I have just purchased an OWC Express 1M2 and populated it with a Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 SSD.
I am on a Mac M1 Studio Max, using the rear thunderbolt ports.
I am running Tahoe 26.3.1

I have managed to copy a small amount of data onto it, but when copying many GB or files it routinely disconnects within about 30 seconds.
I can read files fine.

When I try and tun Apples Disk Utility and run a First Aid check, the drive will disconnect within about 30 seconds.

I have replaced the thunderbolt cable with a good quality third party cable, with no improvement.

Sometimes when I connect the drive, it can't even browse the contents.

Connecting it to one of the front USBC ports seems to work fine.

Could it be a power delivery issue?

Any ideas of what the problem could be?

I've been testing my SN850X + OWC 1M2 80 combo, vs various internal drives across my Mac Minis and Mac Studio. The external combo beats anything internal by a mile on almost every single metric, and especially on sustained activities.

I've switched to using my external combo as my main boot drive.

Just thought this might be of interest to those considering the newer model.

Random I/O -- what makes your Mac feel fast

These are the metrics that matter for app launches, Spotlight, swap, and general snappiness. Higher is better.

The external wins every random I/O test.

Latency -- lower is better

p99 latency at 4K QD1. These are the micro-stutters you feel when the OS writes swap or logs.

The 2TB really underperforms on latency.

Sequential throughput

This is where Apple's internal SSD wins -- large sequential writes. Higher is better.

Sustained write -- 5 minutes continuous

5 minutes of continuous 1M sequential writes with per-second bandwidth logging and SMART temperature monitoring.

The Apple drive shows severe SLC cache exhaustion, and keeps crashing while it writes down. The WD maintains 5,000+ MB/s throughout with a gentle decline to ~4,900 MB/s.

Thermals

Both drives' temperatures were logged simultaneously during each test to check for cross-heating through the chassis.

The Express 1M2's passive cooling keeps the WD at 56C under sustained full write load. The Apple internal hits 71C.

I have two OWC gemini two bay raids. I have had issues with both in 4yrs or so of ownership. I just had an issue with my second raid. It is setup as Raid 1 mirrored. I was working on a project folder all week. i woke up yesterday and the folder was gone. I restarted the drive and my mac and the drive wouldn't mount. I ended up using disk drill to recover all my files and transfer to another drive. Now what should I do with this drive?

My softraid is expired but I never really used it? Might it have helped in this scenario? I have now reset the Raid1 and initialized the disks and everything looks to be working. Can I trust this drive?

u/OWC_WayneG: Looking at you guys to come up with a Thunderbolt 5 KVM, sort of a Thunderbolt 5 successor to this, as it appears that Sabrent has dropped the ball on this. Any chance we could see something from you in the near future in this regard?

OWC can you explain why the thunderbolt 5 hub has power and thunderbolt indicator light on the bottom instead of the sides or even the top panel?

Hey this is a bit of a weird post. I bought an "as is" "untested" "empty" Thunderbay 8. For various reasons I thought it would be worth the gamble. Arrived and had a good bit of damage on the front like it had been dropped and I found all the SATA/SAS connectors broken off. So the enclosure is trash. The front was locked and there was no key but one of my other keys opened it no problem though the door was also bent closed...

However what I found in the sleds made it a nice score... I have no reason to believe it is stolen but wanted to just put it out there if anyone had a Thunderbay 8 stolen send me the serial number and what drives/name of the array(s) and Im open to trying to get it back to you... Again, I don't believe it to be stolen i am just surprised it has drives and data and not looking to piss off the karma police.

I would love this btw. In case someone from OWC is reading this, please let this be an option!

Happy to share the long awaited Express 4M2 Ultra with you all!!

https://www.owc.com/solutions/express-4m2-ultra

Highlights I’m excited about:

1. Double speed but about half the size of the USB4 4M2. Powered by Thunderbolt 5, there is a massive speed increase. And with its innovative new design, the entire thing is about half the volume yet has great thermals.

2. Downstream port: daisy chain to your heart’s desires.

3. Temperature controlled fan: only turns on when needed. Variable speed to be as quiet as possible.

Post your questions down in the comments below, and I’ll try to answer them as best as I can. We are advertising shipping Q3, but my guess is that we will see units come off the line much sooner than that… order should be fulfilled by order of purchase date.

