OWC

Name: 480GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID SSD External Storage Solution
SKU: OWCMEMDC2SSD0.5
Price: 299 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5.00 (2 reviews)

Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini
480GB Bus-Powered Storage Solution

Mac / PC / Chrome / USB 3.1 Gen 2

Portable RAID Powerhouse

Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini is the latest high-performance portable RAID from OWC. Packing dual-drive, USB 3.1 Gen 2 performance into a portable, bus-powered form factor, this is the perfect drive for high demand applications on the go. With ample capacities, no matter where you are, Elite Pro Dual mini delivers the performance and flexibility to meet the most extreme workflow requirements for pros working with rich media content.

RAID for Redundancy. RAID for Performance.

Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini features easily user selectable modes RAID 0 and RAID 1. Choose the configuration that suits your needs. In RAID 0, experience blistering data transfer speeds up to 738MB/s. Or select RAID 1 for greater data redundancy from mirrored disks.

Good Looks meet Great Design.

A rugged aluminum chassis designed for near silent fanless, cooling, keeps your drives protected, cool and quiet everywhere you go. The slimline, side-by-side configuration means Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini fits easily in your laptop or gear bag. And because it's fully bus-powered, Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini is the perfect solution for your portable creative workflow.

Quality You Can Trust

Like all OWC drives, Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini is built to the highest standards of reliability and performance. Because 100% reliability is always the goal, Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini is rigorously quality tested, and backed by an OWC 3 year limited warranty and 24/7 customer support.

Product Specifications:

Software Requirements

OS (USB 3.1 Gen 1)
- OS X 10.7 or later
- Windows 7 or later
- Chrome OS
OS (USB 3.1 Gen 2)
- macOS 10.12 or later and Thunderbolt 3 interface
- Windows 8.1 or later
- Chrome OS
Driver
- Driver not required for OS X
- Driver not required for Windows
- Driver not required for Chrome

Driver

Driver not required for OS X
Driver not required for Windows

Hardware Requirements

Minimum
- Mac or PC with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 port (Standard-A or Type-C)
Recommended (Best Performance)
- Mac or PC with a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port

Bootability^{1, 2}

OS X 10.7 or later

Interface (Chipset)³

(1) USB 3.1 Gen 2 / SATA RAID Controller (ASMedia ASM1352R)

UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) Compliant

Standard Mechanism

Release Candidate (RC) firmware set
There are two kinds of firmware for SSDs Mass Production (MP) and Release Candidate (RC). Prior to an MP firmware release, there are beta firmware releases and an RC firmware release. Often, the RC is the same as the MP release, however there can be small changes and bug fixes made between the two. OWC has evaluated the RC for the 6Gb/s SandForce 2281 Processor and found it to be stable with no issues reported during our testing. However, as with any evolutionary product, issues may surface as different usages and configurations are employed and it is important to understand that there will be further updates and revisions.

Since no firmware update is currently offered for the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD, no update page exists. To see the typical steps involved with a self performed field firmware update, please visit our 3Gb/s product update page at: http://eshop.macsales.com/Customized_Pages/Framework.cfm?page=sf_firmware.html

It is important to note that the current firmware update tool requires the use of Windows XP/Vista/7. OWC is currently working on a Mac OS based update tool, but we do not have an exact availability date.
240GB Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD Specifications:

Specifications

Controller

SandForce 228x Series Processor with 7% Over Provisioning

NAND

Tier 1 Major Multi-Level Cell (MLC) High-Performance Sync-NAND Flash

Form Factor

Standard 7mm 2.5"

Interface

SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s & 1.5Gb/s supported, SATA 3.0 Compliant

Capacity¹

240GB useable capacity
Total Flash Memory Components – 256GB
16GB allocated to real-time data redundancy & error correction

Formatted Capacity²

223GiB

RAID Support

Qualified for single drive and multiple drive production workstation RAID 0/1/10/0+1 and SPAN usage.

SMART Attributes

Standard⁵

Native Command Queuing

up to 32 commands

Manufacturer Model Number

OWCSSD7P6G240

RoHS Compliant

Yes

Format

Unformatted (Instructions on formatting here)

Physical

Height (max)

7mm (0.276″)

OWC 7mm – 9.5mm Adapter

1 included (buy additional)

Width (max)

70.06mm (2.758″)

Length (max)

100.12mm (3.941″)

Weight

77 grams +/- 2 grams
0.170 lbs +/- 2.71 oz

Reliability³

Data Reliability

ECC Recovery: Up to 55 bytes correctable per 512-byte sector

Security

Chip Based Data Encryption: 128-bit AES-compliant

TRIM Support

OS Dependent

Nonrecoverable Read Errors

Less than 1 sector per 10¹⁶ bits read

Warranty

5 Year OWC SSD Limited Warranty
(Standard return policy applies.)

Performance

Sustained
Reads 6Gb/s (up to)

510MB/s

Sustained
Writes 6Gb/s (up to)

503MB/s

Random 4K Read⁴

Up to 60,000 IOPS

Random 4K Write⁴

Up to 60,000 IOPS

Read Latency

less than 0.1ms

Write Latency

less than 0.1ms

Power

Active

Read: 3000mW (3.0W) Maximum draw
Write: 4500mW (4.5W) Maximum draw

Idle

Less than 1000mW (1.0W)

Environmental (Operating)

Temperature (°F)

32°F to 158°F

Temperature (°C)

0°C to 70°C

Environmental (Non-Operating)

Temperature (°F)

-40°F to 185°F

Temperature (°C)

-40°C to 85°C

Acoustics

Idle (Typical)

0.0 bels

Seek (Typical)

0.0 bels

1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending upon operating environment (typically 5-10% less). The actual total capacity will depend on your own defined file settings/preferences.

In terms of standard gigabytes, 1GiB ≈ 1.074GB and refers to the actual formatted capacity of shown under Mac OS 10.5 or earlier and Microsoft Windows OS.

Specific application environments such as temperature and duty cycle will affect the overall reliability.

Specifications provided by SandForce.

Temperature reporting is currently an unsupported feature because due to the operating characteristics of SSDs, it is highly unlikely one would ever exceed an OWC Mercury SSD's stated operating temperature ceiling of 158F/70C. However, we are looking into supporting this feature in the future via a firmware update. Firmware updates can be found here: http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/OWC/SSD.
2 x 240GB* OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G Solid-state Drives**
- *1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending upon operating environment (typically 5-10% less). The actual total capacity will depend on your own defined file settings/preferences.
  
  **OWC reserves the right to replace or upgrade to equivalent or better components.

RAID Modes Supported

Hardware
RAID 0, 1, SPAN, and Independent drive mode

Initial Configuration

RAID 0
Included Drive Guide software will format the drive for either OS X or Windows

Power⁴

Power Supply
- External UL-listed universal auto-switching
- AC input: 100 ~ 240V, 50/60Hz
- DC output:, 12V @ 3A
- Replacement power supply sold separately
- Adapter plugs for international use sold separately

Environment

Environmental (Operating)
- Temperature (°F) 32° — 107°
- Temperature (°C) 0° — 42°
Environmental (Non-Operating)
- Temperature (°F) &min;40° — 185°
- Temperature (°C) &min;40° — 85°

Dimensions

Height: 28 mm (1.1 in)
Width: 155 mm (6.1 in)
Length: 144 mm (5.7 in

Weight (without drives)

0.6 kg (1.25 lbs.)

1. Booting in RAID 0, RAID 1, and SPAN mode are supported without limitation.

2. The following limitations apply when booting in Independent mode: only the disk connected to Port 2 is bootable when both drives are installed. If only one drive is installed, the disk will boot regardless of which port it is connected to. Please check the Assembly Manual & User Guide for more details.

3. If connecting from a computer with USB 3.1 Gen 1 via Standard-A to USB-C adapter cable, the device will function at USB 3.1 Gen 1 speeds. Currently the Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini is not compatible with the USB-C port on the OWC USB-C Dock. Please connect to one of the USB Standard-A ports instead. Performance is identical on all USB ports on the USB-C Dock.

4. If your USB-C host supports the USB Power Delivery 2.0 specification, it can bus-power the Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini. Other USB hosts may be able to bus-power this device as well. If you find that your chosen host does not bus-power the device, please use the included power supply.

Manufacturer provided specifications for Other World Computing p/n MEMDC2SSD0.5 UPC#: 812437023930

Gallery

Reviews

Benchmarks

Click any of the benchmarks below to view the results.

Includes

Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini portable high-performance enclosure
0.5m (18 in) USB Type-C to Type-C cable
0.5m (18 in) USB 3.1 Gen 1 Standard-A to Type-C cable
External power supply and power cable¹
Quick Start Guide
Assembly manual & user guide (Download Only)

1. May be required for certain older (pre-2012 Macs and various PCs) USB 2.0/3.0 Type A models which may not provide the necessary power via bus.

Customer Ratings

Write a Review 5 / 5 2 out of 2 (100%) reviewers would recommend this product

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: RobA Location: Orlando, FL Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 3-4 months

Rating: 5/5 Great Little Enclosure July 29, 2018 I recently bought a USB 3.1 Gen 2 PCI-e card for my aged MacPro tower and with this enclosure housing a couple of SSD's the transfer speeds are really excellent!

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID External Storage Enclosure. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: John4G Location: Richmond, VA Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Home User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 great compact RAID external HD January 8, 2018 The device is compact, and runs off my Macbook USB-C port. Very good write speeds, and the RAID 1 capability gives me great security against single drive failure. It also comes with a comprehensive suite of backup and maintenance software. An excellent deal for the price!

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 4.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID External Storage Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: whitby Location: Austin, Texas Age: Over 65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 4/5 Nice product with excellent performance July 15, 2017 This is a tricky product to set up, but once you work through the configuration it works exactly as advertised.

