OWC

OWC Express 4M2 Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure for 4 x M2 SSD with SoftRAID XT Lite

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£332.99 (Inc. VAT)
£277.49 (Ex. VAT)
SKU:
OWCTB3EX4M2SL
UPC:
0810586030090
Condition:
New
Current Stock:
2
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Description

4-Slot NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure with SoftRAID. Four easy-to-access M.2 NVMe SSD slots customizable for any workflow with up to 32TB of capacity and up to 2800MB/s performance.

Infinitely configurable. Infinitely reconfigurable.

You like to explore your own independent path, and digital storage is where you have fun, push hard and spark the imagination. You explore, you refine, and when ready, you share your vision with the world. The OWC Express 4M2 is the external drive built for the journey before you and the path yet to be explored. 

Customize your Express 4M2 with up to four NVMe SSDs, RAID them however you wish and connect it all with Thunderbolt 3 — the fastest and most flexible interface around. The sheer performance of the Express 4M2 helps you meet deadlines faster, giving you more time to explore your creativity and push your projects further.

Pint-Sized Powerhouse Small in stature. Big on capability. The OWC Express 4M2 is ready to serve with four easy-to-access M.2 NVMe SSD slots customizable for any workflow with vibration damping feet that allow for vertical or horizontal orientation. Install up to 8TB of capacity and experience up to 2800MB/s of mind-bending performance via Thunderbolt 3. The Express 4M2 is an amazingly small digital workhorse with world-renowned OWC quality and award-winning support built-in. 

Ingest and duplicate dailies at breakneck speeds, work with higher resolutions, smoothly scrub through demanding timelines, and plow through thousands of photos with ease. The OWC Express 4M2 is one seriously fast drive to have by your side to take your digital capabilities to a new level.

Built Smaller and Faster from Input by Pros Like You The OWC Express 4M2 is designed with superior ease-of-use in mind. We worked with award-winning creatives and listened to the kudos they heaped onto the OWC ThunderBay mini, and we put all that shared knowledge to good use when we set out to build the next-gen Thunderbolt 3 multi-bay drive. The result is 57% smaller and 2.5x faster OWC Express 4M2. 

It's smaller and easier to fit into your workflow, studio and on stage. It's faster with four easy-access M.2 slots so you can swap, upgrade or expand your Express 4M2 to configure and reconfigure it to serve any project need.

Game-Changing NVMe SSD Performance NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a hyper-efficient communications interface protocol built from the ground up to properly take advantage of SSD technology and high-performance connection buses like PCIe. The result is exponentially faster and efficient SSD storage, and the OWC Express 4M2 has room for four NVMe SSDs.

DisplayPort Display connection flexibility is yours with a convenient DisplayPort located right on the rear of the OWC Express 4M2. There's no need to worry about adapters or extra-long cables. Just plug your display directly into the Express 4M2 and you're all set.

Multi-Drive The OWC Express 4M2 comes equipped with OWC SoftRAID which provides the amazing capability to RAID across multiple drive enclosures. You can also add more Express 4M2 drives to your storage pool using Windows Storage Spaces. Configure and reconfigure your storage however you need by combining multiple OWC Express 4M2 drives together on Mac and Windows.

SoftRAID: Conventional Wisdom Turned on its Head It's often thought that hardware RAID is better than software RAID, but we've proven that not to be true. We've combined the performance and capacity of the OWC Express 4M2 with our robust SoftRAID engine. Experience breathtaking performance, multi-enclosure capability, advanced drive monitoring, e-notifications and downloadable updates. Once you do, you'll see how hardware RAID doesn't even come close.

The Better and Simpler Way to RAID We created SoftRAID to make it easier to maintain mission-critical workflows to save you time and money. With SoftRAID you no longer need to be locked into expensive hardware RAID technology that's not upgradeable or expandable. SoftRAID future-proofs your data and storage with software updates that provide cutting edge capabilities and robust stability. 

SoftRAID takes advantage of your computer's processor versus the slow processors found in most hardware RAID enclosures. The result is a fast and flexible RAID array with no discernible impact on your favourite apps. SoftRAID drive certification tells you whether or not a drive is up to the task before creating a RAID array. Advanced monitoring tools work behind the scenes to keep your RAID running in tip-top shape. 

SoftRAID protects your data by alerting you to issues before anything happens, ensuring you're protected when you're on a critical deadline. SoftRAID rebuilds your RAID in a fraction of the time it would take a hardware RAID to complete the same task, sparing you from significant downtime when you're ready to upgrade or replace a drive.

RAID and Storage Spaces The OWC Express 4M2 comes with SoftRAID Lite XT ready to be set up in RAID 0 performance or RAID 1 mirrored drive mode. So you can customize your Express 4M2 for speed or data redundancy. If you need more options, you can easily upgrade to add extra capabilities and RAID modes to meet any workflow demand. 

The OWC Express 4M2 fully supports Windows workflows as well. Using Windows Storage Spaces you can pool the four M.2 NVMe SSDs together with support for all the Storage Spaces configuration options including the ability to add another OWC Express 4M2 to expand your storage pool on the fly.

