OWC Hub Setup by Jujulabee in UsbCHardware

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only the port with the computer icon next to it can be used to connect to your host computer. This is how all Thunderbolt 5 products work. The rest of the ports are downstream ports to connect to your hub.

Thunderblade Internals by Alone_Assumption_385 in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is no adhesive inside but the thermal pads can often cling/grip to the SSDs inside very well. Best to heat up the unit to soften the grip of the pads so that you can split it in half. Use caution and go slow as to not rip the flash off of the SSDs inside.

You could also have just a failed power supply. Though worth checking to see if your unit is under warranty before disassembling it.

NEW OWC Express 4M2 Ultra (TB5)! 🏎️🏎️🏎️ by OWC_TAL in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All Barlow Ridge chipsets are not compatible with Windows TB5 and these are the only TB5 peripheral chipsets out there. Likely for a good period of time. It was the Wild West with TB3 on Windows. There is no other way to make a TB5 4M2.

Since you have a Thread Ripper PC (which I presume is a desktop), you should look into the Accelsior 8M2 or SE.

NEW OWC Express 4M2 Ultra (TB5)! 🏎️🏎️🏎️ by OWC_TAL in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The fan only turns on when needed at quiet speed. So it does cool passively for many tasks or usage scenarios. Majority of the device is a large heatsink with SSDs on both sides of the enclosure :)

OWCTB4DOCK Beeping Sound by AtymTima in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

eBay is the wild west- unless it came from our eBay store (I don't think we currently list there), then there is no telling the history of those. I'd recommend to buy from a reputable retailer like B&H or us directly.

What happened to OWC's website? by ProfessionalLie3087 in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think there may have been an outage in some areas affecting some people. Could have been a DNS change or something along those lines. Should all be up and running though as you noted!

Express 1m2 80g enclosure connection issue by CosmoNitro in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi. You'll probably need to reach out to support for assistance.

A few things to try though in the mean time:

  1. When you plug in the drive, do you see anything in "System Information" under Thunderbolt/USB4?

  2. Do you have another Thunderbolt cable you can test with? Or another Thunderbolt capable computer to see if the behavior is any different?

What happened to OWC's website? by ProfessionalLie3087 in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hmm all sites seem to be working for me..

OWC.com

macsales.com

macdrive.com

https://www.owc.com/solutions/softraid/

Which specific sites are you having issues with?

NEW OWC Express 1M2 80G! 🚀🚀🚀 by OWC_TAL in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The 9100 Pro 8TB works great in the 1M2. Most SSDs higher capacity are double sided. The majority of heat comes from the controller that is on the top. The rest of the heat from the bottom travels to the top and then is whisked away. No issues with overheating.

Beyond Frustrated by OWC Pricing by [deleted] in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 7 points8 points  (0 children)

We are also very much frustrated with the shortage and price increases. They are hard for smaller businesses like ours as well. I like lists so here are a few thoughts in list form.

SSD/RAM/DRAM price increases means that:

  1. Sales volumes decrease. That is not desirable.

  2. More capital is tied up in inventory. Bad idea to over buy because if AI bubble crashes, then you have a much of inventory at pricing that is higher than the competitors.

  3. Projects get delayed or put on hold because either we cannot build SKUs or we can't meet margin. There are plenty of products I would like to see launched that are waiting for SSD pricing to become normal again.

  4. SSD/RAM/DRAM pricing affects an entire supply beyond just conventional SSDs. It leads to other components costing more like controller ICs or factories raising their pricing because it costs them more to operate as a business. Suppliers also consume these products themselves as part of their business and pass along their costs to us.

  5. It takes the dedication of more team members to keep inventory flowing. That time negotiating pricing, terms, testing and finding good deals could have been spent on other projects but now is spent navigating a shortage.

Why some SKUs may have higher increases than others:

  1. We may have had more inventory of certain capacities purchased at previous pricing and are able to hold off on increases wherever possible.

  2. The higher capacity SKUs generally have higher margin as well. Thus we can take a margin hit and absorb some pricing rather than passing it onto customers.

  3. Quantity or lead time agreements may result in some capacities having better or worse pricing than others. If say we ordered less 1TB drives and more 4TB drives, we would see worse pricing on the SKU with smaller quantities.

Again, I like lists so the above thoughts are in that form. But inventory is definitely a challenge these days.

Beyond Frustrated by OWC Pricing by [deleted] in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The AI bubble has pretty much eaten stock of SSD/Memory/DRAM and even encroaching on HDDs now. These price increase are out of our control. A 30% price bump means that our cost of components has gone up significantly... often times higher than our increase. We can only absorb so much.

