OWC intros dual-bay quad interface Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID drives
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 9th 2009 7:04AM
posted Jan 9th 2009 7:04AM
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).
OMG, they cut a mac tower in the middle!
That price doesn't quite look right for 3TB.
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.
Too bad, only RAID 0, that's not failsafe...
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.
I too would throw down money for a 2 bay enclosure that supported RAID 5 or 10... although I better not hold my breath
Care to share with us how you're going to do RAID 10 across 2 disks?
oh come on, Unix engineer!
You partition the RAID 0 into 2 volumes then mirror them together! It's elementary!
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?
@ 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
@ 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/
Firewire? I thought that was dead. Why include it on a drive?
/-)
You thought wrong. I'd use FW800 over USB2.0 any day.
eSATA eats USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 for lunch, and then spits it out....
@Geir
Yeah, except for the fact that eSATA has no POWER, and can't be used for anything other than storage.
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
Drobo......WTF --ever heard of eSATA?
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.
too bad the power supplies on these bad boys are terrible!! i've had to replace mine regularly.
mine's been fine for 2 years. Also when i did have a drive make a strange noise, they had an easy RMA process.
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. :)
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!!!
@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...?
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!!! :)
oh come on, Unix engineer!
You partition the RAID 0 into 2 volumes then mirror them together! It's elementary!
hahaha this comment is amazing.
You are joking, right?
BTW, Macworld magazine just did a large test of external drives, and the OWC FW800/eSATA models were the fastest they found!
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.
Sorry, I'm a dumbass and messed up the linky above:
http://home2.owc.net/~tech/OWC/936AP%20for%20MAC.zip