Another week has gone by, which means we’ve got another installation video for you.

This week’s “cinematic experience” guide details installing a SATA hard drive into the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Classic enclosure. This single-drive enclosure has a traditional assembly procedure in the form of screws, but also has an “align and slide” procedure which once you see it done, makes perfect sense.

It should be noted that while the enclosure shown in the video is for SATA drives, the only real difference, installation-wise, between the SATA model shown in the video and the older, IDE/ATA enclosures, is the internal connector type.

If you have an existing Mercury Elite Pro Classic solution that you’d like to put a larger hard drive in or you wish to DIY with a new “Add Your Own Drive” Kit, you can find the video in our Tech Center as well as on our YouTube Channel.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there have been some significant changes to the OWC Web site.

Our Graphics and Web Design teams have spent countless hours moving and redesigning the site to make things a little easier to navigate around. Here’s a couple of the great changes you’ll see.

• Shopping Cart Status – Brand new to our site is the Shopping Cart Status indicator, which is located in the upper-right corner of each page. It will tell you how many items you’ve currently got selected for purchase and by clicking on it, you can view the contents and/or check out.
• Support Information all in One Place – Links to Customer Service and Technical Support have been moved to the top of the page, along with a more in-depth site map and contact information. You can also check on the status of current orders here.
• Simplified Tabs – Large changes have been made here. Our categories have been streamlined to make finding what you need even easier.
• Easy Access to Newsletter and Blog – Links to the OWC Blog and the OWC Newsletters are now right at the top, rather than having to dig for them.
• Revamped Footer – At the bottom of each page, you’ll find an expanded version of the tab bar at the top, with quick links to each sub-category. You will also find a smaller version of the Shopping Cart and all our contact links.

Hopefully these new changes will help make shopping with OWC an even better experience!

Can’t always get what you want…

In an earlier post, we discussed the removal of the ExpressCard/34 slot from the 15″ MacBook Pro and the implications of that loss:http://blog.macsales.com/1391-apple-giveth-apple-taketh-away

As music production becomes more commonplace outside of the studio walls, musicians have become more and more dependent on the power and portability of the notebook.  It’s this need for a high performance machine that has made the MacBook Pro a staple for creative professionals.  Up until recently, increased features have been packed into these machines.  However, it seems that some of the features we’ve all come to know and love have been taken away from the most recent additions of the MBP product line -namely the second FireWire bus and expansion capabilities of the ExpressCard slot.  So, before we start crying “the sky is falling,” we need to answer three very important questions:

1. What have we lost?
2. What do we need?
3. What do we have?

We’ve lost expandability, we need sufficient bandwidth for our work flow, and we DO in fact have just that.

…but if you try sometimes…

All we have to do is re-assess our storage and interface requirements.  When recording music, you have to remember that audio data is substantially smaller than video.  Therefore, the bandwidth provided by FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 speeds is more than sufficient for most.  So what’s the bottom line?  You have two practical configurations for your new 15″ MacBook Pro:

1. USB 2.0 Audio Interface and FW 800 (or 400) External HD
2. FireWire 400 Audio Interface and FireWire 400 External HD (daisy chained)

…you get what you need.

In looking at the two configurations above, there is a method to the madness.  Option #1 gives you more bandwidth for your external hard drive, which can be useful for projects utilizing MIDI & virtual instrument libraries that require more resources for disk streaming.  Being a musician myself, I completely understand the hesitation involved when “USB” is mentioned.  In the past, USB has always been considered “the slow interface.” It’s because of this that I will mention that the new MBP’s have been bench-marked having much higher “real world” throughput than earlier models.  Therefore, you will see little to no performance loss when using a USB audio interface as opposed to FireWire.  So, you can think of Option #1 as your “MIDI Workstation” scenario.

Option #2 allows you to still keep a useful FW400 speed for your external HD, while using a FW400 audio interface (note: when daisy chaining a FW400 device with a FW800 device, both devices will be functioning at a FW400 speed). Currently, most audio interfaces that utilize a FireWire connection are FW400 so you’re not losing any performance on that end.  The benefit of these interfaces are that they are typically built to  handle more simultaneous audio input for multi-tracking than their USB counterparts.  You can think of Option #2 as your “portable live audio recording scenario.”

