is an asterisk though that leads to some tiny text that says "SoftRAID licence not included with certain devices". Deceptive marketing for sure. Since it is pretty much a paperweight without it and I don't really want to throw any more cash into this, I am likely sending it back

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KiwiPaul

2.0 out of 5 stars OWC ThunderBay 4 Mini - WARNING - DOES INCLUDE SoftRAID

Reviewed in Australia on July 9, 2023

Verified Purchase

I thought I had researched this thoroughly, but was VERY disappointed to find this does not include SoftRAID.

This is not made clear in the listing or any of the documentation, and the side of the box states: "INCLUDES - SoftRAID software bundle" however tiny writing on another part of the box says: "SoftRAID license not included with certain OTB "add your own drive enclosures". In my opinion this is deliberately deceptive and of course once you've purchased the item to get it operational as a RAID you have little choice but to then purchase the not inexpensive license. - BUYER BEWARE.

So then I purchased the XT version of SoftRAID which is touted as being cheaper because it is device specific to OWC hardware. So I expected the functionality advertised for SoftRAID, just limited to only working on OWC hardware - WRONG AGAIN.

The XT Version has none of the bells and whistles I need in my production environment. It is a heavily stripped-down version of SoftRAID that doesn't allow email alerts for failures, and only provides the most basic monitoring, so I feel like I've been ripped off all over again.

On the positive side Amazon shipped to my part of the world in 5 days which was amazing, and the unit works OK so far.

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NC

3.0 out of 5 stars Fan noise

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2022

Verified Purchase

constant fan noise even using SSDs needs a temp controlled fan