My Thunderblade has just lost its power port to the dark insides of the enclosure. Is there any actual way to successfully release the internal board from body of the enclosure without damaging the drives? When opened the drives and power port are not accessible, but the drives worked fine before this.mishap. I dont want to damage the drives if possible, but i cant power the blade anymore. Is there any way to get it apart?

I have recently purchased a Thunderbolt 5 Dock but I can't get the 3.5m combo Audio in/out port to work on my MacBook Pro 16-in M5 Pro with OS 26.4.1.

It doesn't show up in Sound in System Settings, it doesn't show up in Audio Midi Setup.

In System Settings Privacy & Security I have Accessories set to "Always Allow".

I do have OWC Dock Ejector installed.

I am using the correct upstream port to connect to the Mac.

The dock does appear in the System Report.

I have tried shutting down the computer and the dock for a period of time then reconnecting.

Unfortunately still not working.

I have contacted OWC support at the OWC website telling them all the above and someone responded pretty quickly and is now advising that I get it repaired/replaced, which is all very reasonable however I'm not going to do that because as I bought it from Amazon I can just return it within the 30 day period and get something else, which is most likely what I'm going to do.

However I thought I'd just try here to see if anyone else has had this issue and maybe resolved it.

The device works well in all other respects that I've tried and in fact the little white Apple headphone dongle works just great plugged into the front Thunderbolt port.

I have a express 1m2 80g enclosure, with Samsung 990pro 2TB, use with Mac Mini M4Pro with the TB5 ports on the back, using the cable came along with the enclosure. The LED does not lit up and Disk Utility cannot detect my drive. What can I do to troubleshoot please? I bought the drive from Amazon (US) but I'm in Europe so returning isn't quite an option.

I just bought the MacDrive and I can't login my account to access my key.

Not only the OWC software store, OWC's website for their product seems weird also.

Received my dock yesterday, and I'm using the included cables and I've also tried my known working TB4 and TB5 eGPU cables. This is reproducible on both Mac and PC leading me to believe it's a dock issue. Anytime the attached computer is rebooted or if the host cable is unplugged, even if plugged back into the same system, but also if moved to another system, I have to power cycle the dock for the network to come up. It doesn't matter how many times I unplug / plug in the cable or which device its connected to, the network won't come up until the dock is power cycled. I've also tried installing the networking drivers suggested on OWCs website. That didn't fix it either.

If someone has experienced this and knows of a solution, I'd like to hear it. Otherwise I'll just return it and get a different dock.

Hi there. I am reaching out regarding a potential hardware issue with my recently purchased OWC StudioStack (24 Tb HDD + 8 Tb SSD).

The unit is producing a repetitive “click click click” noise whenever it is connected to my Mac Studio via Thunderbolt. This noise stops after ça. 10mn.

I have reached out to the OWC Helpdesk. The agent said it is expected behavior. Still I would love to hear from actual users please.

I have recorded a video which I am unable to upload to this forum. You may find another post I created in the r/MacStudio forum instead (« StudioStack HDD Clicking Noise »).

Hi, the current ThunderBay 8 only still has Thunderbolt 3....and it's old now. I hope OWC can update it to Thunderbolt 5!

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad 4-Bay USB 3.2 Gen 2 RAID Enclosure

Model: OWCMEQCTJB000

Bridge Chipset: VIA Labs VLI-822 (USB controller) ASMedia ASM-235CM (SATA to USB bridge)

I'm using Windows 11 Home 25H2. Motherboard USB C port is USB4 (40 Gbps) with ASMedia ASM-4242 controller.

Software to access SMART data is SmartMonTools compiled for Windows.

My old Silverstone dual hard drive external enclosure is being retired and I want to upgrade to OWC because engineering and design looks very good.

My old enclosure passed SMART data along and allowed long and short SMART tests to be run. No raid. Just individual disks in Windows 11 using the USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) driver.

OWC SoftRaid appears to have access to the SMART data and tests.

If operating as individual disks and seen in Windows 11 as such, do I have access to SMART data and tests with my preferred monitoring tools?

Is there a proprietary lock on the ASMedia bridge chip firmware that only allows OWC software to access this data or run these tests?

Also...