This takes care of our USB and FireWire issues, but what about the loss of other potential ExpressCard expansions?  Some companies have developed ExpressCard upgrades for audio professionals that use their laptops in a production setting.  Are these upgrades and expansions worthless now?  Absolutely not!  However, if you need to utilize these professional additions you’ll need to purchase the new 17″ MacBook Pro which still provides the user with an ExpressCard slot.  For those of you that don’t want to lug a monstrous 17″ notebook around, your only other alternative is to purchase an earlier version of the MacBook Pro which are still incredibly viable machines for audio/music professionals.

Mr. Jobs and the gang threw us quite a curve ball with this recent feature loss, but have no fear!  OWC is here to light the way through these murky waters of change to help you audio professionals get the most out of your hardware.  You can still make music without an ExpressCard!

As just one of our many ways to connect and communicate with customers at OWC, we dove into the deep end of the “social marketing” Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pools earlier this year as well with the unveiling of and commitment to this blog.

As I am the “man behind the curtain” persona of @macsales on Twitter, I’ve become somewhat of a Twitterholic. That being said, I have no plans of posting random thoughts such as my affinity for Take and Bake meals from Two Tails Market & Eatery.

Rather, what I’ve found other Tweeps to be thankful for are Tweets from us on new product announcements, insights to overlooked features on existing products or even new uses for those products, special price deals, independent product reviews, and facilitating customer service related needs.

The Tweets we are thankful for are the daily recommendations and praise OWC/macsales gets. I’ve visited other users Twitter profiles so I could personally thank them at their website. One person actually then Tweeted that thanking him was a classy act. Ever since that comment, I’ve been trying to come up with a consistent and significant way we could recognize these Tweets and perhaps introduce these folks to other Tweeps.

Additionally, I wanted to come up with a phrase or hashtag that could become as widely used as #FollowFriday or #FF for short. While it would be cool for OWC to be credited as the founder of a Twitter Trend, what would be most gratifying is to see this become THE hashtag used anytime someone wants to Tweet their appreciation for an act of kindness from any source.

So with great hope and positive intentions surrounding this sentiment, I give you Thanks For The Love or #TFTL. While OWC/macsales is well known for high performance, high quality products and a dedication to serving the customer that is second to none, I wanted to make sure we’re also known for truly appreciating our customers loyalty and trust in the form of a Tweet and that #TFTL is just one small way we can “pay it forward” in the world.

So go ahead…make someone’s day…tell them #TFTL.

In the phrase “May you live in interesting times” – often referred to (inaccurately) as “the Chinese curse”- “interest” is used as a euphemism for “trouble” or “unpleasantness.” If that is the case, then “dull,” “uneventful” and even “boring” could be used as “trouble-free” or “easy” in much the same manner.

Blog reader and OWC customer Larry Rymal did just that when he spoke of adding an OWC Storage Solution to his current system:

“Other than the added storage space, it was a very ‘boring’ uneventful upgrade.”

This is a great statement on the ease of use our products offer. No complex instructions, special drivers or extra equipment is needed to use one of our Storage Solutions. Everything you need to use it comes in the box, and its generally just a matter of minutes between opening the package and having your Storage Solution up and running.

In other words, it’s about as “dull” as you can get.

The irony of this phrasing, though, is that the actual usage of our drives is actually pretty interesting – and not in the euphemistic sense. I never mentioned what system Mr. Rymal hooked his OWC Storage Solution up to. No, it wasn’t a Mac. It wasn’t Windows or Linux box, either (though our Solutions would work with any of them).

He hooked it up to his DirecTV HD-DVR. Now, instead of the already-respectable 500GB worth of storage, he’s got 1.5TB, giving him about 300 hours worth of program recording.

The neat thing is, this isn’t the only instance of our Storage Solutions being used in non-traditional ways. Our products are designed to be as easy-to-use and widely-compatible as possible, which means they can be used with a lot of different setups. For example, I use an older Elite to store movies for playback via my DVD player, which has a built-in USB port. A few months ago, OWC Duane put up a great how-to showing how to use our Storage Solutions with your next-generation gaming platform.

If you’re using one of our Storage Solutions with something other than a basic desktop or laptop computer, I’d love to hear about it. Just leave a comment below.

Hardware and/or software bundles are often really good deals. Most times, you can get a number of pieces that work exceptionally well together for a price considerably lower than if you purchased them separately. When combined with lowered prices, these bundles become even more attractive.

