Not many people are aware of it, but today is a pretty special day. On June 9, 2000, OWC introduced it’s first FireWire equippped storage solutions: the OWC Mercury and OWC Mercury Plus, which featured 5400 and 7200rpm drives, respectively.
Of course the Mercury series of drives didn’t stop there. As all good things do, it evolved and grew over time. After the Mercury and Mercury Plus came the Mercury Elite and the Mercury Elite Pro (a line that lives on as the Mercury Elite Pro Classic). Those lines saw the addition of FireWire 800 as the new high-speed connection.
Then, came the Mercury Elite-AL Pro, which were closely followed by the Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID models. The most recent addition to the OWC Mercury family of desktop drives is, of course, the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. All these drives not only feature FireWire and FireWire 800 interfaces, but also have USB 2.0 and eSATA ports available for wider flexibility in connecting to your computer.
Over these 10 years of high-performance, high-quality, FireWire equipped external storage solutions, OWC has consistently offered the best value in external storage, and the current batch of Mercury desktop drives keeps that tradition with features like:
- Cables for all supported interfaces included
- A utility software bundle including: Prosoft Data Backup 3 (OS X), NovaStor NovaBackup (Windows), Carbon Copy Cloner (OS X) and Intech HD Speedtools Utility Suite (Mac OS 8.6 to 10.6.x)
- nearly 2GB worth of popular freeware/shareware applications, desktop pictures, Apple commercials and more.
- An Industry Leading 3 Year Solution Warranty
It’s been a full decade since we started putting award-winning FireWire drives on the desks of the Mac community. From A/V capture to file backup, our drives have done it all with the best features at the best prices. You know what, though? We’re just getting started…
Although I only have the 8.0tb OWC Mercuty Elite-Al Qx2, I can say the quality of the product is top notch. Very good looking, very good performance, very good everything!
I will purchase a couple of those ministacks soon as soon as apple decides to update their mac mini’s =D
Keep up the good work!
Looks like you made a good choice…as the Qx2 just got a five star rating and called “the one to beat” by Layers magazine:
http://layersmagazine.com/mercury-elite-al-pro-qx2.html#more-12985
“You know what, though? We’re just getting started…”
Good!
Personally I’m currently sitting on 6 old PATA fw800 Mercury Elite Pros, 3 Mercury Elite-ALs, 2 original PATA NewerTech miniStacks, an old PATA Mercury On-The-Gro Pro and a new Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini. Not all on the same Mac. (And support friends on at least a dozen more OWC firewire drives.)
If you guys stop making firewire enclosures, I will be very sad.
Now you know why I so badly would like to see a JBOD version of the Qx2 as I badly need to reduce cable clutter on my main desktop. :-)