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I bought this for "bulk storage" through thunderbolt. The options are shocking limited unless you are looking at $500+, which I was not. With falling ssd prices, filling this with 4x2tb WD Blue nvme ssds was a very good value (roughly $700). Speed is, well, as advertised. There are practical limits to the thunderbolt spec so each drive gets a single pcie lane. This translates to about 800mbps in CrystalDiskMark, with 2 and 3 scaling linearly. 4x tops out at 2700mbps, which again, this is more a limit of the thunderbolt spec than the device. The best part is that since each drive get it's own lane, you can actually use this as a raid device! USB controllers suffer from bandwidth bottlenecks, with an enclosure needing physical raid to achieve speed. Not here. Thunderbolt does all the heavy lifting.
Overall, very satisfied with the performance.
My only gripe is the noise. Please OWC, just put a decent fan in the damn thing and charge $5 more, or have it be temperature controlled, something. It sits ~6ft away and you can 100% tell it's there and running. Seems like a stupid place to cheap out especially since the whole thing is surprisingly user serviceable with only phillips heads needed to install the drives and made with very solid metal construction
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This Item  OWC Express 4M2 4-Slot M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure w/ Thunderbolt3 Ports with SoftRaid XT | Recommendations  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | — | $199.00 | $219.99 | $89.99 | $149.95 | $199.99 |
| Delivery | — | Get it as soon as Thursday, Nov 14 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, Nov 12 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, Nov 12 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, Nov 12 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, Nov 12 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
| Sold By | — | TREBLEET | OWC (Other World Computing) | CZ-Store | Amazon.com | ACASIS Direct US |
| hardware interface | usb c | usb c, thunderbolt | usb | usb3.0, usb, pci, thunderbolt, usb2.0, solid state drive | pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4, pci x 4 | usb, usb2.0, solid state drive |
| brand | OWC | TREBLEET | OWC | ACASIS | SABRENT | FREEGENE |
| color | Black | — | Enclosure | — | Grey | — |
| hardware platform | Thunderbolt 3 | — | Mac | Linux, Mac, PC | Windows | ARM |
| material | Aluminum | Aluminum | Metal | — | Aluminum | Aluminum |
Product Description
Infinitely configurable. Infinitely reconfigurable.
Customize your Express 4M2 with up to four NVMe SSDs, RAID them however you wish and connect it all with Thunderbolt 3 — the fastest and most flexible interface around. The sheer performance of the Express 4M2 helps you meet deadlines faster, giving you more time to explore your creativity and push your projects further.
GAME-CHANGING NVME SSD PERFORMANCE
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a hyper-efficient communications interface protocol built from the ground up to properly take advantage of SSD technology and high-performance connection buses like PCIe. The result is exponentially faster and efficient SSD storage, and the OWC Express 4M2 has room for four NVMe SSDs.
DisplayPort
Display connection flexibility is yours with a convenient DisplayPort located right on the rear of the OWC Express 4M2. There's no need to worry about adapters or extra long cables. Just plug your display directly into the Express 4M2 and you're all set.
Connect to Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 Systems with Ease
The OWC Express 4M2 is fully backward compatible with Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2. Utilize Thunderbolt 3 performance to work at full speed, and step back to Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 whenever connectivity compatibility is needed for your workflow. Add a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter along with the appropriate Thunderbolt cable, and you're all set.