Just such a thing has come to the OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray “Quad interface” optical drives.

First, let’s take a look at the new pricing/features of just the drive solutions:

• OWC Mercury Pro “Quad Interface” External Drive (model OWCMRF8UEBDW6) - $299.99.
  • eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 & USB 2.0 interface
  • Up to 6X Blu-ray, 16X DVD, and 40X CD Burn Speeds.
  • Includes all connection cables
  • Two 25GB 4X BD-R discs
  • One year OWC warranty
• OWC Mercury Pro “Quad Interface” External Drive (model OWCMRF8BDSD8X) - $349.99.
  • eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 & USB 2.0 interface
  • Up to 8X Blu-ray, 16X DVD, and 32X CD Burn Speeds
  • Includes all connection cables
  • Two 25GB 4X BD-R discs
  • One year OWC warranty.

While those are great prices on great drives, we’re taking it a bit further and offering up a pair of bundles with Toast 10 Titanium Pro, as well. A long time Mac favorite tool for burning CDs and DVDs, Toast 10 Titanium Pro takes burning on Macs to the next level with built-in Blu-ray data and video disc burning capabilities, in addition to DVD & CD support.

• OWC Mercury Pro “Quad Interface” External Drive and Toast 10 Titanium Pro Bundle (model OWCMRF8UEBDW6T) – $399.99.
  • eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 & USB 2.0 interface
  • Up to 6X Blu-ray, 16X DVD, and 40X CD Burn Speeds.
  • Includes all connection cables
  • Two 25GB 4X BD-R discs
  • One year OWC warranty
  • Full Retail Version of Toast 10 Titanium Pro
• OWC Mercury Pro “Quad Interface” External Drive and Toast 10 Titanium Pro Bundle (model OWCMRF8BDSD8XT) – $449.99.
  • eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 & USB 2.0 interface
  • Up to 8X Blu-ray, 16X DVD, and 32X CD Burn Speeds
  • Includes all connection cables
  • Two 25GB 4X BD-R discs
  • One year OWC warranty.
  • Full Retail Version of Toast 10 Titanium Pro

Let’s Get High-Definition!

Of course, the really great thing about bundling Toast 10 Titanium Pro with our Mercury Pro Blu-ray drives is that it becomes the perfect combination for burning your HD videos for playback on your home Blu-ray player. With HD video cameras widely available, and even iMovie being capable of handling HD video, it somehow seems kind of silly to have to edit all that HD footage together and scale it down to DVD if you want to watch it on your television.

So the question is: if the OWC Mercury Pro supports Blu-Ray media and Toast 10 Titanium Pro allows you to author Blu-ray video discs, what’s stopping you from taking your HD movies and putting them on Blu-ray, for highest-quality playback? Instructions, of course!

Fortunately, OWC has you covered there, too. We’ve put together a nice walkthrough of how to create a basic Blu-ray video that will play on your home Blu-ray player.

Now, you can view your HD video the way it was meant to be viewed – in full HD!

This is one I’m sure you’ve been waiting for. Following the price drops on the NewerTech miniStack, the Triple-Interface Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID and the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad”, we’ve got some reductions for the popular Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” external Storage Solution.

Like all of our Storage Solutions, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” offers incredible value along with great versatility.

• “Quad”-Interface - Whatever connection you have open, be it eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, or USB 2.0, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” has you covered.
• Oxford 924 performance bridge - Our high-quality bridge boards ensure that no matter how you have it hooked up, you’ll get the best performance you can.
• Fully Bootable - The Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” is fully bootable on your Mac, making it a great choice for a bootable clone.
• Large Data Buffer - Data buffers up to 32MB make high data transfer tasks, such as video capture, more relaiable and less susceptible to interruption.
• All cables are included - Nobody likes having to search for the appropriate cable to hook up their drives. You don’t have to worry about that with OWC Storage Solutions; we include one for each interface.
• Backup software included - Backing up with the Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” is even easier, with the included software bundle. We include the full retail version of Prosoft DataBackup III ($59 retail value) for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup ($49 retail value) for Windows. Also included is the Intech HD Speedtools performance suite and Carbon Copy Cloner. None of these applications are required to use the Elite, but they are excellent applications to have in your utilities library.
• 3-Year Warranty - OWC stands behind its products. The Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” with an industry leading 3-Year Full Solution Warranty.
• The Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface”  also qualifies for our exclusive Prosoft Drive Genius offer! Buy Drive Genius now for as low as $25 with purchase of a qualifying storage product – That’s up to 74% off retail price, up to 37% off OWC’s lowest normal selling price! This isn’t a “limited/non-support” version, either – it’s the full retail version! It’s a great deal on a great product.

