Other World Computing (OWC) Reveals Two New SSDs

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Other World Computing (OWC) has introduced two news SSDs in its lineup: the Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G series and 480 GB Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G.

Other World Computing (OWC) has recently announced a new line of enterprise-based solid state drives, the Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G. The drives are designed and built for mission-critical deployments that demand the highest performance and data reliability. They are based on a 2.5-inch form factor, SATA 6.0 Gbps interface and the SandForce 2582 controller. It utilizes a Toshiba-made Enterprise Toggle Synchronous (eMLC) NAND memory, 256-bit AES encryption, and OWC's Paratus Power Technology that ensures any existing writes will be committed/retired to prevent data loss and the drive will be shut down properly during an unexpected power interruption.

OWC list the performance of the drives at sustained read/write speeds of up to 550/525 MB/s, and are capable of a random 4K read/write performance of up to 60,000 IOPS. The Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G drives are expected to ship by the end of Q1, with a pricing at $629 (50 GB), $799 (100 GB), $1,349 (200 GB), and $2,199 (400 GB). The drives are backed by a seven-year warranty and to learn more about the Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G, visit its product page. 

In addition to the Mercury Enterprise Pro 6G series, OWC confirmed at Macworld its Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G SSD is now available in a 480 GB capacity. The new Mercury Aura Pro Express 480GB model utilizes a SandForce 2281 controller (with 7 percent over provisioning) and Tier 1/Grade A Toggle Synchronous Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory. OWC list the performance of the drive at sustained read/write speeds of up to 511/448 MB/s, and are capable of a random 4K read/write performance of up to 60,000 IOPS. The drive offers data rates up to 3x faster than factory SATA 3Gb/s and up to 8x the storage capacity of the factory's base 64GB SSD model.

Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G 480 GB is compatible with current 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air models, which incorporate SATA 6Gb/s data rate capabilities. In addition, it is available in 120 GB and 240 GB capacities. The Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G 480GB model has a MSRP of $1,149.00 and is available from OWC. Read more on the Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G at its product page.

Doug Crowthers
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6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • zulutech
    I wish I could get one of these, but they're just so expensive.
    Reply
  • southernshark
    I guess they sale these to the government.
    Reply
  • zander1983
    zulutechI wish I could get one of these, but they're just so expensive.These are designed for enterprise use (e.g. servers etc) and not intended for desktops.
    But if you have mission critical stuff on your desktop and don't trust SSDs then these are for you :)
    Reply
  • rylan
    I'm not so sure that SandForce and mission-critical go well together. The 2XXX series controller has had more issues across vendors than I could shake a stick at.
    Reply
  • freggo
    There is a point to mission critical, but there is also a point to be made for suicide pricing.

    $629/50GB...
    Why not simply run a couple of cheaper 64KB SSDs in a raid configuration ?
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    Apple: Alright engineers, we need the best anti-3rd party hardware laptop design. Remember, we don't want our customers to modify their laptops with other SSDs or etc.
    Reply