Review: OWC Express 4M2 SSD enclosure - 8TB!

The OWC Express 4M2 is a $350 Thunderbolt 3 enclosure that can house up to four M.2 SSDs for up to 8TB of storage. Ideal for high

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[Anthropophob]

Regarding the OWC website, you can have up to 32TB, so 8TB for each slot. Just wanted to mention this, because many resellers write on their websites, that you just can have 8TB in total.

[chrisso]

Have had one of these for the past year running 4TB on two 2TB SSDs and it's worked flawlessly. I've now upgraded to the full 8TB with another 2 SSDs of 2TBs ea (all in a raid 1 configuration just done in Mac Disk Utility), and can now plough through 4K and 6K B-raw, averaging nothing less than 2000MB/s read and write. Can't recommend this enough, worth every penny.

[joesalyers]

I did the same thing with my old eGPU boxes after I switched to an M1 MAX Macbook Pro. I picked up a nvme pci card that held 4 drives from Amazon for $25 and 4 of the Silicon Power 1TB SSDs. The total cost was around $230 but I already has the eGPU box that I was using with my older Intel Macs. I Sold my gpus at the height of the shortage since I no longer needed them with the M1 Max. But I still had 2 of the Sonnet EGFX thunderbolt enclosures. So one of them became a NVME storage device for my recording studio and the other one I put in a $90 EZcap 334 capture card that worked perfectly with MacOS on Apple Silicon. But if you have been thinking about a product like this but you already have an old eGPU box laying around you can save yourself some money by making a DIY version out of the stuff you already have.

[WarriorsPhoto]

I will not have use for such a device for a long, long time. I do know people that could use it and they will like this video.
Jeff, keep these simple reviews coming. I like that you don't fluff us to make your videos longer. Good length and detailed.

[teddym]

I wish someone would make something like this with just USB C Gen 2. Many of us (I know this for a fact), don't need *concurrent* multiple drive access, but only one at a time.. it's all about the *amount* of nvme storage in our case.. cause we have ryzen laptops without thunderbolt. You will not believe how impossible it is to find such a thing. I mean no one has even thought to make a thunderbolt one that is USB C backward compatible.

[JasonFiske]

This is an exciting product. I hope M.2 drives come down in price more quickly than 2.5” SSDs did. Thanks for the review.

[davidvalens]

so I thought I would buy this and apparently I read this rewiew: "
Each of the 4 m.2 pcnvme slots have only 1 pci express lane. This means that the drive in the slot is limited to 8Gbit transfer speeds. 
If you populate all 4 slots and use the included softraid software you will be able to reach the announced speed of 2600Mbyte/sec speed but with fewer drives you will loose out on speed. 
As long as you are aware of this individual limitation this is a great unit that gives you heaps of fast storage."
I did not know that at this means that your SSD blade will be significantly bottlenecked if you only buy 1 blade as I was planning until I needed more storage. What a huge let down!

[JeffEddy]

Great review. I look at the cost of the Mac Mini and peripherals like this OWC Express for my audio needs and am confirmed that I get better value from owning a PC.

[yabix_music_production]

Is it possible to connect it a usb-type-c. 3.1 connection? Or is it Thunderbolt 3 only. Thanks it advence!!

[petrthingsilike]

Hi Jeff, I have few questions:
1. Is it possible to power the unit just through the thunderbolt 3 cable? Let’s say from a thu3 monitor 85W cable to OMW and from OMW second Thun3 cable into my laptop to power up my laptop?

2. One review on Amazon has mentioned this
I purchased the Express 4M2 direct from the manufacturer. I was drawn to this product because of OWC’s past reputation with the Mac community and the product’s feature set and compact size.

Bait & Switch
When researching this product, I saw multiple references to their “SoftRAID” and “SoftRAID engine.” I fact, there are 14 mentions of this on their product page. HOWEVER, only the last mention, after clicking on the fourth tab on the bottom of the page, so you see that the software included is actually the SoftRAID LITE, with limited functionality.

More on that later...

