The ThunderBlade V4 8 TB from OWC is a reliable and high-performance drive for data storage. The ThunderBlade V4 achieves very high transfer rates. It also convinces with absolute quiet running and low energy consumption in operation. The Thunderblade offers a total of four slots for the installation of drives. Data transfer speed up to 2800MB/s. With SoftRAID, two ThunderBlades can achieve dizzying speeds of up to 3800MB/s. Capacities of up to 8TB. Daisy chain up to 6 Thunderbolt 3 devices. Robust portability in a slim design. Including a snug-fitting ballistic hard shell ThunderBlade continues to impress audio and video experts as an innovative and revolutionary drive. ThunderBlade recently took home two top awards from the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas. ThunderBlade received the BaM Award in the "Store" category and was named "Best of Show" of the future. Both awards are judged by industry experts and recognize innovative technologies that deliver real business and creative benefits.
The ThunderBlade V4 8 TB from OWC is a reliable and high-performance drive for data storage. The ThunderBlade V4 achieves very high transfer rates. It also convinces with absolute quiet running and low energy consumption in operation. The Thunderblade offers a total of four slots for the installation of drives. Data transfer speed up to 2800MB/s. With SoftRAID, two ThunderBlades can achieve dizzying speeds of up to 3800MB/s. Capacities of up to 8TB. Daisy chain up to 6 Thunderbolt 3 devices. Robust portability in a slim design. Including a snug-fitting ballistic hard shell ThunderBlade continues to impress audio and video experts as an innovative and revolutionary drive. ThunderBlade recently took home two top awards from the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas. ThunderBlade received the BaM Award in the "Store" category and was named "Best of Show" of the future. Both awards are judged by industry experts and recognize innovative technologies that deliver real business and creative benefits.
The ThunderBlade V4 8 TB from OWC is a reliable and high-performance drive for data storage. The ThunderBlade V4 achieves very high transfer rates. It also convinces with absolute quiet running and low energy consumption in operation. The Thunderblade offers a total of four slots for the installation of drives. Data transfer speed up to 2800MB/s. With SoftRAID, two ThunderBlades can achieve dizzying speeds of up to 3800MB/s. Capacities of up to 8TB. Daisy chain up to 6 Thunderbolt 3 devices. Robust portability in a slim design. Including a snug-fitting ballistic hard shell ThunderBlade continues to impress audio and video experts as an innovative and revolutionary drive. ThunderBlade recently took home two top awards from the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas. ThunderBlade received the BaM Award in the "Store" category and was named "Best of Show" of the future. Both awards are judged by industry experts and recognize innovative technologies that deliver real business and creative benefits.
The ThunderBlade V4 8 TB from OWC is a reliable and high-performance drive for data storage. The ThunderBlade V4 achieves very high transfer rates. It also convinces with absolute quiet running and low energy consumption in operation. The Thunderblade offers a total of four slots for the installation of drives. Data transfer speed up to 2800MB/s. With SoftRAID, two ThunderBlades can achieve dizzying speeds of up to 3800MB/s. Capacities of up to 8TB. Daisy chain up to 6 Thunderbolt 3 devices. Robust portability in a slim design. Including a snug-fitting ballistic hard shell ThunderBlade continues to impress audio and video experts as an innovative and revolutionary drive. ThunderBlade recently took home two top awards from the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas. ThunderBlade received the BaM Award in the "Store" category and was named "Best of Show" of the future. Both awards are judged by industry experts and recognize innovative technologies that deliver real business and creative benefits.
Last updated at 03/21/2026 16:28:56
OWC 8.0TB ThunderBlade Ultra High-Performance Gen 2 Thunderbolt 3 Storage Solution, (OWCTB3TBV4T08)
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originally posted on macsales.com
I had the pleasure of using this drive on an high-stakes photo shoot recently. I was shooting on two separate workstations and doing post on another. After the first week of shooting I needed to back-up sessions at the end of another 18 hour day before I hung my hat up for the day and man was I tired. I dragged the session over to the Thunderblade... ?copying 125 GB to Thunderblade? Not what I wanted to see at the end of the day but my disappointment turned to amazement as the progress bar shot across the screen and said ?less than 2 minutes remaining.? This instantly became one of the most important tools in my arsenal. BRAVO OWC this beauty is world-class!
originally posted on digitec.ch
Works with iMac at the same speed as the internal SSD does (if not faster).* The power supply sometimes produces extremely quiet high pitched sound, which can only be heard at very close range (within 0.5 m). Solved by placing it into the iPhone box.** Solved by applying black tape.
