OWC reveals 500GB Mercury On-The-Go portable HDD

OWC's Mercury On-The-Go family of pocket-lovin' hard drives has been around for quite some time, but the group is getting an all new leader courtesy of the recently announced 500GB edition. Packing a half-terabyte of space on a 5,400RPM, 8MB of cache drive, the unit even includes FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 to ensure compatibility with pretty much whatever rig you're dealing with. You'll also find a copy of Prosoft DataBackup III for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup for Windows bundled in, but you won't be getting any closer to this bus-powered unit than the photo above without laying down $359.99 to call one your own.

[Doug @ Apr 18th 2008 9:59AM]

Ouch.. Thats steep pricing... But what do I care.. I invented the Internet.

[Dave @ Apr 18th 2008 9:59AM]

How long I've been waiting for this... those horrid Rugged drives from LaCie just aren't doing it for me.

[Dave @ Apr 18th 2008 10:06AM]

Oh but wait... their website shows an image of the "triple 800/400 USB interface" without any FW 400 port. Apparently you need a conversion cable that they supply with it.

http://eshop.macsales.com/images/otg/otg_triple_550.jpg

[eric f. @ Apr 18th 2008 10:29AM]

Yes, they come with a FW800-FW400 cable. These cables are impossible to find in any store, as are any flavor of FW800 (outside the apple store), but if for some weird reason you need a longer one or lose this one, you can find longer ones at monoprice, or obviously get another at OWC.

it works great...I have 2 MOTG drives.

[Harkonian @ Apr 18th 2008 1:36PM]

It doesnt help that the picture shows the device upside down. I have this exact same enclosure...that's the bottom. Notice the little rubber feet in each corner.

[NHAnimator @ Apr 18th 2008 10:17AM]

Also check out their Asbestos In-The-Wall line of home products.

[JFat @ Apr 18th 2008 10:40AM]

that thing is ugly! cant they do any better than that?

[bobartig @ Apr 18th 2008 4:10PM]

I don't really know why, but that's a shot of the bottom of the case. I have this exact enclosure at home. Note the four feet bumps in each corner. The top of the drive is just a clear curved acrylic enclosure revealing the drive inside, but it is marginally more attractive than a shot of the heatsink.

You can see the actual enclosure here:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

[Mark @ Apr 18th 2008 10:51AM]

fugly.

[Adam @ Apr 18th 2008 10:57AM]

Looks like it was made to go with the first gen iMacs.

[Brian @ Apr 18th 2008 4:38PM]

Does it come in Blueberry?

[Laurence @ Apr 18th 2008 11:01AM]

Crazy ugly, but Yay! for Firewire800. Hopefully it'll spur more manufacturers to bring out portable hardrives with a genuinely fast connector.

[Nicolas Letarte @ Apr 18th 2008 11:27AM]

Also, how those acrylic enclosure react with heat? My alu 2.5" enclosures become quite hot with heavy SATA capacity drive.

[Harkonian @ Apr 18th 2008 1:33PM]

I don't understand the purpose of this product...How is this a new product if OWC also makes the exact same SATA enclosure sans HD? And why would you not just buy the enclosure and SATA drive separately and save some money? Maybe I'm missing the point...

[JohnK @ Apr 18th 2008 2:54PM]

Not everyone likes to roll their own hard drives. Sometimes you just need to buy something that works right out of the box. Our company has bought over two dozen of these drives in the past few years for portable video use with FCP systems; there's no way I would have wanted to sit there and hand assemble/format all those.

OWC supports their products well, and they're very generous with the extra goodies. Each drive comes with a leather carrying pouch, AC adapter (which you won't need but nice to have), software, and a plethora of cables (FW 800 or 400, 800>400 adapter, USB). And personally, I don't care what they look like so long as they WORK.

JK

[john @ Apr 18th 2008 1:56PM]

Does the "On-the-go" product name imply that it is not just USB, but USB-OTG? It'd be nice to see some actual "On The Go" drives out there (meaning the USB protocol, not some product name).

Of course, I'd really like to see a drive that has internal battery; bluetooth FTP; wifi for nfs/afp/cifs; USB client for mass-storage-mode, config and charging; and an RJ-45 (also for nfs/afp/cifs).

Ok, maybe not afp. But otherwise, yeah, that.

[Macslut @ Apr 18th 2008 2:23PM]

The one thing that kinda sucks for this is that it requires more power than what USB offers, so for USB use, you need the power adapter. It would've been nice if they had given the option of using two USB ports from the computer side (for additional power).

[Harkonian @ Apr 18th 2008 3:03PM]

Untrue. I have the same enclosure with a Seagate 250GB drive. It runs fine with USB without power on both my PC and my MacBook Pro.

[Harkonian @ Apr 18th 2008 3:08PM]

@JohnK

If we were talking about rolling your own NAS or similar I would agree. But all that is required to put the thing together is you slide the hard drive into the enclosure. For those two dozen drives your company has bought you could have saved somewhere around $1500. And the total time to assemble all 24 units would be 36 minutes..assuming 3 minutes per unit, which is generous.

But, yeah, I agree with you on OWC products. Overall they are exceptional.

[rtdunham @ Apr 18th 2008 3:21PM]

check that math!

also, i'm assuming this is a 2.5 inch drive, right? if so, wouldn't people be interested in the weight and dimensions of a mobile drive? the writer shouldn't assume too much about what we (average readers) know.

[Fabrizio @ Apr 19th 2008 3:38AM]

I've actually had a pretty bad experience with OWC drives, much noisier than same size same speed drives from other manufacturers. Also, the drive keeps constantly starting up for no reason even though I am not accessing it. Now that may just be a mac thing, but it is annoying as hell...

[Rugged @ Apr 19th 2008 6:03AM]

Well, hmmm......expensive, ugly.

I'd rather go for the Buffalo 500GB MiniStation.

A lot cheaper, and the whole line is known to be really good.