OWBLUSE is announcing his “Extreme Performance Drive” this week to a new member of the family of Thunderblad V4. Thunderblad V4 is an external drive that aims at professional users who need the fastest possible speed and it packs four M2 Solid State Drive Blade to a single enclosure that is driven over Thunderbolt 3, total capacity from 1 TB to 8 TB. The result is that OWWLUSE said “the fastest SSD so far” is at the top of 2800 MB/second with reading speed and has the speed of writing up to 2450 MB/second.
We spent some time with Thunderblad V4 and this is definitely a fascinating part of the technology, though its value that starts at $ 1200 and significantly increases from there will limit the potential market. This is an accessory for professionals that have to press each bit performance from their external drives and are undoubtedly the extra overcol for customers wanting to back up their computers.
Design
Thunderblad v4 encloses a huge aluminum covered in large fins to help the heat wastage, because this drive can be fairly warm when you are reading and writing a lot of data. There is no active cooling on the drive, which helps with the anger of Thunderblad V4 because there is no moving part.
Thunderblad V4 is just 5 inches wide, 7.5 inches deep, and only one inches high. It weighs somewhat below two pounds, which gives it a sight feeling on a desk and good stability. A separate power adapter adds some bulk to deal with it elsewhere.
The only feature of Thunderblad V4 is a thin three -inch LED LED that is white (and when connected to a sleeping computer) and blue color is blue when the computer has an active connection. Although the LED appears as a single thin index, it is actually consisting of four distinct categories, one for each M2 drive on the Thunderblad.
Each section will be blown in blue while reading or reading the data from the concerned drive. With the speed of the drive and four onboard SSDs, you will see a kind of flashing riple effect across the LEDs as you move data.
An enclosed light sensor behind Thunderblad V4 lays the front leadership in the dark environment.
In addition to the light sensor, the back of the Thunderblad includes a port and a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports for power adapter connection. A Thunderbolt 3 port includes 0.5-meter Thunderbolt 3 cable is used to attach Thunderblad to your computer, while the second is available for a display or other periplary discipline.
Thunderbolt 3 ports are capable of supplying 15 watts each, but it will not be enough to get a MacBook Pro. This is not the purpose of the real docking station, but it is not surprising that the power output is limited and initially intended to run down stream periphere instead of a host computer.
Speed test
We have tested the speed of some Quikbench disc at Thunderblad V4 and when we don’t hurt the top number of OWC, the drive still shows some serious fast performance. 2016 is directly connected to the 15-inch MacBook Pro, we have seen reading and writing in the range of 2400 MB/second in extended examination mode with the transfer size of 20-100 MB range.
Similar speed tests using blackmagic with larger transfer size of 5 GB have achieved a slight speed than 1900 MB/S Reid and 2100 MB/S writing, although it is difficult to compare two different methods directly. Even that performance is Thunderblad to S. Blackmagik “Will It Work?” The rating system that determines whether any drive format, resolution and frame rates are quick to handle the video in different combinations.
Other peripherals were attached to MacBook Pro’s other Thunderbolt 3 ports with a pair of LG Ultrafine 5K displays, but the results were the same in different configurations.
With an LG Ultrafine 5K attached to the Thunderblad Down Stream Thunderbolt 3K, we clearly saw the lower speed because some bandwidth display was dedicated. The speed of the writing was most significantly affected, about 800 MB/second, while the reading speed was reduced to about 2050 MB/second.
Campaign
Inside Thunderblad V4, the four SSD drives are pre -counted in the RAID 0 format to provide the full described capacity of the drive. The license for the OWC’s Softered XT (previously softered light) has been included with Thunderblad and the software can be re -formatted in RAID for the supply of mirror unnecessary.
When RAID 0 and 1 give you the option to prioritize the storage capacity or data redundancy, it would be nice if some higher RAID mode is available on Thunderblad to offer more flexibility.
With the Dowestrime Thunderbolt 3 port in Thunderblad V4 you can do more than one unit of storage together for more storage, though you must definitely limited by the total bandwidth of a single Thunderbolt 3 connection that they are all running. You can even set up two Thunderblad V4 units as a single raid array.
Adjust the PC
When Focus on OWLUSE Mac and formatted as a RAID 0 Journaled HFS+ Volume for Thunderblad V4 Mac, it can also be used with PCs when the drives are re -formated and reconstructed. In contrast to Mac, however, the boot from Thunderblad is not supported on Windows.
Price and availability
Using the fastest SSD design and Thunderbolt 3 should be expected for any product with large storage capabilities, Thunderblad V4 is not cheap. The 1 TB model is priced at $ 1199.99, 2 TB model $ 1799.99, 4 TB model $ 2799.99, and 8 TB models are on $ 4999.00.
However, for professional users who need the absolute fastest external storage, Thunderblad V4 looks like a solid option that takes the maximum advantage of the bandwidth provided by Thunderbolt 3. All models bring an angry case, a three -year warranty and one year complimentary level 1 data recovery coverage. Four models will be available from OWWLUSI to January 8.
Note: OWBLUSI provided Macrumars’ Thunderblad V4 for this review and it will return to OWLUSI. No other compensation was found. An authorized partner with Macrumors OWW and may receive commissions in case of purchase made through links in this article.
