- BEST THUNDERBOLT 2 HARD DRIVE UPDATE
- BEST THUNDERBOLT 2 HARD DRIVE DRIVER
- BEST THUNDERBOLT 2 HARD DRIVE FULL
OWC speaks to the design and cost parametersįor the design of the OWC Drive Dock we utilized the latest Thunderbolt 2 Chipset and the best USB 3 chipsets available and certified for use within a Thunderbolt solution design of this type. But it is a tremendously useful and flexible external solution for swapping bare hard drives or SSDs. Thus it is not a device for getting maximum perrformance from a dual-SSD stripe or similar. The OWC Drive Dock has one performance limit which is a function of the chipsets available for dual-bay solutions as of late 2015: throughput maxes out at about 530 MiB/sec.
BEST THUNDERBOLT 2 HARD DRIVE DRIVER
Operation was flawless with the OWC Drive Dock, and there is no driver or software to install-excellent. With dual SSDs, performance was limited to to that of the single-SSD.
BEST THUNDERBOLT 2 HARD DRIVE FULL
The OWC Drive Dock delivered full performance with the SSD used by itself and full performance with simultaneous hard drive access. MPG tested (via Thunderbolt) the performance of the OWC Drive Dock using the very fast OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 1TB SSD as well as a pair of HGST Ultrastar He8 8TB hard drives and the Micron P400e SSD. Internal power supply, so no clunky external power brick easier to pack and travel with, say for video professionals downloading/capturing/backing-up video shoots.Accepts one or two hard drives or SSDs in either 2.5" or 3.5" size, making it possible to download and SSD from a video shoot or similar, and backup to a high-capacity hard drive, simultaneously.In total, the OWC Drive Dock offers a key set of advantages that in combination beat out any prior alternative for bare drives: With two slots in the OWC Drive Dock, it’s possible to do a dual simultaneous backup (make a RAID-1 mirror of the pair), or stripe the drives for double the speed ( RAID-0 stripe). For example, inserting two bare 6TB HGSG Desktar NAS hard drives into the OWC Drive Dock delivers 12TB of capacity at low cost. With the OWC Drive Dock, just insert the bare drive and go, swapping drives as needed. The OWC Drive Dock can be daisy-chained with other Thunderbolt devices, crucial for some workflow setups on Macs that have only two Thunderbolt ports.īare hard drives and fast high-quality bare SSDs are the least expensive way to expand storage, since there is no enclosure (case) or power supply or cabling involved. The OWC Drive Dock arrives as a higher grade offering with both USB3 and Thunderbolt 2 ports. OWC has had various iterations of the NewerTech Voyager drive dock for years, but the Voyager line took a single drive and lacked Thunderbolt. The OWC Drive Dock can also be used for one drive at a time, and each drive can be powered on/off independently using the switches on top of the unit. The OWC Drive Dock at about $245 offers a convenient Thunderbolt or USB3 solution to utilizing bare 2.5" or 3.5" bare hard drives or SSDs.ĭual slots accept two SSDs, two hard drives, or one SSD and one hard drive.
BEST THUNDERBOLT 2 HARD DRIVE UPDATE
Update Februry 4 2019: the OWC Drive Dock is now available as the less expensive and still high performing OWC Drive Dock USB-C.