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Mixed feelings
As of early 2020 I don't know of many other devices that offers a 4-slot M.2 NVMe TB3 enclosure at this price - so if you are searching and nothing else has come out, know that this product is unique in the market right now (aside from the much more expensive OWC Thunderblade and some other weird stuff)I am using it with 4 Inland Premium 2TB M.2 sticks.First know that each SSD only gets 1 PCI lane, and Thunderbolt 3 only has 4 lanes to give - which means the only way to get full Thunderbolt 3 speed and capacity is to have 4 SSDs in RAID 0. This is not CLEARLY explained in the main description unless you read other reviews very carefully, but I knew that going into this. That really isn't the fault of the OWC Express 4M2 though - that is just the way the controller works. My larger issue is reliability....In RAID 0 it is not reliable. I also tried RAID 4 for a while - also unreliable. Not sure if it is the SoftRAID software, the enclosure, or macOS 10.15 at fault.1) Unreliable unmount. It would never unmount. Every time I tried to restart or shutdown my mac (iMac Pro), it would hang because the volume would not dismount - which would require me to force shutdown (hard power off). I eventually tracked this down to some software (a Docker MySQL container that was holding open files). I had to shut down the Docker container before attempting to restart or shutdown. Maybe you could blame Docker for this - but probably not. Docker containers running on an internal SSD do not prevent restart/shutdown, only when hosted on this enclosure. I send this to the OWC support in hopes that they would add it to the trouble shooting FAQ, but they just seemed happy that I solved my own issue.2) Becomes read-only. In my use in RAID 0 and RAID 4 I experienced a situation where after a few days the volume became read-only. From what I can tell macOS will do this if it can no longer verify permissions of the volume. SoftRAID said the volume was healthy and nothing I could do would repair the permissions issue - I was locked out from writing to the volume. I had to rebuild the RAID and restore my files from another backup each time this happened.3) This is minor, but it would be nice if it were a little quieter. It has fan, but that is what you get at this price point. It does seem crazy that you have to pay a LOT more to get a passively cooled enclosure from OWC like the Thunderblade - and the Thunderblade does not allow you to install your own SSDs - you pay a ton for those too.I now have it running in RAID 1+0 and it has been stable finally - which is fine, but I'm taking a big hit on performance and capacity. Note that use of any RAID other than 0 or 1 will require you to purchase a license after 30 days - also not CLEARLY explained in the main description.I was almost ready to return it, but there really is no better solution right now (for the price). Hopefully OWC improve on this product. I really do like OWC and have been a customer of various products for a long time. it would be amazing if OWC could do something crazy like take advantage of all 4 PCI lanes of TB3 for each drive, maybe requiring the use of 2 TB3 connections or different controller tech, updates to SoftRAID to specifically help the TB3 bottleneck?Overall it is a cool product, but this type of product seems young and it kinda shows in the 4M2. Looking forward to trying out the next iteration/innovation in this space.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2023
Size: EnclosureVerified Purchase
So far this has been working fabulously for me. Yes the fan is too loud but overall performance of the enclosure itself with the way I have it configured as been perfect for me.
I am using this as my primary RAID for video production. Mainly editing 4k and 6k .BRAW 8:1 footage - usually @ 23.97fps, but sometimes 60fps as well. I’m currently on the 2023 version of Premiere with Mac OS Ventura. This things screams. Tested with the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test app I’m getting just over 2900 MB/s.
I’ve loaded it up with 4x 2tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus’s and built as a RAID 0 using Mac OS Ventura’s Disk Utility and formatted as GUID APFS. I did not want to be bound to OWC’s SoftRAID software because I need this to occasionally move to different Macs and I don’t want to rely on a 3rd party piece of software to access my data.
Getting 4 fast M.2’s and doing a RAID 0 is the key to getting the enclosure’s advertised speed. I see many people make the mistake of only putting one or two drives in, or doing a RAID 1 on 4 drives. I knew this going into it and already had most of the M.2’s on hand so it wasn’t an issue for me, but something for everyone to keep in mind.
I’ve tested the daisy chaining ability out by connecting a USB-C monitor that has a keyboard and mouse KVM’d to it and the Mac sees everything and I cannot detect any r/w performance hits when using it. I have not tested the display port on this yet.
Power-wise the enclosure automatically powers down overall, once my Mac has turned off. I say “overall” because the fan and front LED turns off and the M.2’s do not generate any more heat so I assume they are off. But the blue LEDs inside are still lit.
Speaking of heat. The M.2’s generate a ton of heat. And as many of you probably know by now, the fan is pretty loud. To that end, I decided to take the advice of other users online and purchased low profile copper heat sinks for them. I also changed out the very loud 12v 60mmx15mm fan with a 24v one. Because the enclosures is only providing 12 V to that fan, it spins at half speed. That has cut down the sound issues considerably and seems to keep air moving well. The unit feels cooler than it was before the fan and heatsink upgrade.
For those of you who would like to do the same.