Those are just some of the reasons the Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad Interface” is such a popular Storage Solution. Now, it’s going to be even more popular with these new prices!

• 250GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer – NOW $119.99
• 320GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer – NOW $124.99
• 500GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer – NOW $134.99
• 750GB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – NOW $159.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer – NOW $165.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – NOW 184.99
• 1.0TB “Enterprise Class” 7200RPM with 32MB Buffer – $229.99
• 1.5TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – NOW $229.99
• 2.0TB GreenPower w/32MB Data Buffer – NOW  $359.99 (a $60 price drop)
• OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 0GB Enclosure Kits are also available starting from $49.99. These kits allow you to install your own 3.5” SATA drive in a versatile, high-quality enclosure.

For fast storage that’s easy to use, you can’t go wrong with the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID. For best value, you can’t go wrong with OWC.

No matter how you look at it, the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro ‘Quad-Interface’ is the choice for High-Performance, Reliability, and Flexibility.

By popular request, we’re taking a short break from the “Mac Upgrade” series of instructional videos and moving on to our own products. That’s right, over the next few weeks or so, we’ll be showing you how to install/replace the hard drive(s) in all our SATA-based enclosures.

This week, we’re starting out with our most popular enclosure: The Mercury Elite-AL.

Keep in mind that this video is for the most recent iteration of this enclosure; instructions for the enclosure design sold prior to December 2008 will be in a separate video, to be released near the end of the series.

As always, you can find our instructional videos both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Mankind’s first steps on a surface other than that of the Earth is a landmark event in both US and World history.

NASA has restored some of the tapes of that historic Moon walk and has made high-definition movies of those broadcasts available on their Web site.

Space exploration – both in fact and in fiction – is a popular subject around the OWC offices. You might not have known it, but that affinity for space exploration play a significant role in the name evolution of OWC.

In 1993, LRO Computer Sales founder and CEO Larry O’Connor wanted to rename the company for something that stood for more than just “sales.” Drawing on the idea that it should represent information and relationships first, and inspired by the introduction to Star Trek that lists exploring new worlds as part of its on-going mission, LRO Computer Sales emerged with a new name: Other World Computing.

Of course, tying this all together is the suggestion that parts of the classic Star Trek introduction was inspired by a White House document designed to rally support for the US space program after the launch of the Sputnik satellite.

In a strange bit of coincidence, a photo satellite was launched last month to explore the Moon’s surface, to prepare for future exploration, and photos have recently been received. The name of the satellite? The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – also known as the LRO!

Every once in a while, my day-to-day computing adventures manage to coincide with something that’s reverberating through the Macintosh Community at large. This last week was just such an example.

Over the last week or so, there have been a number of discussions in a number of forums regarding backups in general, with a focus on Time Machine in particular. Oddly enough, about this time last week, the boot drive on my work machine crashed.

As you may have guessed, I am a huge proponent of regular backups. I’ve written  articles about it. I’ve given presentations at Macworld about it. Now, I’m blogging about it. You could say I have a bit of a fixation on backing up. Fortunately, this fixation meant that I was able to keep working while a new drive was procured and was running at full speed again within a couple hours.

After dealing with that then seeing the unusual jump in articles discussing backup, I figured it may be prudent to explore some common backup methods.

Time Machine

A lot has been written about Time Machine. I, myself, have written a couple articles on the topic: one when it first came out and a wider-ranging one a couple of months ago.

Personally, I use Time Machine fairly frequently, as I have the unfortunate habit of emptying my Trash almost reflexively. It’s hard to say how many times Time Machine has enabled me to retrieve a file I just trashed. That protection is well worth the cost of a decent external drive.

Cloning

Time Machine is incredibly useful and effective, except in one instance: when you need to be back up and running quickly. That’s where a “clone” of your drive comes in handy.

Effectively a “clone” is a file-for-file copy of your boot drive. That means that if your main drive goes down, you can boot from your cloned copy and pick up at the last backup point. Unfortunately, everything you did after that point is lost.