Connect to Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 Systems with Ease The OWC Express 4M2 is fully backwards compatible with Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2. Utilize Thunderbolt 3 performance to work at full speed, and step back to Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 whenever connectivity compatibility is needed for your workflow. Add a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter along with the appropriate Thunderbolt cable, and you're all set.

OWC Thunderbolt 3 Cable OWC Express 4M2 comes with an OWC Thunderbolt 3 cable which is Thunderbolt certified for Mac and Windows, with an additional 0.5 meter to 2.0 meter lengths available separately.

Quality You Can Trust Like all OWC drives, the OWC Express 4M2 is built to the highest standards of reliability and performance and Thunderbolt Certified for Mac and Windows. Because 100% reliability is always the goal, Express 4M2 is rigorously quality tested and backed by our one-year limited warranty plus award-winning, 24/7 customer support.

Highlights

  • Up to 32TB (as 4 x 8TB NVME SSD)
  • Up to 2800MB/s
  • Four M.2 NVMe SSD bays
  • Compact design
  • Advanced SoftRAID engine
  • Thunderbolt Certified for Mac and Windows
  • Thunderbolt 3 cable
  • 1 Year OWC Limited Warranty

What is in the box

1 x OWC Express 4M2 Enclosure
1 x SoftRAID XT Lite
1 x Thunderbolt 3 cable (40Gb/s)
1 x External power supply and cable
1 x Quick start guide

Note: Each SSD uses x 1 lane only. To get the full Thunderbolt 3 supported speed you need to install 4 SSD`s and set it to RAID. Only when fitted with 4 SSD`s together they will run on PCIe 3.0 x 4 lanes. Also, note that smaller size SSD`s are generally slower than higher size SSDs.

Mechanisms  Supported NVMe 2280 M.2 SSDs
Software MacOS 10.12 or later*
Windows 10 or later
*SSDs using 512b sector sizes require macOS 10.13 or later
Hardware  Any computer with a native Thunderbolt 3 port
Boot Support

Mac: macOS 10.12 or later1
Windows: Booting not supported

All four drive bays are bootable on macOS. SSDs with 512-byte sectors require macOS 10.13 or later.

Hot Plug Support

Yes

Chipset

(1) Thunderbolt 3 - Alpine Ridge DSL6540

Interface Thunderbolt 3
Device Ports 2 x Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C)
1 x DisplayPort 1.22
Display Support Up to one 4K display @ 60Hz,
or one 4K display @ 30Hz,
or two 4K displays @ 60Hz
Display Support by  Port Mini DisplayPort 1.2: Up to 4K @ 60Hz
Drive Bays 4m x M.2 - 2280 "M Key" (PCIe 3.0 x1 per slot). Note: Each SSD uses x 1 lane only. To get the full Thunderbolt 3 supported speed you need to install 4 SSD`s and set it to RAID. Only when fitted with 4 SSD`s together they will run on PCIe 3.0 x 4 lanes. Also, note that smaller size SSD`s are generally slower than higher size SSDs.
Drive Support M.2 NVMe
M.2 AHCI (PCIe only)
Data Transfer Rate (Maximum) Thunderbolt 3 : 40 Gb/s (or 5000 MB/s)
RAID Capable
Yes
RAID Levels Supported RAID 0
RAID 1
RAID 4
RAID 5
RAID 10
JBOD
RAID 6
RAID Features Software RAID
Mac OS Compatibility
macOS 10.12 Sierra
macOS 10.13 High Sierra
macOS 10.14 Mojave
macOS 10.15 Catalina
macOS 11.0 Big Sur
macOS 11.1 Big Sur
PC OS Compatibility
Windows 10 32-bit Edition
Windows 10 64-bit Edition
Windows Server 2016
Other Requirements When using one or more SSDs with 512 byte sectors, macOS 10.13 or later is required.
Host Port Requirements Thunderbolt 3 or later
Driver Required
No
Power Supply
External UL-listed universal auto-switching power supply
AC Input 100-240V, 50-60Hz, 1-2A
DC Output
+12V, 6A
Wattage 72W Watts
External Power Adapter Yes
Power Delivery Two Thunderbolt 3 ports with 15W power delivery each.
Number of SSD Bays 4
Device Ports (2) Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) Ports
(1) DisplayPort Port
Cooling (1) 60mm 2,800RPM None cooling fan
Power/Activity LED Yes
Housing Color
Black
Housing Material
Aluminum
Dimensions Height: 6.0 cm (2.4 in)
Length: 11.3 cm (4.4 in)
Width: 13.6 cm (5.4 in)
Weight 800.0 g (1.76 lbs)
Notes Hynix Gold P31 SSD’s are only compatible with Windows 10 when installed in this enclosure.
Does not support Dual-Mode DisplayPort (DP++), however, it does support Multi-Stream Transport (MST) in Windows 10.