This is the fan (its a tad smaller at 10mm thick”:
https://a.co/d/8IbOUmL
The fan needs a 2-3 pin adapter:
https://a.co/d/gzv6xqD
And the heat sinks:
https://a.co/d/7fW4Whh
I am using this as my primary RAID for video production. Mainly editing 4k and 6k .BRAW 8:1 footage - usually @ 23.97fps, but sometimes 60fps as well. I’m currently on the 2023 version of Premiere with Mac OS Ventura. This things screams. Tested with the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test app I’m getting just over 2900 MB/s.
I’ve loaded it up with 4x 2tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus’s and built as a RAID 0 using Mac OS Ventura’s Disk Utility and formatted as GUID APFS. I did not want to be bound to OWC’s SoftRAID software because I need this to occasionally move to different Macs and I don’t want to rely on a 3rd party piece of software to access my data.
Getting 4 fast M.2’s and doing a RAID 0 is the key to getting the enclosure’s advertised speed. I see many people make the mistake of only putting one or two drives in, or doing a RAID 1 on 4 drives. I knew this going into it and already had most of the M.2’s on hand so it wasn’t an issue for me, but something for everyone to keep in mind.
I’ve tested the daisy chaining ability out by connecting a USB-C monitor that has a keyboard and mouse KVM’d to it and the Mac sees everything and I cannot detect any r/w performance hits when using it. I have not tested the display port on this yet.
Power-wise the enclosure automatically powers down overall, once my Mac has turned off. I say “overall” because the fan and front LED turns off and the M.2’s do not generate any more heat so I assume they are off. But the blue LEDs inside are still lit.
Speaking of heat. The M.2’s generate a ton of heat. And as many of you probably know by now, the fan is pretty loud. To that end, I decided to take the advice of other users online and purchased low profile copper heat sinks for them. I also changed out the very loud 12v 60mmx15mm fan with a 24v one. Because the enclosures is only providing 12 V to that fan, it spins at half speed. That has cut down the sound issues considerably and seems to keep air moving well. The unit feels cooler than it was before the fan and heatsink upgrade.
For those of you who would like to do the same.
This is the fan (its a tad smaller at 10mm thick”:
https://a.co/d/8IbOUmL
The fan needs a 2-3 pin adapter:
https://a.co/d/gzv6xqD
And the heat sinks:
https://a.co/d/7fW4Whh
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2024
Size: EnclosureVerified Purchase
In order to get the advertised speeds, you will need to run 4 drives at RAID 0. I chose to not get SoftRaid and just use apple disk utility to set up the Raid as it's more reliable imo.
I'm using 4x Samsung 990 Pro 2 TBs, overkill for this for sure, but again I wanted something reliable and they weren't too much more expensive than 980 pros.
My real complaint is the fan, it's noisy. If you're working in a noise-sensitive environment you'll hear it and you'll hate it. Since I planned to put low profile 2mm heatsinks on all 4 drives, I decided to use a 92mmx15 slim noctua fan I had laying around. The size is perfect to cover all 4 drives so that they would be cooled equally, I used a low-noise adapter since the fan basically runs at full speed. I used some rubber mounts that came with my noctua and just position it so that the fan doesn't touch any surface and it wouldn't move about when using the enclosure vertically or horizontally.
This is an expensive piece of kit, but compared to others on the market, this has the best build quality. Just wish they include a quieter, bigger fan and allow more space for larger nvme heatsinks.
I'm using 4x Samsung 990 Pro 2 TBs, overkill for this for sure, but again I wanted something reliable and they weren't too much more expensive than 980 pros.
My real complaint is the fan, it's noisy. If you're working in a noise-sensitive environment you'll hear it and you'll hate it. Since I planned to put low profile 2mm heatsinks on all 4 drives, I decided to use a 92mmx15 slim noctua fan I had laying around. The size is perfect to cover all 4 drives so that they would be cooled equally, I used a low-noise adapter since the fan basically runs at full speed. I used some rubber mounts that came with my noctua and just position it so that the fan doesn't touch any surface and it wouldn't move about when using the enclosure vertically or horizontally.
This is an expensive piece of kit, but compared to others on the market, this has the best build quality. Just wish they include a quieter, bigger fan and allow more space for larger nvme heatsinks.
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
Timothy Woodard
This is a quality product
Reviewed in Canada on October 2, 2024Size: 0TB RAIDVerified Purchase
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que puedes operar en raid o no discos M.2
Reviewed in Spain on January 21, 2021Size: 0TB RAIDVerified Purchase
