OWC Debuts First SandForce-Based IDE/ATA SSD

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OWC said its new SandForce-based line of SSDs is the first and fastest to utilize an IDE/ATA connection.

Wednesday Other World Computing (OWC) said it will be showcasing at CES 2011 its new Mercury Extreme Pro Legacy Edition SSDs. The company is promoting this new line as the first and fastest SandForce-based SSDs to utilize an IDE/ATA connection for legacy desktops and towers.

"With performance up to 41X faster than today’s traditional hard drives, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Legacy Edition offers desktop, tower, and users of other computers that utilize internal IDE/ATA drives the fastest internal drive performance available today," the company said. "It eliminates tedious drive spin up wait time and delayed system responsiveness by providing near instant data access, system boots, and app loads."

The new SSD line comes packed with a mounting sled for easy "plug and play" installation into a standard 3.5-inch IDE/ATA drive bay, and a SATA to IDE/ATA connector cable. When upgrading to a SATA bus-equipped desktop or tower, consumers can simply remove the extra cable, connect the drive to the new rig, and experience "true performance potential" up to 285 MB/s.

Available now through the company's online store, OWC's new SSD line arrives in five different flavors: 40 GB for $129.99, 60 GB for $179.99, 120 GB for $279.99, 250 GB for $579.99 and 480 GB for a meaty $1599.99. All five models have 7-percent over provisioning and a three-year warranty.

"The Mercury Extreme Pro Legacy Edition SSD line is like getting two upgrades for the price of one," said Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing. "It can be used in IDE/ATA based computers today thanks to the included installation kit; and then used as a future upgrade in a SATA based machine to unleash the full performance potential of the drive and the machine."

In addition to the new Mercury Extreme Pro Legacy Edition line, OWC will also be displaying at CES 2011 the Mercury Aura Pro Express, the Mercury aura Pro MBA, the Mercury Aura Pro 1.8-inch and the Mercury Legacy Pro.

Kevin Parrish
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18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jprahman
    Sounds like a great way to breath new life into an old P4/Athlon 64 machine. However, at those prices it may not be worth it.
    Reply
  • bv90andy
    first and fastest
    if it's the first, of course it's the fastest.
    Reply
  • ProDigit10
    though they forgot to mention that some IDE cables allow only upto 150, 133, 100 and 66MB/s.
    Your 280MB/s burst rate won't benefit much from it, but perhaps random reads and writes will!
    Reply
  • ProDigit10
    jprahmanSounds like a great way to breath new life into an old P4/Athlon 64 machine. However, at those prices it may not be worth it.40 and 60GB seem like a good investment for an old pc.
    Remember back in those days (the days of the IDE where the days of Windows 95, NT, 98, 98e, milennium, and 2000) a harddrive of 40GB would cost as much as this ssd. Later in the windows XP era, drives had larger capacities, but you will want compatibility with FAT32 formatting table without partitioning the drive.
    Reply
  • techcurious
    Any PC that is so old that it does not have SATA is not worth upgrading with an SSD at these prices. A PC without SATA is what, about 5 years old at least?
    And what's the point of spending so much money on one of the best SSD's you can buy now, only to get a 3rd of it's performance now and then eventually upgrade your PC and get the full performance of the SSD later, in a year or so.. ? By then, this SSD will be so much slower than a current SSD by the time you get a new PC with SATA. Not to mention that the newer SSD's would be cheaper too!

    480GB for $1599... HAHAHAHAAA!! Instead of that upgrade, you could build a whole new pc with that money, that would outperform your No-SATA-Having-POS (even after an SSD upgrade) by about 10 Fold!
    Reply
  • jprahman
    ProDigit1040 and 60GB seem like a good investment for an old pc.Remember back in those days (the days of the IDE where the days of Windows 95, NT, 98, 98e, milennium, and 2000) a harddrive of 40GB would cost as much as this ssd. Later in the windows XP era, drives had larger capacities, but you will want compatibility with FAT32 formatting table without partitioning the drive.
    True. It just depends how much you want to spend on a new drive vs. building a new system.
    Reply
  • elkein
    Nah, not for me but maybe IDE are drives are still used in some legacy businesses, why upgrade now?
    Reply
  • Spanky Deluxe
    These drives will have a niche market for sure - for example an old database server that's still using 4 IDE drives in a raid setup (yes they do still exist - e.g. G4 Xserves). Some database servers really have no need for more CPU performance but would benefit from faster random access times. Getting a boss to sign off on four 60gb ATA SSD drives for $720 is far easier than getting them to sign off on a brand new server + four SSD drives.

    Of course, any home user stuck with an ATA PC and desperate for an SSD drive but not willing to buy a new computer will be better off buying a standard SATA SSD and a cheap SATA controller card.
    Reply
  • zodiacfml
    they may not even need 4 SSDs, but, this indeed is a small market since scsi is used primarily by servers.

    Spanky DeluxeThese drives will have a niche market for sure - for example an old database server that's still using 4 IDE drives in a raid setup (yes they do still exist - e.g. G4 Xserves). Some database servers really have no need for more CPU performance but would benefit from faster random access times. Getting a boss to sign off on four 60gb ATA SSD drives for $720 is far easier than getting them to sign off on a brand new server + four SSD drives.Of course, any home user stuck with an ATA PC and desperate for an SSD drive but not willing to buy a new computer will be better off buying a standard SATA SSD and a cheap SATA controller card.
    Reply
  • nebun
    thanks bu no thanks
    Reply