The OWC MINISTAC STX The latest addition to the Ministack family since 2005. Ministacks have always been designed as a nice compliment to the Apple Mac Mini, and it still is, you can use it with any desktop or laptop. .
The new MiniStack features STX storage and Thunderbolt expansion, and according to OWC it is the world’s first Thunderbolt certified Thunderbolt 4 storage solution. It is primarily designed to be a jack of all trades solution that provides connectivity and multiple storage options.
The miniStack STX is equipped with a universal SATA HDD / SSD bay and an NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD slot. The three Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports enable you to connect to Thunderbolt, USB and future USB4 drives, displays, A / V mixers, cameras and tablets; As well as desktop accessories such as keyboards, card readers or mice.
Key features
- Extensive power: Add more than 200x data storage on top of your Mac Mini’s built-in storage
- More connections: Add a mix of up to five Thunderbolt devices, three USB devices and two displays
- Whisper-quiet: An aluminum housing with an internal heat sink and high-efficiency cooling fan provides cooling, almost silent operation
- Maximum compatibility: Use with Thunderbolt or USB equipped Mac, PC, iPad, Chromebook, Android tablet or anything that supports external storage
- Data Security: Add RAID 1 protection with optional OWC SofTRAID software
- Easy backup: Apple Time Machine and Windows file history ready
- Plug and play
- Thunderbolt cable included
Size and form factor
The MiniStack STX is similar to the Mac Mini. It’s not small, but it’s also not huge, so you can use it with a MacBook or PC notebook, desktop machine, iPad and Chromebook.
Because they are designed to be stackable, you can create beautiful, neat mini-towers.
Dual drive
The universal SATA drive bay contains a hard disk drive or SSD to increase data storage performance. When you need to support low latency instant access operations, such as video editing, the NVMe M.2 SSD slot makes a good addition. NVMe is designed to provide the possibility of speeding up modern flash drive technology using a more direct path to the computer’s processor over PCIe.
With multiple drive configurations available, you can get real-world data transfer speeds of up to 770MB / s. It lets you remove 5GB of video footage in about 6 seconds. No, it’s not blindly fast, however, it’s enough when working with lots of footage from today’s modern cameras on a decent computer.
You can use a SATA drive to back up a time machine or file history when working from an NVMe drive.
Input and output
The MiniStack STX has three Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports for device connection and one more for connecting to a computer. There is also a 20V DC input.
The MiniStack STX is designed to allow you to connect past, present or future devices / accessories via three Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports. These three ports allow you to create three independent chains with a total of five Thunderbolt devices, including one USB device at the end of each chain (for a total of 8 devices). You can now move devices from one chain without affecting another chain (s).
Construction standards
The OWC miniStack STX is well made and features a rather inadequate design. The OWC symbol illuminates in front of it.
How easy is it to set up?
The OWC miniStack STX is fairly plug-and-play. When you connect it to your computer you turn on the OWC Drive Guide which asks you how you want to configure your drive.
Once you select your option you click Next and all you have to do.
Change and remove drives
Changing drives inside the OWC miniStack STX is quite straightforward. All you have to do is undo the four screws on the bottom of the OWC miniStack STX and remove the top cover. Here you can easily swap HDD / SSD and add or remove an NVMe drive.
Speed
Even if you use NVMe, OWC miniStack STX will not give you the speed you want. OWC claims that the miniStack STX can deliver speeds of up to 770MB / s.
Above you can see a speed test done with 2TB 7200rpm HDD.
Above you can see a speed test done with OWC Aura P12 Pro NVMe. Although this SSD is capable of writing speeds of up to 3000MB / s and read speeds of up to 3200MB / s, you will not be able to get anywhere near it if you use it in an OWC miniStack STX.
Softread
You can use OWC’s SoftRAID software with your MiniStack STX and create a RAID 1 to automatically keep a uniform copy of all your data on each drive. SoftTRAID has been around for over 25 years and is a great software RAID solution for Mac and Windows.
SoftRaid starts protecting your data before you start saving by verifying that Ministack STX drives are safe for data storage. In the unlikely event that you encounter a disk problem, your data is still complete and accessible to other drives of the miniStack STX.
SoftTRAID constantly monitors your disks in a combination of SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) features with its own I / O statistics. This deep dive disc health analysis identifies potential problems so you can take preventive measures. Since SoftRAID is available for both Mac and PC, it allows you to share ministack STX between computers if you need to.
Real world use
I was using the OWC MiniStack STX with the Apple MacBook Air, initially as an expansion hub, which I could also use to do dual backups of the material I was shooting on the street. Although it’s not the fastest device, it was usually fast enough to back up a CFast 2.0 card that I use in early media. I can make a backup to an NVMe drive that I can also use to edit, as well as create another backup to the HDD drive.
The MiniStack STX has ample input so that I can comfortably attach additional drives and card readers if needed.
Was this the perfect solution to this kind of thing? Probably not, but it still works reasonably well. Typically, with my laptop, I use an expansion hub that needs to be powered up anyway, so there wasn’t a big exit from the MiniStack STX. Since I had two drives installed inside it meant using it instead of an expansion hub and connecting multiple drives.
Price and availability
The OWC miniStack STX is now available in a variety of configurations.
You can buy the base enclosure for $ 279 USD without any pre-installed drive. Prices then range from $ 349 USD for one Ministack STX Up to mini 1,499 USD for a miniStack STX with a 2TB HDD, a 14TB HDD and a 4TB SSD.
You can configure the perimeter with any combination of HDD / SSD and NVMe capabilities to suit your needs.
Thought
The MiniStack STX is a nice little device, but it is not seen as the jack of all trades and the master of none. It can certainly be used for a variety of purposes, but the speed it gives is a bit slow and it can deter many people from considering it.
In many ways, the MiniStack STX is a slight niche, but it may initially appeal to the owners of the recent Mac Mini.
