One of the “unsung heroes” of the OWC product line is the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Horizontal Enclosure Stand. Designed to provide a secure, stable way to securely stack OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Storage Solutions on top of each other, this simple stand has a lot more to it than one might think.
First of all, it isn’t just some cheap piece of plastic that you slap on the bottom of the drive enclosure. It’s constructed of the same high-quality aircraft-grade aluminum as the Mercury Elite-AL Pro it was designed to compliment. That means it can stand up to the physical stresses that some people (like myself) subject their drives to. Aesthetically, this is also a good choice, as making it from the same material as the enclosure allows them to match and appear as one cohesive unit. You can’t get that kind of a match with a plastic base.
Of course, there’s also the matter of keeping the drive securely positioned. Metal-on-metal setups usually wind up with scratches and/or slipping. We got around that, however, by using a high-grade, non-marking rubber to protect the drive enclosure and keep it from sliding out of the stand.
The rubber serves another purpose as well. A hard drive has several metal disks inside, spinning at 5400 to 10,000 RPM. By its very nature, it’s going to vibrate, and a vibrating metal case on a solid surface tends to get a little… noisy. Fortunately, the same rubber holding the drive in this stand also absorbs the vast majority of the vibration generated by the spinning hard drive.
Any remaining vibration is further reduced by the non-marking rubber feet on the bottom of the stand, which also help prevent the aluminum base from scratching the surface you’ve got it on.
There’s something else special about those rubber feet on the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Horizontal Enclosure Stand. The rubber feet on most other bases are merely stuck on with adhesive which can weaken and peel over time. Our solution to this was to design the feet so they actually go through the base and are held on by a flared top.
As you can see, we put a lot of thought into something seemingly as simple as a hard drive stand. If we put that much attention to detail into a product accessory, can you imagine the amount of thought and consideration that goes into the products themselves?
In other words, we worry about it now, so you don’t have to worry about it later.
