Review: AKiTiO Thunder3 Quad Mini 4-Bay Thunderbolt 3 Storage Enclosure

Achieving Maximum Speed

Initially I planned to put 4 small SSD drives in it and run them in a RAID0 to get max speed from unit and see if I could get close to the Thunderbolt 3 maximum 40Gbit/sec transfer speeds. Upon a little more detailed reading of the specs, I realized it was a non-hardware RAID device, meaning it will house 4 drives but they will all be independent separate drives. Software RAID is available, however.

At that point, I purchased one 500GB Western Digital Blue SSD spec’d as having 500MB/sec read/write speeds. There will be times I want to use a USB converter to access it on other systems. For this reason, I am not doing any RAID with the drive, at least for now.

Keeping it Cool

With 4 drives internally, the Thunder3 Quad Mini could get a little warm, especially if you use traditional hard drives and not SSD drives. There is a small fan on the back to circulate air (Figure 4, below). To activate the fan there is a small switch to turn it on. In the following image you can see the ports and plugs available on the back side of the Thunder3 Quad Mini.

Figure 4. The Thunder3 Quad Mini’s rear-panel fan

Detailed specs of the Thunder3 Quad Mini are available here.

Thunderbolt 3 Features

Some interesting things the AKiTiO Thunder3 Quad Mini will do because of its Thunderbolt 3 interface:

• Because Thunderbolt 3 can carry substantial power for devices when it is plugged into my Macbook Pro I can remove the power cable. This frees up a T3 port on my laptop for other things and … bonus … it can even power other devices that have a USB-C connector including some laptops, mobile phones/tablets, etc.
• You can daisy chain up to 6 devices so you can load up lots of drives with a simple string of cable and only one port on the computer.
• It has a Display Port plug on the back. This means the drive can be a hub for your desktop. One single cable from your computer and you can run a 4k Display and multiple Thunderbolt 3 devices. Think of the reduction in clutter you can achieve.
• With the Quad Mini and Adobe you could load it with 4 different drives and use each one separately as a scratch disc for different things like render files, media files, audio files etc. This should really make Adobe Premiere nimble and quick. Now I just need 3 more drives.

Speed Tests

Of course I had to do some speed tests so I loaded up the AJA Disk Test program on my Mac. My first test was on the installed system drive for the Mac and I got pretty good speeds: 1,286 MB/sec Write and 1,972 MB/sec Read (Figure 5, below).

Figure 5. Read/write test results for the installed system drive

When I tested the WD Blue drive in the Quad Mini I got the solid readings I was expecting from a SSD drive over a T3 connection: 420 MB/sec Write and 499 MB/sec Read (Figure 6, below). Those are right on the numbers marketed by AKiTiO for this unit.

Figure 6. Read/write speeds for the WD Blue drive

Of course, this kind of speed is not even scratching the surface of what a Thunderbolt 3 connection can do. It’s great to know I now have a drive that can operate at full speed and not be restricted by a legacy connection speed like most of my older USB 3.0 external drives. This little Quad Mini is going to get plenty of use with the Mac. In addition, I can now use the AKiTiO T3 to T2 converter to get max speed out of my older AKiTiO Thunderbolt 2 drive.

The biggest con for me was my original expectation of the Quad Mini to use it in a RAID0 for sheer speed with hardware RAID that I experienced with the Thunder2 Duo Pro. That would have been a great feature. Unfortunately, I will just be using it as a dock for a series of standalone drives.

Are the AKiTiO line of drives a little pricier than those you can easily get online or at a big box store? They are, but their features are top notch, their build quality is robust, and you can depend on them for the long haul. All their “little things that make them better” add up to a pretty solid, robust drive.