Other World Computing announced today a lower starting cost for installation of a 6Gb/s SSD via the OWC Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program for the Mid-2011 Apple iMac. Starting from less than half the cost of factory SSD options, the OWC program gives mid-2011 iMac owners/buyers the option of having OWC install up to three award winning, SandForce Driven OWC Mercury 6G Solid State Drives up to 480GB each and with data rates over 2x faster than factory SSD options. Program options also include a larger capacity hard drive up to 3.0TB and certified Memory Upgrades up to 32GB. 27″ iMac owners also have the option of OWC installing the industry’s only eSATA interface and experience data transfer rates up to 600MB/s. OWC’s installation service program offers multiple configuration options starting at $169 with a 48 business hours or less installation turnaround. Article Continues…
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OWC Upgrade Service For All Mid-2011 Apple iMacs Now Offers $249 Solid State Drive Option With Over 2x Faster Performance Than Factory SSD Options
OWC Introduces First ‘Apple/Mac Friendly’ Firmware Update Solution For SandForce Driven Solid State Drives
Other World Computing announced today the industry’s first and only Apple/Mac compatible firmware updater for SandForce Driven Solid State Drives. The fully Mac bootable updater is freely available from OWC for use exclusively with select OWC Mercury Solid State Drive models manufactured since January 2010. This new Mac compatible firmware updater is in addition to firmware update support OWC previously made available for Macintosh computers via the use of Bootcamp, as well as for PCs running the Windows OS. Article Continues…
OWC Announces Upgrade Service For All Mid-2011 Apple iMacs Featuring Up To Three High Performance 6Gb/s Solid State Drives, 3.0TB Hard Drive, 32GB RAM And/Or Industry’s Only eSATA Interface For 27″ Models
Other World Computing announced today its OWC Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program for the Mid-2011 Apple iMac that enables any 2011 21.5″ or 27″ iMac model owner to have OWC professionally install up to three award winning OWC Mercury 6G Solid State Drives up to 480GB each, a larger capacity hard drive up to 3.0TB, and OWC Memory Upgrades up to 32GB. 27″ iMac owners also have the option of OWC installing the industry’s only eSATA interface and experience data transfer rates up to 600MB/s. OWC’s installation service program offers multiple configuration options starting at $169 with a 48 business hours or less installation turnaround. Article Continues…
OWC Turnkey Program for 2011 iMacs Announced.
You know that feeling of accomplishment when you’ve overcome a huge obstacle and you can’t wait to tell the entire world about it? Well, we’ve got it; we’ve overcome the whole “fan/drive sensor” problem found when installing a non-factory drive in the 2011 iMacs. That means we can now officially announce the OWC Turnkey Program for the 2011 iMacs.
We’re also going to one-up the 2010 program by including upgrade options for both the 21.5″ and the 27″ 2011 iMac models.
That drive sensor thing was a big hurdle. Apple uses a custom firmware that sends temperature info in a non-standard fashion. Unfortunately, unless the drive has this special firmware, the fans spin at full speed. We wanted a solution that would be a long-term solution that wasn’t dependent on a software patch or hack. Though those sorts of fixes can be temporarily effective, we didn’t want to rely on them for two reasons:
- they put overhead on the bus which can reduce performance
- a software solution can can fail or be rendered non-functional by a wide variety of actions (software updates, system reinstalls, etc.) which could risk the hard drive and the data contained on it.
So, we went another route and developed a hardware solution that interfaces accurately and properly with what can be viewed as a frustratingly unique temperature data monitoring method by Apple. While our solution adds a little bit to the cost of upgrading the iMac’s hard drives, we feel that cost is more than offset by the advantages it has over software solutions. Article Continues…
New Instructional Videos!
It’s been a while since we really drew attention to new additions to our Instructional Series of videos, but considering the requests we’ve been getting lately, we figured you may be interested.
We’ve added a total of six new videos to our DIY section, showing you how to upgrade the memory and storage on the 2011 mini and mini Server, as well as showing you how to install the Mercury Aura Pro Express in the 2011 MacBook Airs.
You can check out these new videos (and all out other ones, too) in our Tech Center, on our YouTube Channel, or in iTunes.
OWC Represents “Voice Of Consumers” Usage Of Solid State Drives At Flash Memory Summit 2011
Other World Computing today announced it will represent the “voice of consumers” when several of its executives make presentations to Flash memory industry experts at the Flash Memory Summit being held today through this Thursday, August 11, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The Flash Memory Summit is the only conference dedicated entirely to the $38 billion market for flash memory and Solid State Drive (SSD) applications. Panel discussions, keynotes, paper sessions, workshops and special sessions are conducted to explore the uses, challenges, and future of flash memory and its applications from the iPad to enterprise level deployment. Summit themes will include: Solid State Drives (SSDs), Using Flash Storage in Consumer Applications, Managing Flash, and Flash as Nonvolatile Rugged Memory. Article Continues…
By The Numbers: What Can An OWC 6G SSD Do For Your 2011 Mac mini?
Our benchmarking has been completed on the latest round of Mac mini machines from Apple. We teased a bit with our post from last Friday exclaiming that the OWC 6G SSDs work with the new 2011 Mac mini.
In our excitement on discovering the functionality of the drives, we posted screenshots of a few of our test results, but we wanted to put what that means for you into perspective.
The chart above shows the average read/write speeds as reported by QuickBench in four increasingly beneficial drive configurations in our 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 Mac mini (RAID 0 configuration results obtained from a 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 Mac mini Server as that is the only machine that comes factory stock with two available drive ports.) Article Continues…
2011 Mac mini works with OWC 6G SSDs
After extensive testing, we’re glad to announce that both the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G line and our Mercury Electra 6G line of SSDs are fully compatible with the 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 ports on both the 2011 Mac mini and the 2011 Mac mini Server.
Both drive models work great, without the dropouts and other inconsistencies that we have seen in the 17” 2011 MacBook Pros.
Like its predecessor, the 2011 Mac mini Server has two drive bays, which can see the drives individually or in a software RAID 0 or 1. We tested a pair of Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSDs set up in a RAID 0 inside the mini Server and achieved read/write speeds over 1000MB/s!
The “regular” Mac mini only comes with a single drive installed. It appears, though, that a dual drive setup is certainly doable (though we can’t really comment on it until we look into it more, so please don’t even ask - just keep checking back; we’ll post it when we know for sure).
However, since the “regular” Mac mini comes as a single-drive unit, that’s how we tested it. It didn’t disappoint, either, getting speeds of over 500MB/s Read and over 420MB/s Write using one of the EXTREME Pro 6G’s.
You can see the results of both series tests below.
As you can see by these scores putting a 6Gb/s-capable SSD (or SSDs) in your 2011 Mac mini or Mac mini Server, really helps it achieve fullest the data transfer speeds possible.