originally posted on macsales.com
The Thunderblade is a solid professional product encased in a nearly indestructible drive. I've connected it to my new M1 MacBook Pro Max and the speeds are all I could have hoped for. Lightroom and Photoshop perform at incredibly fast speeds. If I could have given 4.5 stars I would have because something about Softraid seems to cause reboots of Big Sur and now Monterey. Doesn't seem to be related to the M1 architecture, because it happened with my prior intel iMac as well as the M1 MacBook.
| General | |
| Device Type | Solid state drive - external (portable) |
| Capacity | 8 TB |
| Interface | Thunderbolt 3 |
| Features | Rugged, NVM Express (NVMe), Intel DSL6540 controller |
OWC 8.0TB ThunderBlade Ultra High-Performance Gen 2 Thunderbolt 3 Storage Solution, (OWCTB3TBV4T08)
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
I had the pleasure of using this drive on an high-stakes photo shoot recently. I was shooting on two separate workstations and doing post on another. After the first week of shooting I needed to back-up sessions at the end of another 18 hour day before I hung my hat up for the day and man was I tired. I dragged the session over to the Thunderblade... ?copying 125 GB to Thunderblade? Not what I wanted to see at the end of the day but my disappointment turned to amazement as the progress bar shot across the screen and said ?less than 2 minutes remaining.? This instantly became one of the most important tools in my arsenal. BRAVO OWC this beauty is world-class!
Works with iMac at the same speed as the internal SSD does (if not faster).* The power supply sometimes produces extremely quiet high pitched sound, which can only be heard at very close range (within 0.5 m). Solved by placing it into the iPhone box.** Solved by applying black tape.
The Thunderblade is a solid professional product encased in a nearly indestructible drive. I've connected it to my new M1 MacBook Pro Max and the speeds are all I could have hoped for. Lightroom and Photoshop perform at incredibly fast speeds. If I could have given 4.5 stars I would have because something about Softraid seems to cause reboots of Big Sur and now Monterey. Doesn't seem to be related to the M1 architecture, because it happened with my prior intel iMac as well as the M1 MacBook.
The unit is behaving well, but there are two things worrying me. I haven't had these problems, but Murphy's law says they will pop up at the worst time.1. OWC has said that some apps do not "play well" with SoftRAID. Recommend RAID 4 and not RAID 5. Raid 5 avoids a bottleneck of having one disk designated as a checksum only.2. I have some units at work, original Thunderblade, Thunderblade X8 etc. Have had occasional kernel panics with SoftRaid listed in the backtrace. But worse is that after 2 months of problems, working with support and shipping the X8 unit back to OWC, it still comes up with a failure of one of the NVMe units and then is unable to rebuild the array, thus losing everything on it. The idea is that RAID is supposed to be more reliable than single ... MoreThe unit is behaving well, but there are two things worrying me. I haven't had these problems, but Murphy's law says they will pop up at the worst time.1. OWC has said that some apps do not "play well" with SoftRAID. Recommend RAID 4 and not RAID 5. Raid 5 avoids a bottleneck of having one disk designated as a checksum only.2. I have some units at work, original Thunderblade, Thunderblade X8 etc. Have had occasional kernel panics with SoftRaid listed in the backtrace. But worse is that after 2 months of problems, working with support and shipping the X8 unit back to OWC, it still comes up with a failure of one of the NVMe units and then is unable to rebuild the array, thus losing everything on it. The idea is that RAID is supposed to be more reliable than single disks but it does not seem to be the case. The NVMe shows up as no errors, but the array is corrupted and tries to rebuild that single disk.SO yes, not a 5 star review. Possibly the hardware is fine and it is just software, but that is part of the system you are buying into. Would I recommend it to a friend? Maybe, with a warning.
