OWC Drive Dock with Thunderbolt 2 & USB 3.1 Review

Test System, Software & Methodology.

For this kind of reviews, I use two types of drives whenever it is possible, HDDs and SSDs. Hard drives have the capacity advantage while SSDs provide the better performance. Both have their merits, and it depends on your usage scenario which you’ll opt to get and use.

The drives will be tested in all available drive modes. In this case, we only have software RAID and with limitations. I will still test this as it is a possible usage scenario for users down the road. Each drive mode is tested with a variety of benchmark apps before it’s destroyed and I move onto the next mode. That will give you a great view of a possible setup’s performance and comparable values to other reviews and devices.

Some of our benchmark applications can’t deal with dynamic disks and software RAID. That includes AS SSD and AIDA64. For those tests, I’ll leave out the two apps as the results will be same as a single drive setup.

Test system for USB:

• Gigabyte Z79X UD5H-BK
• Intel Core i7-4790K
• G.Skill Ares DDR3 1866MHz (2x4GB)
• Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD
• CoolerMaster Silent Pro Hybrid 850W
• Noctua NH-D15S
• Dimastech Easy V3
• Windows 10 Pro

Test system for Thunderbolt:

• Supermicro C7Z87-OCE
• Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3
• Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz (2x4GB)
• OCZ VX500 512GB SSD
• Sapphire R7 240 2GB
• be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W
• Noctua NH-D15S
• Lian Li PC-T60
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Software used:

• AIDA64 Storage Benchmark
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• ATTO Disk Benchmark
• AS SSD Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark 64bit

Storage Drives used:

• WD RED NAS 6TB
• Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB