OWC intros dual-bay quad interface Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID drives

OWC's Mercury Elite-AL Pro hasn't changed much since May of 2007 in terms of design, but the latest models offer up two bays for that sweet, succulent RAID action. The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Bay drive offers up four interface options (USB 2.0, eSATA, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800) and comes in an aircraft-grade brushed aluminum housing. Pre-configured models are available now from $219.99 (500GB) to 3TB ($499.99).

[Verythrax @ Jan 9th 2009 7:10AM]

OMG, they cut a mac tower in the middle!

[Jeff @ Jan 9th 2009 7:21AM]

That price doesn't quite look right for 3TB.

[doctorSpoc @ Jan 9th 2009 11:44AM]

do you mean to high or too low? i think it's too high... you can get Seagate 1.5TB drives at $150 (tiger direct) = $300... the enclosure on it's own is $120... so the total should equal $420... what's with the $80 for them to put the drives in for you... the price should actually be $400.

i'd just get my own drives and slap them in if they are going to rip me off like that... just a note of caution from my 1st hand experience.. eSATA blows REALLY bad through multi-interface bridges.. the oxford bride in this unit is better than most but still a dedicate eSATA only enclosure is what you need for the fastest speeds.

[Niels @ Jan 9th 2009 7:23AM]

Too bad, only RAID 0, that's not failsafe...

[Buck @ Jan 9th 2009 9:02AM]

I was excited until I saw it was only a Raid 0. If it supported Raid 5 or Raid 10 I'd be waiting for UPS to show up.

[elBravo @ Jan 9th 2009 10:58AM]

I too would throw down money for a 2 bay enclosure that supported RAID 5 or 10... although I better not hold my breath

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Jan 9th 2009 11:27AM]

Care to share with us how you're going to do RAID 10 across 2 disks?

[spam_free @ Jan 9th 2009 12:40PM]

oh come on, Unix engineer!

You partition the RAID 0 into 2 volumes then mirror them together! It's elementary!

[Joseph @ Jan 9th 2009 2:11PM]

1. being that the hardware handles the raid, you can't mirror it. I bought a Striped volume because it was cheaper, thinking, "I will mirror it myself." wrong. It is all done before it gets to the computer. Super strange I know.

2. These use good drives, so going to Tiger Direct and picking a drive isn't the same.

3. RAID 5 requires 3 disks, Raid 10 requires 4. Who are these people?

[doctorSpoc @ Jan 9th 2009 3:29PM]

@ joseph

Seagate is the only one that sells 1.5TB drives... so i guess that Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB Hard Drive ST31500341AS - 7200RPM, 32MB cache for $149(tiger direct), $129 (newegg) is a crappy drive? not to mention they really don't have any choice in 1.5TB drives... this IS the disc you will get with the 3TB model.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4138742&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

[doctorSpoc @ Jan 9th 2009 3:41PM]

@ Joseph again... ok, sorry... the drives that OWC are putting in are NOTeven as fast as the $129 ones from newegg... they only have 16MB of cache each vs 32MB on the ones from newegg...

look, i have nothing against OWC they sell quality stuff... i have an dual bay eSATA only enclosure from them... they are just overcharging for this RAID.

look at the stats here... "Data Buffer: 32 Megabyte (2 Drives with 16MB (16,384) cache each)" http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ME8Q7T30GB64/

[Le Big Mac @ Jan 9th 2009 9:10AM]

Firewire? I thought that was dead. Why include it on a drive?

/-)

[eric f. @ Jan 9th 2009 10:41AM]

You thought wrong. I'd use FW800 over USB2.0 any day.

[Geir @ Jan 9th 2009 10:52AM]

eSATA eats USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 for lunch, and then spits it out....

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 11th 2009 1:51AM]

@Geir

Yeah, except for the fact that eSATA has no POWER, and can't be used for anything other than storage.

[nsfw @ Jan 9th 2009 9:37AM]

Why do people keep writing, "FAIL! a two drive system doesn't support RAID 5 or 10" Do you realize what you are saying? Go read the RAID wiki.

[John Siebert @ Jan 9th 2009 9:57AM]

is there anything cheaper / better than a www.drobo.com ? I like this thing but by the time u have the network drive and the box your paying $900 before even getting a drive to put in it.
j

http://www.tranquilblue.com
http://www.frattoys.com

[Geir @ Jan 9th 2009 10:35AM]

Drobo......WTF --ever heard of eSATA?

[biglou @ Jan 9th 2009 11:04AM]

too bad the power supplies on these bad boys are terrible!! i've had to replace mine regularly.

[Joseph @ Jan 9th 2009 2:13PM]

mine's been fine for 2 years. Also when i did have a drive make a strange noise, they had an easy RMA process.

[palehorse @ Jan 9th 2009 11:38AM]

only two bays (no RAID 5)?

forget it...

I'm in the market for a decent 3-day NAS, with gig ethernet, at a reasonable price... any hot tips would be much appreciated. :)

[doctorSpoc @ Jan 9th 2009 11:49AM]

why would you expect a 2 bay enclosure to support raid 5 and 10 when raid 5 and 10 require a minimum of 3 drives? HELLO!!!

[palehorse @ Jan 9th 2009 12:07PM]

@doctorspoc

ummm, I never said that I expected it to support RAID 5 or 10. In fact, I made it perfectly clear that the reason I wouldn't buy it is the 2-drive limit (therefore no RAID 5 or 10) and lack of ethernet.

Perhaps you meant to respond to someone else above...?

[Justin @ Jan 9th 2009 11:51AM]

w00t. Here's my write-up on why I bought this drive (although I bought the enclosure instead): http://jevidon.tumblr.com/post/68560680/wir-001-buying-a-new-external-hd-enclosure

I was amazed at how few available options for dual-drive enclosure with eSATA are out on the market. Drobo is a great piece of eqiupment, but you're not reaching the full potential of your drive speeds. It's one thing to have a bottleneck on your PC/Mac that you can eventually upgrade, but limiting yourself on the drive enclosure itself is just stupid.

Oh, and speaking of stupid, let's give a big round of applause to those that lambaste this enclosure for only doing RAID 0 and 1. What was OWC thinking!!! :)

[spam_free @ Jan 9th 2009 12:46PM]

oh come on, Unix engineer!

You partition the RAID 0 into 2 volumes then mirror them together! It's elementary!

[Joseph @ Jan 9th 2009 2:15PM]

hahaha this comment is amazing.

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 11th 2009 1:52AM]

You are joking, right?

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 9th 2009 5:46PM]

BTW, Macworld magazine just did a large test of external drives, and the OWC FW800/eSATA models were the fastest they found!

[Justin @ Jan 16th 2009 12:59PM]

Just a quick update for anyone looking at purchasing this drive: Upon receiving my enclosure and installing two drives, I realized that there was no documentation for switching the RAID configuration between RAID 0, 1 and SPAN. However, after speaking with OWC support I learned that they had just yesterday finished developing a mac-based utility that allows users to change the configuration. The link is as follows: http://home2.owc.net/~tech/OWC/936AP%20for%20MAC.zipHope this helps.

[Justin @ Jan 16th 2009 1:00PM]

Sorry, I'm a dumbass and messed up the linky above:

http://home2.owc.net/~tech/OWC/936AP%20for%20MAC.zip