Cloning software is easy-to-find. A copy of the popular Carbon Copy Cloner is included with every OWC and Newer Technology Storage Solution. You can even automate the backups to be as frequent as you want.

Hardware redundancy

Of course, if you want to always have a completely up-to-date “backup” that works automatically, then you may want to look into a RAID of some sort. The easiest to use would be the NewerTech Guardian MAXimus, which is an all-in-one Mirrored RAID (RAID 1). If one drive fails, there is an automatic copy which you can run off of until you can replace the failed drive.

A little more advanced is the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2, which can provide more advanced RAID setups and larger capacities.

Its instantaneous nature is both a strength and a weakeness. Because it copies file information without an intermediary, if a file is corrupted on one disk, it is corrupted on the backup as well.

Additionally, you are limited to the speed of the bus you are connected to. If you have eSATA capability on your computer, this won’t be a problem – the total bandwidth available is higher than the physical drives can output. Otherwise, you’ll need to use FireWire 800,400, or USB 2.0. Those busses, however, will be saturated by the drives, potentially slowing the system down.

Combinations

This is exactly what it sounds like: a combination of two or more methods. This helps offset the weaknesses of one method with the strengths of another. In my instance, I have one drive dedicated to Time Machine, and another that is a fully-bootable clone, which I update daily. When my drive went down, I was able to boot to my clone, and retrieve any new, non-cloned files I needed via Time Machine.

Another option would be to run your system off of a RAID 0 (or RAID 5) and use another (single or RAID) drive to hold Time Machine backups. The variations are only as limited as your imagination and budget.

Don’t Delay

Backing up is something you don’t think about until your hard drive fails. Unfortunately, it isn’t a matter of “if” but of “when.”

Do you have a plan in place for when the inevitable happens?

Looking to be among the first notified of these special deals and more?  Sign up for OWC Larry’s Tips and Deals Newsletter.

We don’t get too excited about iPhone and iPod cases – they are more of a “personal preference” for most people – but I have to say that I have been extremely impressed and pleased with the XGear Carbon cases since I got my own at Macworld.

In a world with a million different silicon and neoprene casings, the Xgear ‘Nitrous Oxide’ line of Carbon Fiber based cases really are a world apart. I find the case to have excellent hand comfort, looks great, and is effective at protecting from drops onto hard surfaces too. One of the best features – it does not pick up lint, dust, etc. This has my ‘OWC Larry’ recommendation.

We currently carry the Xgear Carbon case for iPhone (1G, 3G, 3G S – all) – $24.99

You can also see all the Xgear ‘gear’ we offer here.

Every year, America’s Cardboard Cup Regatta holds it’s annual event at the Crystal Lake Main Beach in Crystal Lake, Illinois. This event was originally created by members of the Crystal Lake Yacht Club to provide people with a fun day and to enjoy Crystal Lake. Every year the Regatta hosts more than 180 cardboard boats and over 5,000 spectators. Over the years, this event has grown and is now considered by people worldwide as the championship of Cardboard boat racing. Participants have come from all over the Chicago region and as far away as Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

Best of all, the proceeds from America’s Cardboard Cup Regatta benefit a wide variety of local charities.

This year for the event’s 25th Anniversary, the Other World Computing team of businesses OWC.net, Two Tails Market & Eatery and Java Planet entered a joint effort vessel for the third straight year. Additionally, the combined financial contributions of the businesses earned a Gold Level sponsorship of the event itself.

OWC participants in the event included:

Captain : Ryan O’Connor
Boat Coxswain: Amanda Tabor

Rowing Team:

• Brian Bielick
• Brian Bellman
• Josh Buhr
• Brittany Finn
• Horacio Villa
• Joseph Alemann
• Russell Wilson
• Ryan Kanak
• Bill Friel
• Colleen Cullerton
• Chelsea MacNamara

Shore Patrol:  Kayleen Ivers, Kevin Ivers, Eileen Milard, Laura Park

It’s Friday, and that means we’ve got another Instructional video for you! As you might expect, this week we’re installing a new hard drive in a the mid-2009 revision of the 15” MacBook Pro.

Upgrading the hard drive in your MacBook Pro not only allows you to store more files, but  it also can improve performance if you’re upgrading from a 5400 RPM drive to a 7200 RPM drive.

