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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/500190
MacDirectory 57 CONTENTS DEPARTMENT Ports of Call One of the new Mac Pro's most valuable features is its abundance of ports, both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. Not only can it drive high-resolution displays, Thunderbolt 2 has the kind of throughput that was once only the domain of internal expansion slots. This opens up lots of possibilities not only for the diminutive Mac Pro but us owners of slim, sealed iMacs. With nearly twice the throughput of FireWire 800 and the added benefit of being a very low cost connection, SuperSpeed USB 3.0 slots, ideal for adding comparatively cheap storage and rapidly ingesting video and photos from flash storage cards. The iMac has two Thunderbolt 2 and four USB 3.0 ports, but dedicating one of the Thunderbolts to OWC's very new Thunderbolt 2 Dock provided something close to the Pro, with five additional USBs, audio in and out, FireWire 800, a second Ethernet slot and HDMI 1.4b. One of the Thunderbolt ports is the uplink to the Mac; the other can chain up to five more devices. The performance and obvious build quality of the Dock is outstanding and, in brushed aluminum and shiny black, it's one of OWCs most elegant creations and styled to be an iMac's perfect companion. The Storage Question Staying with OWC, I decided that the ThunderBay 4 was a great value for a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. I had been reading interesting things about SoftRAID 5, a multi-threaded software RAID solution for the Mac OS that promised performance that could compete with a more expensive hardware RAID option. Though the enclosure is offered in an empty, bring-your-own-drive configuration, the SoftRAID options, priced roughly $100 more, include four, pre-certified drivesready for striping, saving many hours of setup time. I opted for a 16TB setup ($1,234.99). SoftRAID allowed me to create a 12 GB RAID 5. It offers roughly three times the speed of individual drives with the ability to loose one drive without loosing any data. SoftRAID runs efficiently in the REVIEW MacDirectory 57 Product: OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID (16TB, SoftRAID 5) Made by: macsales.com Price: $1,234.99 Pros: Very speedy RAID at a reasonable price; Well built; easy setup Cons: Does little to quiet noisy drives Rating: