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OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 with support for up to 16 (320TB) 12Gb/s SAS drives

Posted on: 01/27/2024
How can I upgrade an OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 or OWC 1U4 enclosure to support 12Gb/s SAS drives?
And how can you increase the number of supported drives from 8 to 16 with a total capacity of up to 320TB?
In a very simple and cost-effective way. By simply replacing the factory-installed SATA 6Gb/s controller with a SAS 12Gb/s SATA 6Gb/s controller

Thanks to the possibility of replacing the factory SATA controller from OWC with the HighPoint RocektRAID 3720C 8i SAS/SATA macOS/Win controller, we can install SAS 12 Gb/s or SATA 6 Gb/s drives in HotSwap bays of OWC Flex 8 or OWC 1U4 cases. The bays themselves, originally installed in the OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 housing, are adapted to both SAS 12 Gb/s / 6 Gb/s and SATA 6 Gb/s drives.

However, when using the HighPoint RocektRAID 3742A 8i8e SAS/SATA macOS/Win controller, in addition to the drives mounted directly to the OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 enclosure, we gain the ability to connect another eight SAS or SATA drives via external SAS 12 Gb/s ports.
Thanks to this solution, we can install as many as 16 drives with a total capacity of up to 320TB

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