As usual, you can find the new video both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Next week, by popular demand, we’ll be starting a series on installing drives in our external enclosures. While it’s common knowledge that our enclosures are made of high-quality components and materials, we also believe that “quality” also includes giving you complete, easy-to-follow instructions on how to assemble and use them.

Stay tuned; as each one becomes available, we’ll announce them here.

A couple of weeks ago, we saw price drops on both the miniStack v3 and the Triple-Interface Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID. It turns out that this week, the Elite RAID’s bigger brother, the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” is also seeing a price reduction.

This round of pice drops adds even more value to a Storage Solution that’s already packed with features like these:

• Quad-Interface - The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” can connect up via eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, or USB 2.0 for maximum versatility
• Fast, Fast, Fast - There are two 7200 RPM drives, configured in a RAID 0 (striped) in this solution. This provides fast read/write speeds, speeding up disk-intensive tasks, such as video capture and editing. The eSATA connection allows you to utilize the RAID to its maximum performance.
• Custom Oxford-based bridge - This A/V Certified bridge chipset ensures fast and reliable data transfer between the drives and your computer.
• Fully Bootable - If you use this Storage Solution to clone your internal drive, you can boot right to the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID and continue working should your main drive fail. Speed enthusiasts may also want to try using it as their main boot drive, taking advantage of the speed this solution can offer.
• Large Capacity - The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” is available in capacities up to 4.0TB. That’s enough to back up several home computers.
• Brand-name Hard Drives - There’s no worries about “mystery meat” here. OWC Storage Solutions use high-quality drive mechanisms from well-known drive manufacturers such as Hitachi and Western Digital, and we tell you exactly which mechanism is used right there in our specifications.
• No searching for cables - Like all OWC products, the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” comes with all the cables you need. Whether you need eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 or USB 2.0, the cable is in the box so you can use your drive right away.
• Backup software included - For making your backups easy, we include the full retail version of Prosoft DataBackup III ($59 retail value) for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup ($49 retail value) for Windows. Also included is the Intech HD Speedtools performance suite and Carbon Copy Cloner. None of these applications are required to use the Elite, but they are excellent applications to have in your utilities library.
• 3-Year Warranty - The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” is backed by an industry leading 3 Year Full Solution Warranty. We know our products are high-quality, and we stand behind them!
• The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID also qualifies for our exclusive Prosoft Drive Genius offer! Buy Drive Genius now for as low as $25 with purchase of a qualifying storage product – That’s up to 74% off retail price, up to 37% off OWC’s lowest normal selling price!

Okay, we all know that the The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” is a great Storage Solution, but all the features in the world don’t mean anything if the pricing is obnoxiously high. Don’t worry. Remember the first paragraph of this post? We’re talking about price drops. Here’s the scoop:

• 640GB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – NOW  $199.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – $219.99
• 1.5TB 7200RPM with 64MB Data Buffer - $279.99
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer - NOW $289.99
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB Data Buffer – was $369.99, NOW $319.99 (a $50 price drop!)
• 2.0TB “Enterprise Class” 7200RPM w/64MB Buffer - NOW $394.99
• 3.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB of Data Buffer - NOW $409.99
• 4.0TB GreenPower w/64MB of Data Buffer - was $779.99, now $719.99 (a $60 price drop)
• OWC Elite-AL Pro RAID SATA HD x 2 enclosure kits are also available without drives as  ‘Add Your Own Hard Drives Kit’ starting from $104.99, and have user configurable options for different RAID and non-RAID modes.

The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID “Quad” is a high-quality, fast, easy-to-use RAID storage solution. These new prices just make them an even better value.

When Apple introduced the MagSafe adapter in 2006, it was kind of a mixed blessing. While the theory behind it is incredibly cool, the fact it is a proprietary connector protected by patents and lawyers means that third-party power adapters aren’t going to be legally seen at reasonable prices any time soon, and Apple’s trend toward integrated batteries means that you can’t hot-swap while on the road if you need to. The only option you have is to buy a second adapter from Apple… until now.

OWC’s happy to announce that we’ve got Apple Genuine 60 Watt MagSafe Power Adapters for MacBook & 13” MacBook Pro and Apple Genuine  45 Watt MagSafe Power Adapters for MacBook Air now in stock.

These are Apple Genuine adapters, not some illegal, unsupported knockoff. While not brand new, these units are in Good condition, have been OWC Tested before shipping and are backed by a 90 Day OWC Warranty for your peace of mind.