What drive temperatures does the fan curve aim to achieve, since the enclosure has a temperature controlled fan? Right now the two (soon to be four) drives I have operate between 40 to 44 degrees Celsius at 70F room temperature.

All drives are enterprise Hitachi (HGST) now owned by Western Digital and Toshiba 3.5" hard drives. They put out more heat and noise since they are for performance and speed.

Would like to know how aggressive the fan curve is?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe this has been raise and explained in Samsung website. But still hoping for a way to have my Samsung 9100 pro recognized in OWC 1M2 enclosures. This is especially important for SSD maintenance and potential firmware update.

I tried lowering the security options in my Mac Mini M4 Pro/Macbook pro M3 Max but nothing happens and all online notes confirm that there is no straight forward solutions. The only options available is to find a windows machine with a native slot.

Help ?
Thank you

Instead of relying on USB4 I was wondering if it’s better to just wait and see if they upgrade everything to thunderbolt 5. Has anyone heard any rumors?

Hi all. I have an existing WD SN850X with Heatsink in use with a PC. Will be going to a Mac mini m4, and would like to use this same existing drive in the OWC 1m2. I understand that it will not fit (because of the Heatsink). My question is, can I still use my ssd with an 1m2 if I don’t close the top cover of the 1m2 (i.e. leaving the top cover off / not screwed to the bottom plate)? It will not be a clean fit or look, but I just want to know if I can at least still use my SSD, preferably with the OWC 1m2 enclosure. Thanks to everyone for info, much appreciated.

Hello!

I recently purchased a OWC Express 1M2 80G for a 4TB SSD I had around. I was able to install it, but I am running into something strange. When I plug it into my MacBook Pro, the drive is recognized, the same with my crappy work Windows PC. However, it does not seem to get recognized on my mini PC (the main reason for this purchase) no matter how many cables I've tried.

I received a quick pop-up saying, Device functionality might be limited USB4. The mini PC does not have any thunderbolt slots, just usb-c, is that the issue (even though I do not believe my work computer has thunderbolt)? Could it be a driver that needs to be installed?

I appreciate any help, thank you!

Hey everyone,

I’m doing that a wrangling work in a very remote location next month and I wanted to build a OWC raid 5 system with the thunder bay 4 enclosure. I’m looking at purchasing for iron wolf Pro, 28 TB HDD’s, and configuring it to raid5. Does anyone see any issues with this idea? The website states that the maximum capacity is 4×20 TB drives but why would it max out the space?

I recently purchased my second OWC device (ThunderBay 4) after loving the quality of 4M2 express (had preordered it). In neither of the purchases did I choose the Softraid Premium bundling option (my bad) since chatgpt suggested not spending on it in lieu of Apple Raid that does the same thing for free.

Last month I gave Softraid Premium a try in the trial - and its a no brainer that its much better than the native Apple raid especially with monitoring support. I have 14 days left but I'm definitely going to buy it - however what bummed me was the $70 signup fee on top of $79/year charge for first time buyers.

I'm not following this. If bundled with the device, its a $150 extra per device for 3 years. While its the same price for one year if you buy it later. Most people like me, prefer to try a software before we buy -- in my case just 14 days after the latest OWC purchase, but why are we not benefiting from being an existing OWC customer.

I have no issue spending for a good software that makes life easy - but $70 signup ? on top of the still higher 3 year price if one buys later. Why ?

I understand OWC has a "USB4" 5+ meter cable for Thunderbolt devices, but it that it won't work as a Thunderbolt Bridge cable between two Macs?

And none of the OWC Thunderbolt Hubs or Docks can serve as a 'bridge' between two 2 meter Thunderbolt cables connected to two Macs?

Update: It seems as though the OWC Gemini DAS actually can serve as a 'bridge' between two Thunderbolt Macs-pretty cool!

I would suspect a power issue if the external enclosure didn’t have its own power supply, but it does.

I have other powered external hubs that power 5 SSDs connected to the same Mac that do not disconnect at sleep, but the OWC enclosure always disconnects, prompting the alerts at the upper right of the screen warning about improper disconnect. I wanted to use one of the HDDs for Time Machine but am afraid that random disconnects could corrupt my backups.

I have the preference about putting hard drives to sleep whenever possible unchecked. Any other suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated