OWC Mercury Pro U.2 Dual Thunderbolt NVMe U.2 SSD Enclosure

I loaded this up with two of their 4x nvme sleds and cannot be happier. Great build quality and is detected every time!

Unlike Thomas’ poetic prose that do not provide any tangible information about the technical source of his problems, I will try to do so, inarticulate as I am.Tried to hook one of these up with an ASUS Z790 MB/ASUS TB'ex 4.0 controller, installed the U2 shuttle. Shuttle drives weren't recognized. ASUS said it was a OWC issue, OWC said it was a TB controller issue. Spent hours and hours trying to get it to work with no luck. All driver's updated, Bios and Firmware updated. Thunderbolt Control Center would see the device but would be in a Not Connected state. No one seemed to know how to fix that or what to look for.UPDATE: after down grading my ASUS Bios and using Intels latest Thunderbolt driver I am able to get 4 nvme drives to be recognized in one shuttle. Adding a second U.2 shuttle causes no issue but putting a drive in the 2nd shuttle causes it to fail - no drives recognized, device reading Not Connected.Due to an Amazon delivery persons misdelivering the first unit, I ended with someone’s package and was standing there when the misdelivered was happening - the driver ignored my waving/jumping up and down bc she had headphones on.. I digress). I immediately called Amazon bc I was ticked. I was told by Amazon to keep the original order if it showed up - it did a few days later, and they would send out a replacement immediately. So now I have two of these.Back to my problem, when I plugged the unit in and can get 4 drives to work in either but can’t get a Firth to either. I’ve tried various combinations with no luck. Frustrating.Also, I purchased the soft raid solution and setup a few different raid levels. There is NO performance gain over single drives. Disappointing. I used Samsung 980 2TB drives so they are gen 4 PCIe. I understand Thunderbolt 3/4 is limited to PCIe gen 3 - I’d hoped to get beyond 1500 when the limit is ~3000.So still frustrating. OWC supports has asked for logs etc but doesn’t have an answer to date.UPDATE 2: Now OWC is asking for receipts before they will assist me further. I sent them the order info from Amazon, but that isn’t good enough.IN CLOSING: Well OWC says it won’t work on my machine - ASUS Z790/ 13th gen Intel CPU. Two many upstream switches - kinda makes me think Windows 10/11 based machine using a Thunderbolt 3/4 would encounter the same problem and saying that an 8 drive configuration is supported for windows machines is at a minimum a mid characterization. Their recommendation is to try on a Mac.

This is a great product minus the fan noise. I ended up replacing it with a 25MM Noctua fan and it runs much quieter and cooler. Getting full 2800 MB/s with 4 x Crucial 4TB NVMEs. Plan on adding another sled when I’m ready for more space. That is one other downside, you have to purchase the NVME caddy. Also, don’t bother with SoftRaid. It’s not worth the money.

Doesn't mention it comes with ZERO shuttle trays. $231 and you still have to pay $300 for the trays to actually use it as intended. Very disappointed in that. Should at LEAST come with ONE! Or just say it's an HDD raid!

I love my Mac Studio, but need a lot of storage and Apple charges a ton for it. I was happy to discover this OWC enclosure that would allow up to eight M.2 drives to be installed. I ended up starting with 4 and expanded later when I found the drives on sale. Super pleased to have 8TB of storage for less than half of what Apple would charge. As usual, OWC stuff just works and have had no issues even with macOS 13 Ventura.

I have been using this with an M1 MacMini for about 8 months. It has performed perfectly. I highly recommend and eagerly look forward to a PCI-E 5, Thunderbolt 4 upgraded version.The only dislike I have is that it only includes a single U.2 enclosure. To get the dual out of this dual unit, you’ll have to send another $150 USD for the 2nd enclosure

There is no way this unit can live on a desk in a music studio. It creates a constant white noise hum and a coil whine. What makes that more annoying is the maximum length 2 meters of an active TB3 cable means it would be a pain to set it up under your desk. I don't really feel like swapping a fan on a brand new product. 4 OWC accelsior 8T ssds in RAID5 amount to ~1000 write ~1100 read. That's plenty for my needs but way way less than what you see on a PCIe card.

Ich nutze das Ding als Storage für meinen Mac Studio und es ist wirklich klasse. Man muss nur wissen dass man zwingend beide bays bestücken muss, sonst kommt man nicht auf die volle Geschwindigkeit, das ist etwas Schade.Es ist auf jeden Fall auch angenehm leise.