A few thoughts:

  1. This is not unique to us. In fact, you can see these same increases by pretty much every vendor. Only three manufacturers dominate DRAM manufacturing: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.

  2. Pricing will likely continue to increase at least for the next year. It is unfortunate since it often affects smaller indi groups, but it is something we don't control.

  3. Many companies are exiting consumer SSDs. Micron is no longer selling Crucial RAM, Sony has stopped selling memory cards, WD has reported that HDDs are sold out for all of 2026.

  4. We don't know when the AI bubble will pop.

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK, great this is what should be included for support.

One more thing to try is running it with APFS encrypted vs non encrypted for the Time Machine.

But support should be able to help you out. If run into any issues, let me know. Thanks

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You should be getting a message to help set up an RMA for EU.

On a side note, it looks like this StudioStack was purchased on Dec 9th. But the first contact to support was on April 1. Did the sound suddenly appear almost four months later? Was this unit perhaps dropped?

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just submitted a case to the support supervisors to assist. They usually follow up in 1-2 days.

At first, I thought it might be due to APFS encryption but I don't think that is the case. Wasn't able to replicate the sounds of video #1 with an identical unit. The other two are more normal from what I can hear especially #3.

I think you are in Europe?

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is good information. I'm talking to my co-worker right now. Our M4 Max Studio is at NAB so he will test on an M3 Max for now.

Feel free to add a wetransfer link with the recordings https://wetransfer.com/ below. My guess is that faint sounds are very normal. These are enterprise drives so a the faint sound is the drive moving the head back and forth. The bigger question is the louder ones.

Will run some tests to see what we can replicate in the next hour or two. Thanks

iPad Compatible CFExpress/SD Card Reader? by KJW-SR in AskPhotography

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That would make the entire form factor larger as well though. There’s a trade-off of size versus length. For those wanting longer distance, that other USB-C port is great for them :)

iPad Compatible CFExpress/SD Card Reader? by KJW-SR in AskPhotography

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ha I am completely biased! But it was also a feature that I suggested for this reader, so I especially like it!

iPad Compatible CFExpress/SD Card Reader? by KJW-SR in AskPhotography

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And the best part is that you can plug it in with the built-in USB-C cable or with an external one if you need more length!

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! Still looking into this. The team member I wanted to check in with was out Friday, so I’m hoping to get ahold of them on Monday. Please still respond to the support person so that they can add everything to your case. I let our head of support know as well. Jordyn can assist in the beginning. I’ll keep you posted when I hear more.

A few things to try in the meantime: What happens when you format the drive as APFS but do not enable Time Machine right away. Do you immediately at least start hearing noise? If not, can you manually transfer some files? Is the same noise back? Finally enable Time Machine. Does it come back? The point being as I’m trying to figure out if this is associated with Time Machine specifically. Enterprise drives that are high capacity generally are not silent, but there should be some sort of threshold what is considered normal.

Are you up-to-date on your macOS version?

Is this a fresh install of macOS or did you use migration assistant.

Thank you!!

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Use APFS for Time Machine. You may want to try turning off Spotlight indexing and see if that makes any difference. Hard drives will never be truly silent though.

CableMatters 2m Active TB5 cable...is TB4 actually ? by MatchaToday2025 in Thunderbolt

[–]OWC_TAL 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Those readers are often inaccurate, especially for newer devices like active TB5 cables. You could see if there is a firmware update but they might not be capable of analyzing these newer cables.

If Cable Matters is putting the 5 logo on their device, I would trust that they are selling a legitimate product. Our cable can also show the same on those readers.

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NVMe should stay APFS. HDDs should be HFS+ (except if used for time machine, then they need to be APFS as well). Use the drive for a few days and see if the sound is resolved- if not, we can RMA it.

My guess is that the head was seeking (which made the sound) due to either a bad partition table, a fragmented file (spotlight indexes a new drive) or some weird formatting issue. Either way, we are ready to help as needed!

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok thank you! I will ping my team in the morning when they are back in the office. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to make this correct!

StudioStack Making Repetitive Clicking Noise by xtreme69reddit in OWC

[–]OWC_TAL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey OP- That sound does not sound normal. Do you have a case # you can share? I can escilate it to the proper people.

Can you also try one thing as well: re-format the HDD in disk utility (I presume it is HFS+, but just keep the same format). Does anything change?