Compatibility

iMac | 2017 iMac18,1 - A1418 - EMC3068
iMac | 2017 iMac18,2 - A1418 - EMC3069
iMac | 2017 iMac18,3 - A1419 - EMC3070
iMac | 2019 iMac19,1 - A2115 - EMC3194
iMac | 2019 iMac19,2 - A2116 - EMC3195
iMac | 2020 iMac20,1 - A2115 - EMC3442
iMac | 2020 iMac20,2 - A2115 - EMC3442
iMac | 2021 iMac21,1 - A2438 - EMC3663 - M1
iMac | 2021 iMac21,2 - A2439 - EMC3664 - M1

iMacPro | 2017 iMacPro1,1 - A1862 - EMC3144

MacBookAir | 2018 MacBookAir8,1 - A1932 - EMC3184
MacBookAir | 2019 MacBookAir8,2 - A1932 - EMC3184
MacBookAir | 2020 MacBookAir9,1 - A2179 - EMC3302
MacBookAir | 2020 MacBookAir10,1 - A2337 - EMC3598 - M1
MacBookAir | 2022 Mac14,2 - A2681 - EMC4074 - M2
MacBookAir | 2023 Mac14,15 - A2941 - EMC8301 - M2

MacBookPro | 2016 MacBookPro13,1 - A1708 - EMC2978
MacBookPro | 2016 MacBookPro13,2 - A1706 - EMC3071
MacBookPro | 2017 MacBookPro13,3 - A1707 - EMC3072
MacBookPro | 2017 MacBookPro14,1 - A1708 - EMC3164
MacBookPro | 2017 MacBookPro14,2 - A1706 - EMC3163
MacBookPro | 2017 MacBookPro14,3 - A1707 - EMC3162
MacBookPro | 2018 MacBookPro15,1 - A1990 - EMC3215
MacBookPro | 2018 MacBookPro15,2 - A1989 - EMC3214
MacBookPro | 2018 MacBookPro15,3 - A1990 - EMC3215
MacBookPro | 2019 MacBookPro15,1 - A1990 - EMC3359
MacBookPro | 2019 MacBookPro15,2 - A1989 - EMC3358
MacBookPro | 2019 MacBookPro15,3 - A1990 - EMC3359
MacBookPro | 2019 MacBookPro15,4 - A2159 - EMC3301
MacBookPro | 2019 MacBookPro16,1 - A2141 - EMC3347
MacBookPro | 2019 MacBookPro16,4 - A2141 - EMC3347
MacBookPro | 2020 MacBookPro16,2 - A2251 - EMC3348
MacBookPro | 2020 MacBookPro16,3 - A2289 - EMC3456
MacBookPro | 2020 MacBookPro17,1 - A2338 - EMC3578 - M1
MacBookPro | 2021 MacBookPro18,1 - A2485 - EMC3651 - M1 Pro
MacBookPro | 2021 MacBookPro18,2 - A2485 - EMC3651 - M1 MAX
MacBookPro | 2021 MacBookPro18,3 - A2442 - EMC3650 - M1 Pro
MacBookPro | 2021 MacBookPro18,4 - A2442 - EMC3650 - M1 Max
MacBookPro | 2022 Mac14,7 - A2338 - EMC8162 - M2
MacBookPro | 2023 Mac14,10 - A2780 M2 Pro
MacBookPro | 2023 Mac14,5 - A2779 M2 Max
MacBookPro | 2023 Mac14,6 - A2780 M2 Max
MacBookPro | 2023 Mac14,9 - A2779 M2 Pro

Mac Pro | 2019 MacPro7,1 - A1991 - EMC3203
Mac Pro | 2023 Mac14,8 - A2786 - EMC8163 - M2 Ultra

Mac Pro Rack | 2019 MacPro7,1 - A2304 - EMC3413
Mac Pro Rack | 2023 Mac14,8 - A2787 - EMC8164 - M2 Ultra

Mac Studio | 2022 Mac13,1 - A2615 - EMC3988 - M1 Max
Mac Studio | 2022 Mac13,2 - A2615 - EMC3988 - M1 Ultra
Mac Studio | 2023 Mac14,14 - A2901 - EMC8292 - M2 Ultra
Mac Studio | 2023 Mac14,13 - A2901 - EMC8292 - M2 Max

Macmini | 2018 Macmini8,1 - A1993 - EMC3213
Macmini | 2020 Macmini9,1 - A2348 - EMC3569 - M1
Macmini | 2023 Mac14,3 - A2686 - EMC8003 - M2
Macmini | 2023 Mac14,12 - A2816 - EMC8180 - M2 Pro

MacBook | 2015 MacBook8,1 - A1534 - EMC2746 - Core M
MacBook | 2016 MacBook9,1 - A1534 - EMC2991
MacBook | 2017 MacBook10,1 - A1534 - EMC3099

Reviews(1)

  • 5

    4M2 Enclosure is awesome for video editing

    Posted by Suchet Budon on 11th Apr 2022

    Im video editing on my M1 MAX MacBook Pro. Ive built this enclosure up to 8TB (with 4 x 2tb Sabrent SSD drives inside it). And it works really fast - The setup is so easy as well there are videos online. The after sales and pre-sales customer service is also fantastic as I had never used a RAID system before, this was the first time building it for me and there was lots of stuff on Youtube to help and the people at OWC are excellent too. I highly recommend it and look forward to more products from this company which I want to use for my movie work.