FLEXible Storage

• Eight drive bays: use a mix of U.2/M.21 NVMe and SATA/SAS2 drives for up to 128TB of capacity and real world speeds up to 2,750MB/s
• Future ready: top four bays can use U.2 SSDs…the emerging M&E industry storage standard
• Powerfully easy RAID: create, manage, and monitor advanced RAID sets with SoftRAID

Docking FLEXibility

• Do more: second Thunderbolt 3 port3 for daisy chaining devices or additional display(s)
• Connect more: (1) USB-C and (2) USB-A 10Gb/s ports for peripherals and mobile devices
• See more: DisplayPort 1.4 for connecting up to an 8K display4
• Fast media ingest: front-side SD 4.0 and CFexpress card readers with up to 985MB/s speed

FLEXpandable for Unique Needs

• Play your card: (1) PCIe slot for audio/video capture, networking, SSD storage, hardware RAID card, or I/O card

See your work in greater detail by adding up to an 8K display via a built-in DisplayPort 1.4 connection. Ingest hi-res images and video via front-side SD 4.0 and CFexpress card readers. And when you want to expand your desktop capabilities, there’s a PCIe slot waiting for your specific project needs.

ThunderBay Flex 8 is the one Thunderbolt 3 desktop device that rules them all. With an irresistible economy of scale, this consolidated solution is ideal for anyone waiting for the right moment to invest in Thunderbolt technology.

At the heart of the ThunderBay Flex 8 capabilities are two cutting-edge technology standards: NVMe and PCIe. Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) optimizes the performance of modern flash technology over the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) standard. It enables significantly faster SSD performance with a more direct and optimized path to a computer’s processor.

Tying both of these technologies together is the Thunderbolt 3 interface which uses the PCIe bus. This interface offers the fastest data transfers possible on a single cable between computers and peripherals like storage solutions, docks, and expansion devices while also supplying charging power.

THE FUTURE STANDARD OF STORAGE AVAILABLE TODAY

Right out of the packaging, all eight bays can utilize SATA 6Gb/s 2.5-inch SSDs or 3.5-inch HDDs. To take advantage of 40Gb/s PCIe technology, the top four bays are NVMe U.2 SSD ready. These emerging super-fast SSDs enable ThunderBay Flex 8 to meet the future storage needs of content creators and video production pros.

MUSCLE-FLEXING DATA PERFORMANCE

Are you a video pro working with 4K/8K and even Phantom high-speed files? The ThunderBay Flex 8 offers a variety of drive configurations that deliver real-world read/write speeds of 2,750MB/s that saturate the Thunderbolt 3 speed threshold. Try any of these options:

1. Eight FLEXible drive bays with up to 2,750MB/s real world speed
2. Four top bays: install your choice of U.2 NVMe SSDs (one bay PCIe 3.0 x4, three bays PCIe 3.0 x1), 2.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s SSDs, or 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s HDDs.
3. Four bottom bays: install your choice of 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s drives. Removing the SATA drive controller and replacing with a SAS controller card enables use of faster SAS HDDs.
4. Swap out the built-in SATA drive controller card with a SATA/SAS hardware RAID card and configure 8 x SATA/SAS drives in hardware RAID 0

SAFELY DISCONNECT DRIVES WITH A CLICK

Done with the drives but need the docking connectivity? Eject the ThunderBay Flex 8 drives and any external drives in a single click with the free OWC Dock Ejector app. It ensures all data has been written before any drive is unmounted to protect against data loss. It will even warn you from accidentally ejecting an in-use drive.

FLEXPANDABLE FOR UNIQUE NEEDS

By removing the enclosure’s side panel, you can expand your capabilities by installing a half-length, full-height, single-width expansion card in the PCIe x16 connector/x4 lanes slot. Add a 4K video capture card for direct ingest of multi-stream high-res footage. Record high-quality tracks with an audio card and then edit and archive tracks. Create a powerful file server with a high-speed networking card. By replacing the built-in SATA drive controller with a SATA or SAS RAID card, you can even turn ThunderBay Flex 8 into a hardware RAID storage solution while keeping a PCIe slot open for other cards.

SAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS

1. An empty enclosure that lets you add your choice of drives and PCIe cards. You can remove the SATA drive controller card to add a RAID or SAS drive controller card
2. The bottom four bays populated with SATA drives and top four bays left empty for use with U.2 NVMe drives, M.2 NVMe drives with adapter, or SATA/SAS drives
3. All bays filled with SATA drives, one bay left as cold spare, the other seven preconfigured in RAID 0 or RAID 5 with SoftRAID

SoftRAID highlights:

• Advanced: create RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, 1+0 (10) volumes (RAID 6, 6+ coming soon) and get email notifications for drive and RAID volume health with SoftRAID Pro (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

RELIABILITY AND SUPPORT YOU CAN COUNT ON

From the seamless aluminum enclosure to the slip-resistant feet, the OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 — like all OWC products — is designed and built to the highest standards of reliability and performance. Because 100 percent reliability is always our goal, ThunderBay Flex 8 is rigorously tested for quality and backed by our up to 5 Year Limited Warranty* and award-winning customer support.