OWC Announces Mercury Electra SATA 6 Gb/s Solid State Drive

[Sam_Reynolds]

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today announced the OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD, a new consumer/prosumer targeted SandForce Driven SATA Revision 3.0 6Gb/s Solid State Drive. Designed and built in the USA utilizing the highest quality components available, including Tier 1/Grade A NAND, the OW... [ Read full article ]

[Nodscene]

Sounds a bit too good to be true but I hope that's not the case. 120gb, 500+ read/write for only $230 is astounding. If it lives up to the hype I know what my next drive is going to be.

[Soultribunal]

Someone show AkG.

I want his numbers on this.

ST

[AkG]

Nothing special I'm afraid. These drives are cheaper than most because they are going to be using asynchronous NAND not the faster and more expensive synchronous NAND most others use (and sure as hell not the Toggle mode NAND the Max IOPS V3 uses). They can call it "Tier 1/Grade A" all they want, doesnt mean its fast. Just that its passed all the normal QA processes. Its still inferior NAND from a performance perspective. Their high performance model is the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G, not this drive. This drive is spec'ed and designed to compete with the "Agility 3" not the "vertex 3". Thats why its cheaper.

As for their claims of "Doesn’t Slow Down With Use Like Ordinary SSDs", unless SF has opened the firmware up just for them (doubtful) thats a load of bollocks. The commands still go through DuraClass and as such if you hammer this drive it WILL go into a lowered state....just like any SF drive. SF drives have three states: Factory Virgin, Normal operating and Hammered. No SF drive will operate in Virgin state as it would burn through the NAND faster. Like all others this one will peak and then slow down a bit and reach its normal state of performance after a few days or weeks (depending on usage). IF you continue to slam it with uncompressed data (such as CDM and AS-SSD) it will go into a hammered state to protect the NAND and stay there until the "storm" has passed. This is part of the DuraClass algorithms. If OWC is stating it wont slow down, they are either running custom firmware that will burn through the NAND much more quickly than normal as it wont go into normal state but stay in Factory state..or have removed the Hammered State...and will burn through the NAND more quickly... OR its just PR wonkiness run amok (and they are comparing it to previous gens which slowed down even more...NOT other mfg'ers SF second gen SSDs). Guess which way I am leaning. ;)

In other words these drives are nothing special. just your average typical midgrade next gen (SF based) SSD.

EDIT:
Dont look at the sequential numbers. There will be very little difference between ANY SF gen 2 on seq read and write. Its only the 4K performance that will vary greatly. More importantly...sequential speeds are a terrible way to chose an OS drive.

[Nodscene]

Well, pretty much as I figured. Thanks for the explanation AkG

[thorn]

Call me biased, but I had a feeling there was some, more than usual, marketing 'magic' going on when they specifically mentioned they were a "Mac and PC technology company."

[AkG]

Well to be fair they ARE one of the grand daddies of the aftermarket mac sales niche. They have been catering to Apple users for a loooong time.

Personally, what I get a chuckle out of is there main market niche is MACs...and they are selling a SSD which needs TRIM to perform its best...BUT OSX doesnt have TRIM and wont until Lion hits (and only Lion, no built in TRIM for previous versions). You would think a company which prides itself on offering the best options for Mac users would be using a Crucial controller not a SF controller.

[SKYMTL]

One thing I can say about OWC is their customer service is absolutely top notch. I bought an adaptor for my girlfriend's iPad which wasn't compatible for whatever reason and they had another on its way to me within an hour of calling their 1-800 number.