Fast and will actually work bus powered even though you are warned against it.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID External Storage Enclosure. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: pcsnet Location: St. Louis Age: Over 65 Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Great product and Great Customer Service June 29, 2017 I received an email yesterday about the garage sale. I saw the drive enclosure. There was only one available. Ordered yesterday morning and it arrived today at noon.

It was easy to setup. I added my own drives.The enclosed instruction sheet said that OWC software should pop-up. It didn't. I formatted it using Disk Utility. All set for Raid 0. Ran speed tests. Great results.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from (*) OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID External Storage Enclosure. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: lastcookie Location: Sarasota Age: 55-65 Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 4/5 Very good - one portability issue June 7, 2017 This is a very nice, compact, raid solution. The case is very well built and performance is excellent. My only criticism is the power switch: it is very tiny and recessed making it a real challenge to reach behind and get a fingernail to catch it. No fingernails and you will be reaching for a tool to power it down.

This is only an issue, IMO, if you plan to move the drive frequently, which I do. Since it is described as being portable I think this is a fair criticism. With a more accessible switch this drive would get my 5 stars,

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 2.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID 7200RPM External Storage Solution. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer Top 50 Contributor

Reviewer: joevt Location: Langley, B.C. Age: 35-44 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Excellent quality and performance March 8, 2017 I wanted to buy a drive that can perform faster than 5 Gb/sec. This USB 3.1 gen 2 device does just that.

I've tested this in macOS Sierra. The Apple drivers in Mac OS X El Capitan do not support 10 Gb/sec.

I've connected this device to a AlpineRidge Thunderbolt 3 controller. No issues there.

I've connected this to a ASMedia 1142 PCIe card from Startech. Half the time, System Information.app would say the speed was "Up to 480 Mb/sec". When this happened, the drive performed at USB 2.0 speeds. The other times, it says "Up to 5 Gb/sec" but the benchmarks I tried showed that it was doing more than 5 Gb/sec. Windows 10 had similar issues, but would sometimes show the connection as 10 Gb/sec. I tried two different USB-C cables (one was a Thunderbolt 3 cable). This may be an issue with the ASMedia chip in general, my PCIe card specifically, Apple's XHCI driver, or a combination. I only have one PCIe card and this one USB 3.1 Gen 2 device to test.

I used Black Magic Disk Speed Test.app to test the speed. This will get you some quick ballpark numbers:

USB 2.0 speed: 41.5 MB/s Write, 41.8 MB/s Read USB 3.0 speed: 411.2 MB/s Write, 428.0 MB/s Read USB 3.1 Asmedia 1142: 710.1 MB/s Write, 784.3 MB/s Read USB 3.1 AlpineRidge: 756.3 MB/s Write, 836.5 MB/s Read

Those numbers were from a Skylake PC (4.6 GHz). The USB 3.1 speed was slightly slower in a Mac Pro 2008 using the Asmedia 1142 PCIe card: 660.3 MB/s Write, 740.5 MB/s.

For the SSD's, I used two 1.0TB Mercury Extreme Pro 6G.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID External Storage Enclosure. Customer Videos:

Verified Buyer Top 250 Contributor

Reviewer: shortimer Location: Ellington, Connecticut Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 RAID done right (USB-C) February 1, 2017 Another well designed product from OWC. Returned two tries with a LaCie Rugged RAID 4TB, which is TB2. This USB-C product from OWC just works. The price AND speed w/ RAID is the best per gigabyte compromise available at this moment. Obviously, this is in conjunction w/ the new MBpro design that only has USB-C ports. Highly recommended, because there just aren't many/any choices out there for bus powered 220mbps speed @ 4TB of memory.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 4.0TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini Portable, Bus-Powered High-Performance USB-C RAID External Storage Solution. Customer Videos:

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini 480GB Bus-Powered Storage Solution Mfr P/N: MEMDC2SSD0.5 OWC SKU: OWCMEMDC2SSD0.5 Dual bay USB 3.1 Gen 2 equipped bus-powered RAID solution 3 Year OWC Limited Warranty Ships: Same Day

Reviews (2)

only $299.00

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OWC

Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini 480GB Bus-Powered Storage Solution

Product Specifications:

Software Requirements

Hardware Requirements

Bootability 1, 2

Interface (Chipset) 3

UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) Compliant

Standard Mechanism

Release Candidate (RC) firmware set

240GB Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD Specifications:

Specifications

Physical

Reliability3

Performance

Power

Environmental (Operating)

Environmental (Non-Operating)

Acoustics

RAID Modes Supported

Initial Configuration

Power 4

Environment

Dimensions

Weight (without drives)

Gallery

Reviews

Benchmarks

Includes

Customer Ratings

Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini
480GB Bus-Powered Storage Solution

Bootability^{1, 2}

Interface (Chipset)³

Reliability³

Power⁴