If you can use a spare MagSafe adapter, or need a replacement for one gone bad – buying a used adapter from us saves you about $30 bucks off of the cost of a brand new one.

Keep in mind, though, that these adapters are only good for the MacBook/13” MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. They won’t work for the 15” & 17” MacBook Pros. We are currently on working on getting some 85 Watt adapters for those models and we’ll let you know right here on the OWC Blog when we get them in.

Upgrading your machine is a great way to bring out the best in it and allow it to do what you need it to accomplish. Over the years, there have been some common problems that keep popping up. Though most of you probably know them already, it sometimes slips by the wayside in eager anticipation of getting all those benefits the upgrades will bring.

To help avoid the most common problems, here is a compiled list of reminders that we like to call “The Golden Rules of Upgrading.” We’ve broken it into two parts: things to consider before buying your upgrades and things to consider after you have received the new goodies and are ready to put them to use.

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Looks like the NewerTech Voyager isn’t the only one getting the all the reviewers’ love. OWC’s Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 is pulling in the accolades, as well.

We haven’t really talked a whole lot about the Qx2 on the OWC Blog, and that’s kind of a shame, because it’s a product I really, really like. In short, it is an easy-to-use, multi-drive storage solution.

External storage is insanely useful, especially for backups. In most cases, your standard single drive external storage solution will serve you well. However, while single-drive options are inexpensive, they are limited in speed and redundancy.

For FireWire and USB 2.0, most drives will be bottlenecked by the connection bus. With eSATA, though, the drive mechanism itself becomes the limiting factor, relying on how fast the drive itself can access the data. While OWC Storage Solutions use high-quality drive mechanisms, we have yet to find a single drive that can take up the entire SATA bus’s bandwidth.

The other place where single drives are limited is in data redundancy. When a drive eventually fails (which, granted, can be years from now), all the data on the drive is lost. Regular backups and/or clones are ways of getting around this, but they also are limited to only being as up-to-date as the last time they were run.

Both these limitations can be addressed by the use of a RAID device, such as the Qx2.

A little bit about RAID

For those of you who don’t know the term, RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Independent Disks.” Effectively, multiple hard drives are connected together and appear as one large volume on your desktop. There are a number of different RAID types, each with different levels of redundancy and speed.

RAID 0 (Striped) – This addresses the speed limitations of a single drive, and is a great choice for instances where fast data access is needed, such as video and audio capture. Data is split into blocks over two or more drives at same time for high speed and large capacity. However, if one drive goes down, the whole RAID array is ruined. Technically, you could say that this is not a “RAID,” as it eliminates the “Redundant” part. But that would be nit-picky, and nobody likes people like that.

RAID 1 (Mirrored) - This addresses redundancy issues, and is best for when you have data you can’t afford to lose to hardware failure. In this mode, data is written simultaneously to to two different drives. If one drive goes down, you still have a second copy. The down side to this is that you effectively lose half your total drive capacity.

RAID 10 (1+0) - This RAID level combines both RAID 0 and RAID 1, effectively layering one over the other. While you still maintain the speed of a RAID 0 and gain the redundancy of RAID 1, you still have the loss in capacity mentioned of RAID 1, only now you have TWO drives you lose the capacity of.

RAID 5 (Striped with Redundancy) - This is a slight variation on RAID 10, which addresses the capacity loss. In RAID 5, data is striped between 3 or more disks, with only one drive’s worth of data being lost to redundancy. In effect, the more Disks the RAID array has, the more space-efficient the RAID’s redundancy function becomes. For a more detailed description of how RAID 5 works, check out this informational PDF.

There are, of course, other RAID levels, such as RAID 6, RAID 0+1 & RAID 53, but they’re mostly just variants or combinations of these major ones.

RAID-in-a-Box

The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 makes adding RAID functionality and massive capacity up to 8TB to your system incredibly simple. All you need to do is put four identical drives into the Qx2 case (or select one of the pre-configured complete solutions), and select the type of RAID you want  (it comes pre-set as RAID 5…which is my personal preference incidently). After a few moments, the Qx2 will configure itself and you can then attach it to your computer via the connection of your choice, where it will behave just like any other external device.

I won’t kid you, the Qx2 isn’t for everybody. In fact, for many, a simpler solution may be more useful. For those in a “small office” situation or power users with more advanced storage needs, though, this may be just what you’re looking for.