OWC 10TB External Thunderbolt Drive Costs Nearly $1,000

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You're forking out the big bucks with the 10 TB solution.

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Kevin Parrish
Kevin Parrish
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • danwat1234
    What drive is 5TB? Seagate and Hitachi's is 6TB, maybe a 5TB of that line? Or maybe a Toshiba mg04sca500e?
    Reply
  • pletopia
    How exactly do you do Raid5 with 2 drives ?! The minimum requirement for Raid5 is 3 drives ....
    Reply
  • TyrOd
    What drive is 5TB? Seagate and Hitachi's is 6TB, maybe a 5TB of that line? Or maybe a Toshiba mg04sca500e?

    It's a Seagate 5TB drive that they didn't announce to the public.
    It's a 5 Platter SMR drive similar to the 4TB SMR drive they announced to reseller partners last year.
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    Seagate's 6TB drive doesn't use SMR
    http://techreport.com/news/26282/6tb-crammed-into-3-5-seagate-enterprise-capacity-drives

    Thanks, it comes with 2TB, 4TB 5TB and 6TB flavors http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_enterprise_capacity_6tb_35_hdd_review_v4
    Reply
  • TyrOd
    13249940 said:
    Seagate's 6TB drive doesn't use SMR
    http://techreport.com/news/26282/6tb-crammed-into-3-5-seagate-enterprise-capacity-drives

    Thanks, it comes with 2TB, 4TB 5TB and 6TB flavors http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_enterprise_capacity_6tb_35_hdd_review_v4

    That doesn't make sense, though. Those enterprise 5TB drives cost $450 by themselves.
    OWC would be losing money at that price point.
    It's far more likely that it's the 5TB consumer drive that uses SMR which are ~$250 right now.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7290/seagate-to-ship-5tb-hdd-in-2014-using-shingled-magnetic-recording

    http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1038924&gclid=CPv4iaCBm74CFaMF7AodfX8Aaw&is=REG&Q=&A=details
    Reply
  • Haravikk
    How exactly do you do Raid5 with 2 drives ?! The minimum requirement for Raid5 is 3 drives ....
    That's not strictly true, a RAID-5 of two disks is certainly possible. The problem is that it offers no advantage over RAID-1, which will typically be faster in all cases, as well as being quicker to rebuild.

    I don't know who in their right mind would buy a two disk external drive for nearly $1,000 though; the whole benefit of RAID is that you can achieve high capacity using relatively low cost drives, but at the same time you can also gain redundancy. If you're serious about your data you'd be better off with a four bay enclosure with four 4tb drives in RAID-5 for the redundancy and 12tb capacity.
    Reply
  • Strunf
    13253178 said:
    How exactly do you do Raid5 with 2 drives ?! The minimum requirement for Raid5 is 3 drives ....
    That's not strictly true, a RAID-5 of two disks is certainly possible. The problem is that it offers no advantage over RAID-1, which will typically be faster in all cases, as well as being quicker to rebuild.

    It's not possible to have RAID 5 with just two drives, for RAID 5 you need to Strip and Parity, with two you can only have either Strip or Parity, Strip will be like RAID 0, Parity will be like RAID 1, if you check their website they don't speak of RAID 5, they say RAID 0, RAID 1, span and independent.
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    I don't really see the point in the extra expense of these Thunderbolt drives with just one or two discs. It's an added expense with no benefit as they won't saturate USB 3.0. I wouldn't bother with anything less than four discs. In all practicality eight or more.
    Reply