CES – OWC announced a beast of an external hard drive this week for CES, ThunderBlade V4. Calling it the “fastest external drive ever built,” OWC said it’s capable of speeds up to 2800MB/s read speeds, and 2450MB/s writes. And that’s not a typo, that’s megaBYTES per second.
ThunderBlade V4 for Thunderbolt 3
The ThunderBlade V4 is a blade RAID SSD storage device fore Thunderbolt 3. The blade portion of that description refers to storage on sticks, rather than 2.5″ SSD drives. As shown in the image below, ThunderBlade V4 supports 4 blades, which are RAIDed together for capacities up to 8TB.
OWC hasn’t announced when it will ship, but pricing is set at US$1,199.99 for 1TB, up to $4,999.99 for 8TB.
The company also announced Envoy Pro EX Thunderbolt 3 for Thunderbolt 3. This device offers less performance at lower starting point, with 1TB at $979.99 and 2TB at $1,699.99.
ThunderBay 4 is a new Thunderbolt 3 RAID enclosure for 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives, with capacities up to 48TB, starting at $749 for 4TB.