Other World Computing (OWC) on Thursday said it had expanded its Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini portable hardware-RAID storage product line with a 3 TB RAID-1 model for "robust" data protection, and a 3 TB RAID-0 model for maximum performance. Pricing is $359.99 for the RAID-0 version and $369.99 for the RAID-1 model.
OWC's Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini contains two 2.5 inch hard drives for up to 3 TB of capacity, or two OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSDs for up to 960 GB of capacity. A "quad interface" of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA connections is also provided, delivering data transfer speeds of up to 300 MB/s with Mac and PC computers, the company said.
The two drives reside in an anodized (heat dissipating) brushed aluminum enclosure featuring an "ultra-protective" Shock Isolation System and a bus-powered design. Near silent fanless operation makes this storage or backup solution a relatively quiet, silent partner running in the background and keeping tabs on your data. Overall the storage device measures a mere 5.6 (D) x 6.1 (W) x 1.1 (H) inches, making it small enough to shove into a laptop bag.
"It’s the ultimate portable storage solution for professional users," the company said. "The Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini fits easily into laptop, photography, and other gear bags because of its side-by-side drive orientation. Fast, hardware-RAID technology is ideal for demanding data storage and backup needs, and can be configured with either high-performance hard disks or SSDs."
The new 3 TB models sport two 1.5 TB 5400 RPM 2.5 inch SATA hard drives (HGST Travelstar 5K1500) with a 32 MB buffer each. The max 300 MB/sec speed is performed via an eSATA connection, whereas FireWire 800 provides speeds up to 100 MB/s, FireWire 400 up to 50 MB/s and USB 2.0 up to 60 MB/s. This setup is pre-formatted for Mac OS X, and can be switched to three other RAID modes besides the factory default setting: RAID 0, RAID 1, NRAID and NRAID Independent Mode.
For more information about OWC's line of Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini storage solutions, head here. Prices range for the eighteen HDD models from $191.99 to $369.99, and for the six SSD models from $337.99 to $1027.99.
