Over the last few weeks or so, the Chicagoland area has seen more than its fair share of precipitation, even resulting in flash flooding in some suburbs.
Fortunately, we in Woodstock didn’t seem to get hit quite as hard by the storms. But, while the rain isn’t falling as heavily around here, prices on OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad” Interface storage solutions are falling enough to make up the slack – except with these drops, it’s a little more like sunshine!
Like all of our storage solutions, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400/USB2/eSATA “Quad Interface” offers incredible performance along with great versatility. Key features include:
- Oxford 924 based performance bridge solution
- Two 1394B 9 pin FW800 ports, One 1394A 6 pin FW400 port, One USB 2.0 port, One eSATA port
- Large data buffer up to 32MB
- Fully bootable, ideal for applications, A/V, Photos, Music, etc.
- Certified for Audio/Video and Time Machine
- Attractive & compact shock resistant Aluminum design
- USB2, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, & eSATA cables ALL INCLUDED!
- Prosoft DataBackup III (OS X), NovaStor NovaBackup (Windows), Carbon Copy Cloner (OS X), and Intech Speed Tools (8.6-10.6.x) included
- Fully Mac & PC compatible
- Industry leading 3 year solution warranty
What makes them really great values, though, are these new, lower prices:
- 250GB 7200RPM with 8MB Data Buffer — NOW $114.99
- 320GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer — NOW $119.99
- 500GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer — NOW $127.99
- 750GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer — $159.99
- 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer — NOW $169.99 (a $10 drop!)
- 1.5TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer — NOW $199.99
- 2.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer — NOW $249.99 (a $10 drop!)
Prosoft Drive Genius 3 Bundle Offer
Purchasing Prosoft Drive Genius 3 along with an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro (or any OWC or NewerTech external storage solution) can save you $60 off the retail price of the program. Check our Web site for more details.
Grant,
Thanks for the reply. I do acknowledge that the level of appreciation for bright LEDs will vary greatly. It’s just that, as a desktop device, the brightness of a Hard Drive LED can be a visual distraction if within the field of vision of a computer user. There are standards in some countries that establish a maximum brightness. I am not an electrical engineer or related, but work at a computer manufacturer and am very familiar with led panels, light pipes, diffusers, luminance. The commercial computer products I am familiar with use resistors that attenuate the LEDs (and sometimes diffusers as well) to a create a acceptable brightness. The advancement in LEDs make it easy to get extremely bright output compared to only a few years ago. But only some applications needs this maximum output.
Sure there is a coolness factor that comes with the uber bright Blue LEDs, to show that you have this awesome hard drive but this conflicts with good status indicator usability.
Like you, I also have my Mercury Elite HDDs under my desk(out of my peripheral view), but I have considered using HDDs in my living room for AV media storage. Unfortunately, the brightness of my current Mercury Elites would preclude me considering them for that application. The LEDs would be too distracting in a room that is often darkened for watching video (a common scenario for many). Sure I could cover them by blocking them with something, but I feel that I shouldn’t have to take this step for a quality product. You mention that an OWC enclosure kit would allow some customization–can you elaborate on that?
This pic (following link) says it all with my OWC Drives–as I stated above, one HDD alone illuminates the room across the hall when no other lights are on. Photo in a dark room: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45391449@N08/4909404661/
In that photo, the G5 LED and the Lacie LED both give a baseline of the brightness of the OWC LED. I only use one Mercury Elite at a time so this image was only for comparison purposes.
With the lights on, the LEDs is tolerable as long as the drive is off to the side that the viewing angle is not straight on. This pic shows that: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45391449@N08/4909405111/
I hope that the designers of future OWC products consider the points I made above.
Thanks, ed
BTW I just purchase an OWC SSD for internal use (no LEDs to deal with!)
Hey Ed..thanks for the images…hmm…on side and elevated…that would definitely give some more direct view to the LED. But we’ll definitely take under consideration…good images!
The enclosure kit and customization comment…I think if you look at your own comment, you may have your solution… ;-)
Is there any chance that your new Mercury Elite AL pro drives have reduced the brightness of the blue LED at the front? My 750GB drive from about 2 years ago is extremely bright… it lights the next room across the hall in the dark. Too bright by a factor of five.
Hi Ed and thanks for stopping by the blog. Our “cool blue” LED is an often asked about feature. Some love it, others feel it’s too bright.
I’ve got one on my desk staring me in the face as I type this…and it doesn’t bother me in the least. We have repositioned the light in the past though to better diffuse the light. IF you buy an enclosure kit, all sorts of ways you could deal with this to your preference.
Something nice about a firewire enclosure for slim laptop optical drives would also mean being powered by the firewire connection. (I’m currently sitting on 2 laptop optical drives I could put in these)
Always good to have price drops, but I am looking for 2 products which you have not created yet:
1) Enclosure for slim DVD/Blu-Ray drive, perfect new house for the DVD drive removed to install the Data Doubler; cheap ones may exist around, the hard part is having a slot-loading front cover to hide the DVD innards and protect from dust, and OWC’s characteristic pleasing visual style;
2) Substitute drawer for Mac Pro HDD drawer. Stuff in a RAID controller and 4 2.5 disks. With 4×2.5 disks you can match and surpass the TB capacity of 3.5 disks, and with RAID you have added data safety and performance, which also goes above and beyond using just 4 plain 3.5 disks.