OWC 10TB External Thunderbolt Drive Costs Nearly $1,000

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You're forking out the big bucks with the 10 TB solution.

Other World Computing added on Tuesday a 10 TB option for its OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual line of dual-bay external Thunderbolt storage products. This model is the most expensive of the series, costing $949.99 for two 5 TB hard drives in a single enclosure. All Mercury Elite Pro storage solutions are available now.

"This new 10TB option adds even more value to our best-selling Mercury Elite Pro Dual line," said Larry O'Connor, founder and CEO, Other World Computing. "With the addition of this 25% larger capacity model with Thunderbolt interface and USB 3.0 technology, the Mercury Elite Pro Dual line continues to deliver best in class performance and reliability."

According to a list of features, the Mercury Elite Pro Dual provides both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 1 interfaces, meaning customers will see speeds up to 10 Gbps on the two Thunderbolt lanes and up to 5 Gbps on the USB 3.0 lane. The trick with Thunderbolt is that equipped devices can daisy chain with other Thunderbolt devices; USB 3.0 can't.

The specs also show that the drives have read speeds of up to 442 MB/s and write speeds up to 424 MB/s. The device even provides user-selectable hardware RAID settings including Span, 0 (Stripe), 1 (Mirror), 5 (Stripe with Parity), 10 (1+0), and JBOD/Independent drive modes. For instance, RAID 0 provides the best capacity and performance, and RAID 1 provides the best redundancy.

The company states that all Mercury Elite Pro Dual models are Plug and Play, and come with a 24-inch USB 3.0 cable and a 39-inch Thunderbolt cable. They also come with a software bundle that's worth $200 USD and a three-year limited warranty. All six models measure 2.8(W) x 9(D) x 5.25(H) inches and weigh 5.5 pounds.

Here's the list of models and their pricing:

  • 2.0 TB 7200 RPM (1.0 TB + 1.0 TB) = $ 429.99
  • 4.0 TB 7200 RPM (2.0 TB + 2.0 TB) = $ 494.99
  • 4.0 TB HDD/SSD Hybrid (2.0 TB + 2.0 TB) = $ 579.99
  • 6.0 TB 7200 RPM (3.0 TB + 3.0 TB) = $ 574.99
  • 8.0 TB 7200 RPM (4.0 TB + 4.0 TB) = $ 759.99
  • 10.0 TB 7200 RPM (5.0 TB + 5.0 TB) = $ 949.99
  • Add Your Own Drives enclosure kit = $ 299.99
Kevin Parrish
8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • danwat1234
    What drive is 5TB? Seagate and Hitachi's is 6TB, maybe a 5TB of that line? Or maybe a Toshiba mg04sca500e?
    Reply
  • pletopia
    How exactly do you do Raid5 with 2 drives ?! The minimum requirement for Raid5 is 3 drives ....
    Reply
  • TyrOd
    What drive is 5TB? Seagate and Hitachi's is 6TB, maybe a 5TB of that line? Or maybe a Toshiba mg04sca500e?

    It's a Seagate 5TB drive that they didn't announce to the public.
    It's a 5 Platter SMR drive similar to the 4TB SMR drive they announced to reseller partners last year.
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    Seagate's 6TB drive doesn't use SMR
    http://techreport.com/news/26282/6tb-crammed-into-3-5-seagate-enterprise-capacity-drives

    Thanks, it comes with 2TB, 4TB 5TB and 6TB flavors http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_enterprise_capacity_6tb_35_hdd_review_v4
    Reply
  • TyrOd
    13249940 said:
    Seagate's 6TB drive doesn't use SMR
    http://techreport.com/news/26282/6tb-crammed-into-3-5-seagate-enterprise-capacity-drives

    Thanks, it comes with 2TB, 4TB 5TB and 6TB flavors http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_enterprise_capacity_6tb_35_hdd_review_v4

    That doesn't make sense, though. Those enterprise 5TB drives cost $450 by themselves.
    OWC would be losing money at that price point.
    It's far more likely that it's the 5TB consumer drive that uses SMR which are ~$250 right now.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7290/seagate-to-ship-5tb-hdd-in-2014-using-shingled-magnetic-recording

    http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1038924&gclid=CPv4iaCBm74CFaMF7AodfX8Aaw&is=REG&Q=&A=details
    Reply
  • Haravikk
    How exactly do you do Raid5 with 2 drives ?! The minimum requirement for Raid5 is 3 drives ....
    That's not strictly true, a RAID-5 of two disks is certainly possible. The problem is that it offers no advantage over RAID-1, which will typically be faster in all cases, as well as being quicker to rebuild.

    I don't know who in their right mind would buy a two disk external drive for nearly $1,000 though; the whole benefit of RAID is that you can achieve high capacity using relatively low cost drives, but at the same time you can also gain redundancy. If you're serious about your data you'd be better off with a four bay enclosure with four 4tb drives in RAID-5 for the redundancy and 12tb capacity.
    Reply
  • Strunf
    13253178 said:
    How exactly do you do Raid5 with 2 drives ?! The minimum requirement for Raid5 is 3 drives ....
    That's not strictly true, a RAID-5 of two disks is certainly possible. The problem is that it offers no advantage over RAID-1, which will typically be faster in all cases, as well as being quicker to rebuild.

    It's not possible to have RAID 5 with just two drives, for RAID 5 you need to Strip and Parity, with two you can only have either Strip or Parity, Strip will be like RAID 0, Parity will be like RAID 1, if you check their website they don't speak of RAID 5, they say RAID 0, RAID 1, span and independent.
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    I don't really see the point in the extra expense of these Thunderbolt drives with just one or two discs. It's an added expense with no benefit as they won't saturate USB 3.0. I wouldn't bother with anything less than four discs. In all practicality eight or more.
    Reply