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Other World Computing, often shortened to OWC, has released the ThunderBlade Gen 2 external SSD.
This second-generation external SSD comes at a lower price point than its predecessor while offering improved performance. Specifically, the ThunderBlade Gen 2 runs cooler than its previous version while keeping its ‘near-silent’ operation thanks to a finless design. The SSDs can be stacked and up to six can be daisy-chained together.
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OWC says the drives can reach speeds up to 3,800MB/s when multiple are used alongside OWC’s SoftRAID program — that equates to roughly 1TB of data being transferred in just four and a half minutes. On their own, the drives are capable of transfers up to 5000MB/s. These speeds are achieved with the onboard dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, which use the USB Type-C connector.
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As you could expect from such performance, these drives aren’t cheap. The ThunderBlade Gen 2 external SSDs come in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB capacities for $ 799, $ 1,199, $ 1,899 and $ 3,499, respectively. Each drive comes with a custom hard-shell case, a Thunderbolt 3 cable and a three year OWC limited warranty.
To purchase and find more information on the ThunderBlade Gen 2 drives, head over to OWC’s website.
Update (January 29, 2019): This article has been edited to clarify that when daisy-chained, the ThunderBlade Gen 2 SSD drives can reach speeds of 3,800MB/s when used alongside OWC’s SoftRAID program and speeds of 5,000MB/s when used individually. The previous version of this article implied the top speed of the drives themselves were 3,800MB/s.
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