I have a somewhat older (2017) but well-appointed (4.2GHz i7, 32GB, Radeon Pro 580 8GB...) 5k iMac. i was working on a 4K project using Adobe Premiere.Things were working ok using a major brand, bus-powered, usb-c SSD (about 900MB/s via blackmagic speed test). But still far from optimally. It would take 3-5 seconds or longer to engage playback, sometimes the program window wouldn't refresh, etc...With the project deadline fast approaching i thought i should reconsider my situation. So after a little research it seemed the ThunderBlade was my best logical answer. Originally, I'd thought I also needed a dock, as to not consume all my Thunderbolt ports. BUT considering the ThunderBlade can be daisy-chained, that solved that problem, saving me about $300 additional ... MoreI have a somewhat older (2017) but well-appointed (4.2GHz i7, 32GB, Radeon Pro 580 8GB...) 5k iMac. i was working on a 4K project using Adobe Premiere.Things were working ok using a major brand, bus-powered, usb-c SSD (about 900MB/s via blackmagic speed test). But still far from optimally. It would take 3-5 seconds or longer to engage playback, sometimes the program window wouldn't refresh, etc...With the project deadline fast approaching i thought i should reconsider my situation. So after a little research it seemed the ThunderBlade was my best logical answer. Originally, I'd thought I also needed a dock, as to not consume all my Thunderbolt ports. BUT considering the ThunderBlade can be daisy-chained, that solved that problem, saving me about $300 additional expense!Speaking of solving problems! The over 2x increase (+ or - 2200 MB/s) in drive speed has really breathed new life into my workflow! Realistically speaking, I still sometimes see a second or so lag engaging timeline playback. But that's a massive improvement over the 3-5, as much as 10 or more seconds i was seeing with my previous drive. And general timeline scrubbing is now just shy of real-time.The drive also (at least mine did) came pre-formatted as RAID 0. So i was up and running right out of the box. I connected it to my existing setup and moved my nearly 1TB project file from the USB-C SSD in just over 20 minutes. If you're looking to measurably improve your Apple + Adobe Premiere performance WITHOUT having to buy a whole new machine, I'd consider this money VERY well spent!
I have to say that build quality of the device is excellent and I especially appreciate the fact that it has passive cooling (no fan). Speed is excellent however it comes with a grain of salt (or few) - to get full performance you have to use SoftRAID and OWC driver otherwise formatted with Apple Disk Utility device performance will be a hit and miss. The software that unlocks full performance has number of issues IMO hence the rating I gave. First and foremost - it doesn t support APFS (seriously? 2 years after APFS was introduced?) as of now. Secondly to load the driver you have to compromise Catalina security allowing 3rd party system components to be loaded at boot time. This is not a right solution. Last if you use OWC driver the drive itself won t show in ... MoreI have to say that build quality of the device is excellent and I especially appreciate the fact that it has passive cooling (no fan). Speed is excellent however it comes with a grain of salt (or few) - to get full performance you have to use SoftRAID and OWC driver otherwise formatted with Apple Disk Utility device performance will be a hit and miss. The software that unlocks full performance has number of issues IMO hence the rating I gave. First and foremost - it doesn t support APFS (seriously? 2 years after APFS was introduced?) as of now. Secondly to load the driver you have to compromise Catalina security allowing 3rd party system components to be loaded at boot time. This is not a right solution. Last if you use OWC driver the drive itself won t show in About this Mac > Storage. Have no explanation to this strange phenomena. Wrapping up my essay - hardware is great. Software needs work.
Very very happy with this drive so far - setting it up through SoftRAID was easy, and once set up this drive is incredibly fast. I use it for audio, batch processing and copying files happens in a flash now - and backups literally take seconds. I was able to turn buffering off completely in my DAW as it's not needed any more. I also like the added security that SoftRAID brings, monitoring the health of the internal drives. Highly recommend the upgrade - it's worth the extra cost!!!
I've been a software developer for 30 years, and for the past 15 years have used OWC products. Finally, I am done with them. I recently had a 2 month old thunderblade die and sent it to 3 data recovery specialists who could not recover ANY useable data from the drive, upending my business. To make matters worse, their service was atrocious. I had to go through a lengthy process to get the drive replaced, and then they wouldn't even replace it, opting to recondition the drive. I've spent an unbelievable amount of money on their products over the years, only to endure an ever worse, buggy and unsupported SoftRAID application. No more.
This drive is too complicated for its own good. I spent days with tech support to get it recognized on my MacBook Pro, then copied data to it. Later, the trial to the RAID software expired and an offer was made to buy the software to again view the drive--maddening. Once a product key was entered, I could again see files in Finder but Lightroom and other apps cannot see the drive and report it as unplugged. Tech support has advised if it is viewable in Finder that is the end of their obligation, even though their own software reports it as unmounted. Now too much time has passed that the device is not returnable to B&H. A very expensive paperweight!
I hesitated before I bought this because of the price; after I was sure this was fair, I bought it from B&H so I could use my B&H PayBoo card and get reimbursed for the sales tax. I haven't looked back. It is an extremely fast 8 TB and I use it to edit large drone photos and movies as well as family movies. Final Cut Pro finally flies! The soft raid software that comes with this drive is excellent and gives me the full 2800 MB/s it promises. So much faster than my iMac memory/SSD and my external SSD cards. I highly recommend this drive for fast processing of very large files like photographs and movies. They recommend you keep backups and I do.
| General | |
| Device Type | Solid state drive - external (portable) |
| Capacity | 8 TB |
| Interface | Thunderbolt 3 |
| Features | Rugged, NVM Express (NVMe), Intel DSL6540 controller |
