Are you a freelance photographer, content creator or graphic artist working from home or a small office? What do you currently do for the storage of all those hefty files of photos, videos and Illustrator files? You could use an external hard drive, especially if you are a Mac user and don’t want to pay Apple’s exorbitant storage prices. You could try storing everything in the cloud but that can be slow and the costs soon add up.
An alternative to this conundrum could be a hybrid solution with hot storage on a fast SSD for your current projects and cold storage on slower hard drives for your archives. The advantage of this solution is you get the speed of an SSD for the files you are currently editing, plus you get the low cost of a hard drive for the files you may only need to access once a week.
The device that offers this hybrid solution is the Orico DMM Series. Available in the same form factor as a Mac mini or Mac Studio, the DMM Series is available in several configurations. The basic Data Matrix Elite 2Big model I reviewed is the entry-level version, while the more expensive models offer extras like RAID stacking and Thunderbolt speeds up to 40Gbps.
The Data Matrix Elite is available in capacities of 6TB/ 10TB/ 18TB/ 24TB depending on the configuration you use. The design matches the Mac mini or Mac Studio perfectly and is small enough to stack a Mac mini on top or, if you have a Mac Studio, you can put the two units side by side. The power supply is an external brick which is about the same size as a laptop charger for an older PC.
Inside the Data Matrix Elite 2Big I reviewed, there are two bays for slotting in 3.5-inch hard drives. The review unit was populated with two Western Digital Red 4TB drives lashed together to appear on a computer as a single volume. These aren’t the fastest drives on the planet but they are solid and whisper-quiet, as well as being superbly reliable. They are perfect for storing long-term archives but you wouldn’t want to edit video on them.
On the underside of the Data Matrix Elite 2Big is a small hatch which opens and reveals an M.2 bay for installing an NVMe SSD. The version I had was fitted with a 1TB Orico SSD with supported speeds up to 1500MB/s. The sample I tested was labelled as an “Engineering Prototype” but the quality and finish seemed fine to me.
If you want more “hot storage” in the form of a larger SSD, you will have to upgrade to the Data Matrix Pro model which offers a 2TB NVMe SSD storage option. The SSD is where you would edit and store your hot projects because the solid state technology offers the best data speeds.
At the rear of the Data Matrix Elite 2Big, there is a power button and two Thunderbolt ports for connecting to the host computer and for daisy chaining other devices whether that be more Orico DMM units, an external drive or a USB-C iPhone. You can daisy chain up to five devices onto the Data Matrix Elite 2Big. There is also a DisplayPort for output to an external monitor with support for resolutions up to 8K, making it ideal for video editing. The one thing missing for me is an Ethernet port. I’d love to see this device usable as NAS.
At the front of the Data Matrix Elite 2Big are three activity LEDs to show the power status and the data activity for the HDDs and SSD. The front also sports a slot for CF Express memory cards, a 10Gbps USB A port, a 10Gbps USB-C port and slots for SD and microSD memory cards with transfer speeds up to 1500MB/s.
The Data Matrix Elite 2Big has a built-in fan that flows air over the hard drives to ensure everything stays cool. The NVMe SSD has a heatsink to passively cool the memory which can get quite hot when in use.
Setting up the unit is easy. As soon as I plugged the Data Matrix Elite into a Thunderbolt port on my Mac mini M2 Pro, I was offered the chance to initialize the drives. The two hard drives appeared as one and I opted to format them in GUID macOS Extended while I formatted the SSD as GUID APFS. And that was all I had to do.
When the Data Matrix Elite 2Big is turned on two drives will appear on the desktop and you can choose to maybe change the drive icons to, say, a red color for the SSD and blue for the HDD to signify the difference between the hot and cold storage bays.
The speed of the WD Red hard drives isn’t blisteringly fast. My Blackmagic Speed Test showed read and write speeds of around 207MB/s. That’s fine for cold storage but you wouldn’t want to edit video at those speeds. The 1TB SSD returned read speeds of 1457.9MB/s, which is very close to the promised 1,500MB/s on the device’s technical specifications. If you want faster SSD speeds, then the larger Data Matrix Pro model goes up to 3,000MB/s which is pretty good.
The basic Data Matrix Elite 2Big doesn’t have any RAID option but the Data Matrix 3Big and 6Big models do. That would be a good option if you wanted to have your storage running 24/7 as a backup and the WD Red drives are certainly certified for 24/7 operation.
Verdict: The Orico Data Matrix Elite is an ingenious storage solution offering the speed of SSD and the economy of HDD. The only major difference between the models is the storage capacity and the addition of RAID on the Pro and Ultra versions. At an early bird starting price of $999, the Data Matrix Elite 2Big gives you 6TB of storage and the option to scale the system using the Thunderbolt/USB4 daisy chaining. I wish Orico had added Ethernet support so the unit could be accessed over a network, but maybe that will come in future versions. If you are looking for a non-NAS storage solution with Thunderbolt compatibility and styling that matches the Mac mini and Mac Studio, the Orico Data Matrix Series is ideal.
Pricing & Availability: The Orico DMM Data Matrix Elite 2Big comes in 6TB/ 10TB/ 18TB/ 24TB capacities, while Data Matrix Pro 3Big offers 10TB/ 18TB/ 34TB/ 46TB of storage. Finally, the Data Matrix Ultra 6Big can be ordered in 22TB/ 72TB/ 82TB/ 112TB options. You can find more info at oricotechs.com.
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