SSD vulnerability
Newer, cheaper nvme SSD’s on the market utilize a technology called “multi-level cells.” That essentially means more bits are packed into the chip (more accurately “stacked” on the chip) yielding higher density at a lower cost. YEA consumers, right? That benefit comes at a risk, though. Newer triple level cells (and upcoming quad-level cells) are more prone to failure. That’s why a nvme RAID is such a great idea... speed and data integrity. I won’t go into all things RAID at this stage, but in a nutshell:
1. a striped RAID has no data protection but allows you to use all the storage you paid for. If a cell in the SSD fails (and it will), you lose data.
2. A mirrored RAID allows you to use half of the capacity you purchased. Everything it writes to one SSD stick is also copied to a second. If one fails, you still have a second copy.
3. RAID 5 allows you to reserve just one SSD for data protection. It allows you to utilize three out of four SSDs for storage capacity and still yields full data security in the case any one of the four fails. Best of both worlds.

Bait and Switch (or the dubious up-sell)
Since SoftRAID is mentioned so many times on the page and it’s well know for its RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 capabilities, one would expect that you’ll enjoy your Express 4M2 and all its RAID flexibility. Well, you’d be wrong. The bundled LITE software only supports STRIPE and MIRROR raids, so you either lose half your capacity or get no data protection.

Customer Support
So, I called customer support to inquire. I was told that since I could click through the product page embedded links to learn that only the LITE version is included (even though there is no definition of what the LITE version does relative to the full version) I would need to purchase the upgrade or settle for a mirror or striped raid.

I asked that they clarify the product page so other customers wouldn’t discover this after purchase and I was told simply “no.”

It’s unfortunate, really. The product is solid, compact and well built. It could be a much better product with the upgraded software bundled. Could they do this? Sure! OWC owns SoftRAID. So of course they have an incentive to push customers into an upgrade.

I won’t be one of them. I despise this type of covert salesmanship. If they were more clear up-front what it does out of the box and how much it costs to get full functionary, I’d feel differently.

As a result, I’m returning the unit and will avoid OWC in the future.

Would you consider that as a problem?

3. What M.2 ssds would you recommend?

Thank so much for your video!

[ricardorgomez]

Thank you for reviewing the unit. I love OWC products for their performance and value and glad this holds up to their standards. This is definitely on my list 😍

[thinktankubator]

Thanks for the review. I'd be really curious to compare/contrast the Express 4M2 to OWC's 8TB Thunderblade product. This seems to be a better value proposition, at least for 8TB's of RAID configurable external storage. Would you be able to do that?

[Trusteft]

I have a feeling the TB3 cable that comes with the enclosure is not the same that you show the enclosure connected to the mac.
Call it a hunch.
03:57 Is this a joke? Am I the only one who can't hear anything from the fan?

[berndkiltz]

Hey Jeff, that is a very interesting device - as for the noise: Did you ever consider swapping the fan for a noctura or something? Should be VERY silent then... ?

[shadowrd]

This is an awesome Tech. With everything you need to know. I don’t have a MacBook. I have an old Lenovo Thinkpad W500. But this is still great to know. You sir have a new subscriber. One last thing.? Just like Bernd Kiltz had said. In the comments down below. I was thinking of. Changing out the fan. For a Noctua fan. They make some quiet fans.

[ffxsam]

Pretty big design flaw: why have thumbless screw access and then require the user to use a screwdriver to access the drives?

[robchokehold]

Ugh, I bought one of those and that thing is LOUD. Louder than the 2018 Mac Mini going at full blast. Louder than my regular PC with constantly running case, CPU and gfx card fans. Louder than my external mechanical dual 3.5" drives. Louder than a Synology NAS with 4 drives in it. I mean LOUD. Will have to get a replacement fan before I can stand to keep this powered on. Thank you SO MUCH for NOT fitting it with a power switch, OWC. Or making the fan spin down when not in use. Gawdammit. For anyone who's also suffering from the noise pollution: the fan is 60mm x 60mm and can be a maximum of 16mm deep. So unfortunately, the 6cm Noctuas won't fit. So annoying, and it's not like the thing was cheap, at all. "Sad."

[timelapsega]

I love this thing, highly recommended especially considering how cheap ssd's have gotten. You can get an 8TB SSD raid that does 2300mb read/write for like $900. Really looking forward to an updated one that supports Gen4 SSD's.

[danielgrace]

Can you use it as a NAS ? Plug it in back of your routers usb port and view to the folders. Maybe launch games from it.

[jaimeduncan]

Very complete review. You said that 8TB is the maximum the unit supports. Do you mean "at the moment since there is no drives above 2TB available, or do you mean that even if the release 4TB m.2 ssd the unit will not be able to take advantage of them? thanks. Answer they list the max capacity with OWC drives, right now it 32TB