Other World Computing today announced its Mercury Elite Pro mini portable external storage solution now features the next generation Oxford 944SE bridge chipset from PLX Technology for faster data throughput, reduced power consumption, and even cooler operation. Offering a “Quad Interface” of FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0, and eSATA connectivity for data transfer speeds up to 300MB/s, the Mercury Elite Pro mini delivers high performance storage/backup to Mac or PC users in a portable, no AC adapter required Plug and Play footprint.
13 “Quad Interface” models offering a variety of speed and capacity options from $99.97:
5400RPM
- 250GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $99.97
- 320GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $104.99
- 500GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $119.99
- 750GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $139.99
- 1.0TB 5400RPM 8MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $169.99
- 1.5TB 5400RPM 8MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $274.99
7200RPM
- 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $109.99
- 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $129.99
- 750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $174.99
OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G Solid State Drive (SSD) Equipped
- 60GB SSD FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $209.99
- 115GB SSD FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $299.99
- 240GB SSD FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $594.99
- 480GB SSD FW800/400+USB2+eSATA Storage Solution $969.99
Built For Performance & Flexibility
Designed to emulate the award winning history of the larger desktop sized Mercury Elite Pro, the mini portable storage solution features the fastest 2.5″ SATA hard drive mechanisms up to 7200RPM and even OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3G Solid State Drives for demanding A/V, digital photography, professional music, graphics, general data, and Time Machine ready storage needs. With two FireWire 800 ports, users can “daisy chain” multiple devices and utilize the fastest data transfer interface, eSATA, while bus powering via FireWire. The Mercury Elite Pro mini can also be used with storage capable digital cameras and camcorders with FireWire and/or USB data ports for fast, on-location backups of images and video.
Portable & Bus Powered Storage Up To 1.5TB
Measuring a compact 3.8″ W x 5.5″ L x 1.1″ H, the OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini offers storage capacity up to 1.5TB – enough space for up to 1,500,000 JPEG photos, 750 DVD movies, 114 hours of digital video, or 525,000 MP3 songs – in its fanless, aircraft grade brushed aluminum enclosure. Because it’s bus-powered, the Mercury Elite Pro mini doesn’t require an AC adapter, which makes it ideal for in-the-field business professionals, creative/entertainment professionals, students, and anyone else needing to back up data, transport large files between computers, gain additional storage capacity, and even perform video editing and live music recording. With multiple interfaces, all connection cables included, and a $100 retail value disk utility software bundle, the Mercury Elite Pro solutions offer Plug and Play ease of use with any Mac or PC.
Backed By The Best Support In The Industry
The best warranty is one a consumer should never have to use, but should the need occur, OWC is proud to provide a superior level of support and warranty coverage to its customers. The OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini comes fully backed by an industry-leading three year warranty which includes a 48-hour warranty repair turnaround time with complimentary Level 1 data recovery during the first year ownership, plus additional data recovery options available throughout the warranty period, for complete user confidence.
Complete Line Of Solutions Up To 12TB
In addition to its portable Mercury Elite Pro mini, OWC also offers a complete line of performance storage solutions from the highest capacity bus-powered portable solutions on the market to selectable RAID multiple drive desktop and rackmount solutions with up to 12TB capacity.
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Is it okay to daisy Elite Pro Dual Minis without external power?
No, you will need an external power supply for each drive when used in a daisy chain.
With Thunderbolt being the transport layer of PCI Express and Display Port, it should be interesting to see a Thunderbolt to eSata adapter. This would allow us to connect any HD to our Thunderbolt Mac. It should not be too difficult since Thunderbolt supports transport of the PCI Express.
Hope you guys from OWC make such a device.
I second that. I would love to have Thunderbolt externals drives. :)
With thunderbolt ports on new Apple iMacs and notebooks with others to follow shortly, thunderbolt drives will be needed soon. I will wait to buy any additional drives until the port is available…Some drives are expected to show up this summer. I hope OWC is among those to be offered. La Cie has announced detailed specs for Little Big Foot drives in 3 capacities up to 1 Tb due this summer.
Here’s my situation: I work in two locations, and in each location I use a MacPro 1,1. Due to software requirements, I have a Windows 7 virtual machine that I use on a G-Raid Mini drive that I transport between the two locations, and my shared data resides on that drive as well. Using FW800, it works – it’s not speedy by any means, but it is functional.
I built an HTPC at home that uses a SATA III boot drive. Man that thing is wicked fast! Suddenly this Win7 virtual machine seems quite sluggish, and I have the need for speed.
