It’s Friday and—even with all the hullaballoo about the new MacBook Pros and their spiffy new Thunderbolt connectors—we’ve got something great for everybody, not just the lucky folks who can afford the latest and greatest Apple has to offer. We’ve got some nice price drops on the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini storage solutions.
The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini is a smaller, portable, bus-powered version of our best selling and award winning Mercury Elite-AL Pro line of desktop solutions. Designed for performance, flexibility, reliability and portability, the Elite-AL mini features FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces, measures in at only 5.5″ x 3.8″ x 1.1″ and provides up to 1.5TB of high-performance portable capacity!
Other key features include:
- Performance Oxford-based bridge solution
- Two 1394B 9 pin, One USB 2.0, and One eSATA interface ports
- Fully bootable, ideal for applications, A/V, backup (Time Machine, etc), photos, music, etc.
- Single cable bus-powerable via FireWire or USB 2.0
- Bus-Power via FireWire (or AC Adapter) for high-performance eSATA interface use.
- Attractive & compact shock resistant Aluminum design
- FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and eSATA flex cables ALL included!
- Fully Mac & PC compatible
- Intech Hard Disk Speed Tools suite and Carbon Copy Cloner included
- Full retail versions of Prosoft DataBackup 3 for OS X (a $59.95 retail value) and NovaStor NovaBACKUP® for Windows (a $49.95 retail value).
- Industry leading three year solution warranty
These storage solutions are the great even if you don’t have a brand new MacBook Pro, and these great new prices will make saving up for one even easier!
5400RPM Models
- 250GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer — $99.97
- 320GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer — NOW $104.99
- 500GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer — NOW $119.99
- 750GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer — NOW $139.99 (a $40 drop!)
- 1.0TB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer — NOW $169.99 (a $18 drop!)
- 1.5TB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer **NEW ITEM** – $274.99
7200RPM Models
- 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer — NOW $109.99 (a $10 drop)
- 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer — NOW $127.99 (a $10 drop)
- 750GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer **NEW ITEM** — $174.99
SSD Models
Ultra High Performance, Ultra-Low Power, No Moving Parts and sustained Data Rates of over 265MB/s!
- 60GB OTG Extreme SSD — NOW $214.99
- 120GB OTG Extreme SSD — NOW $329.99 (a $20 drop)
- 240GB OTG Extreme SSD — NOW $594.99 (a $55 drop)
Also Available
- OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Enclosure Kits now from $74.99
Prosoft Drive Genius 3 Bundle Offer
Purchasing Prosoft Drive Genius 3 along with an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Qx2 Storage Solution (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.
Solved the booting problem with the 200GB OWC Mercury ExtemeSSD in a new MBP8,2. Started with making several backups of the SSD. Then used the OSX 10.6.6 disks that came with the new computer to reinstall the operating system over the old system without erasing the SSD. This was accomplished by connecting the old computer by target disk mode in FW800. The trick is to start the new computer up with the CD and install the system to the old machine from the new. This must get the right drivers onto the SSD. Then take the computers apart and switch the hard drives.
Installed a 200GB OWC Mercury ExtemeSSD purchased April 2010 in a brand new MBP8,2 today. It won’t boot.
I put it back into my old MBP3,1 and it boots fine. Tried to connect FW800 in target disk mode from old machine to new machine. Used option key to bring up the SSD on the new machine. Selected the SSD. Again it won’t boot.
By not booting I mean that the new computer bongs and then shows the apple logo. But the turning disk icon never appears. Then it is very difficult to get the new machine to turn off. Holding down the power button does not work until the machine has sat there for 3 to 5 minutes and the power button is depressed again.
Are there known incompatibilities with the old SSD and the new MBP?
None that we’ve found Paul….as our benchmark testing has shown:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/Macbook_Memory_Benchmarks
Suggest you contact our tech support dept to discuss your particular situation further.
True, but your drive is SandForce-based, and the performance varies almost nothing from vendor to vendor based on this same controller. Speaking about your 3rd-party solution vs. others (such as OCZ), other 3rd party products using the same controller as yours can be found for cheaper prices (USD 1.100-1.200 for the 480GB model). That’s a significant premium for a product which performs the same as other SandForce-based ones.
Wind the SandForce 2 controller being launched, having 550MBps speeds, I don’t see you moving much inventory of the previous generation at such high prices.
What I would really like to see, though, is the SSD to be useable as an enclosure. It already has all components safely encased.
It would be lovely to see a USB3 and/or Thunderbolt port besides the SATA connector for the next-gen OWC drives. That would justify a small premium (not USD 400). ;-)
Since Apple’s 500 GB SSD with TRIM support costs $1100, when will OWC drop its 480 GB SSD price? After all, at $1600, it seems way out of line compared to its 240 GB model price of $499.
Apple’s SSD is not SandForce processor based. So can’t compare to ours when initial speed doesn’t match as well as theirs slows down over time unlike ours which can actually get faster over time:
http://blog.macsales.com/8924-not-all-ssds-are-created-equal-buyer-beware
Look for third party comparison of stock SSD in new MacBook Pro versus putting an OWC SSD in it….we’ll cover it here for sure ;-)