I see these Mercury Extreme Pro 6G drives, and I’d like to utilize one with my MacPros, in a portable format for operating my VM and data. I see these MaxPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 cards that are compatible with the MacPro 1,1, but what I can’t find is an external case for SATA III drives. The Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini and Pro Dual Mini appears to be limited to SATAII. Does such a beast – a portable SATA III case – exist?
Hi Bill and sorry for delay in reply. None of our portable external drives are SATA Revision 3.0 capable…nor do I know of others on the market that are such. We DO have an external desktop sized solution:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/esata/Elite-AL_Pro-RAID_Ready_Dual-Drive
That is a “pass thru” design….it shares the bus speed of the host computer but is truly dependent on the speed of the PCIe card.
We met as a group on this and your best solution to be portable is to get our Mercury Elite mini SSD models:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
and via eSATA, you’ll see consistent, sustained 247MB/s rates..whereas your current portable even at FW800 is likely 85MB/s.
On the Elite mini page…look for the benchmarks tab…then you can compare interface and drive type performance….my numbers above are near exact.
So…nearly 3X faster portable…sounds like what you need?
We’ve ordered several of these drives, they’ve been great. The upgraded chipset is welcome, but I would be _much_ happier to see a five-year warranty. I love OWC, and order from you guys whenever I can, but you can’t really call a three-year warranty “industry-leading” when other manufacturers are offering five- or even seven-year warranties.
Interestingly enough, some manufacturers, like Seagate, are reducing their warranties from 3 years to 2 years. Only one brand we know of that is longer than us…and not exactly a well known name for external drives ;-)
But your comments have resonated here and we’ll take it under advisement as to perhaps extending out to five years sometime in the future…like we just did with our Extreme 6G SSD….the first consumer/prosumer SSD on the market with a five year warranty.
Yes, Thunderbolt Qx2 please.
My main question is: How did you fit 1.5 Terrabytes into one of these? There is no 1.5 TB 2.5″ drive on the market and you don’t sell a bare 1.5 TB 2.5″ drive (though I wish you would).
Ah James….there is the 2.5″ 1.5TB Seagate Freeplay Hard Drive… ;-)
I was wondering the same as James. Now that you clearly stated that there is the 2.5″ 1.5TB Seagate Freeplay Hard Drive, why don’t you sell it as an internal or bare drive? Or, if you do, where because I didn’t saw it in the hard drives section of http://www.macsales.com?
I googled the drive and found out why it’s not an option as an internal. It is too high. At 14.8mm instead of the usual 12.Xmm. Am I right?
Yes, the drive is a non-standard 14.8mm tall drive. As such it does not fit in most notebook computers, but the Mercury Elite Pro mini can accommodate the additional height. As such, we’re only offer the complete solution at this time.
Boot compatibility??
Hi James…bootable on all of the four interfaces provided your system meets certain requirements. You can see that info under the Specs tab on any Elite mini model….see the Port/Interface section heading…then click to find out more.
Can start you here on the 1TB model…just follow the path given above and you’ll be set.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQM5T10GB8/
Ok guys, it’s June! What’s the hold up on our TB drives??
Hey WhoDa….when there’s a TB to TB connector cable out, we’ll start to give that area a bit more attention ;-) Things are in the works…but other cool products due out first…like SSD model expansion and a GripStand for the iPad 2…we’re busier than four armed elves in Santa’s Workshop on Christmas Eve! ;-)
More interested in thunderbolt.
Keep in mind that Intel didn’t give out TunderBolt development info until AFTER Apple shipped TB equipped MacBook Pros.
Even the vendors given info ahead of time (Sonnet, Promise, etc) only gave a vague “summer” time frame for release for their products.
It will be a while before we start seeing ThunderBolt products being made available.
I have held off any computer purchases till external devices are ready. Why refresh a computer that can not make use of the technology it has?
I agree with you Brad… although there are other tech improvements in the current line of Macbook Pros which would make it a worthwhile upgrade. I’ve been looking at obtaining a new external HDD solution for a while now. However, similar to your reasoning in regard to the computer upgrade, I figure that I’ll hold off on buying any external solutions until I can obtain a multiple interface external HDD solution which includes Thunderbolt. Why spend money on solutions that do not take this into account when it is the way forward (unless due to urgency of need one has to move forward right now). Hopefully someone will come up with a TB solution that also includes a FW800 port which can be used with older Macbook Pros.
>Hopefully someone will come up with a TB solution that also includes a FW800 port which can be used with older Macbook Pros.
This is not going to happen.
Thunderbolt to Firewire 800/400 / USB 2.0 ADAPTERS….will most certainly happen.
Cheers,
O-Dub Scott
Yes, but Adrian is asking for a for TB solution for older Macbook Pros.
Obvious if it ships with Thunderbolt, then that type of adapter is possible. But you’re not going to be able to retrofit an old Macbook. Like I said.