OWC Blog - blog.macsales.com

Tag-Archive for » SSD «

OWC Announces Mercury Accelsior as Industry’s First Fully Macintosh and PC Supported Bootable PCIe SSD Card

Monday, April 16th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing today introduced the OWC Mercury Accelsior, the industry’s first both Mac-bootable and PC-bootable, fully supported PCIe SSD card. By utilizing the fastest data interface available in a Mac Pro or PC—the PCIe slot—the Mercury Accelsior offers nearly 3x the performance vs. an SSD in a SATA 2.0 3Gb/s drive bay with well beyond even 6Gb/s speeds of up to 780MB/s. Now owners of PCs and Apple Mac Pros can stop waiting for I/O-intensive apps like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, or Avid Pro Tools to render, capture or process; and can experience near instantaneous booting and application launches. The Mercury Accelsior will be highlighted along with other OWC storage solutions in booth #SL14110 during the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show being held this week in Las Vegas.

Fully Bootable, No Drivers Needed

The OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD card is AHCI compliant, so no drivers are required for a truly Plug and Play solution. Besides turning a computer into a speed demon, this high-performance SSD is bootable on PCs and is the only Mac-bootable, Mac supported PCIe SSD available. Article Continues…

This post has 58 comments.
Category: New @ OWC, Press Releases
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Adding an OWC SSD to your 27″ iMac (2011) costs even less!

Thursday, April 12th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

To celebrate Tuesday’s release of the OWC DIY Kit for 2011 27” iMac models, we’re knocking and additional $15 off the price if you buy a qualifying OWC Mercury SSD at the same time.

Though the procedure is not for the faint of heart, adding a fast OWC SSD alongside the internal platter-based hard drive that’s already installed allows you to keep your data while gaining the speed benefits of an SSD when your OS is properly installed on it.

If you’re looking for further drive expansion options, though, or if you’d rather have a trained professional do it for you, you may want to check out our Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program, which has a number of extra options.

This post has 4 comments.
Category: New @ OWC, Product Spotlight
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

OWC Introduces DIY Kit to Add SSD to 2011 27″ Apple iMac

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed


Other World Computing today introduced the OWC DIY Kit for 2011 27″ iMac models. The kit enables owners to add a high-performance SSD in addition to existing factory hard drive. After performing this installation, which comes fully supported with a step-by-step video, iMac owners will enjoy near instantaneous booting and application launches along with data transfer rates up to 559MB/s. While OWC highly recommends its Mercury SSDs for the Apple iMac, this kit is fully compatible with all 2.5″ Serial ATA SSDs.

OWC DIY Kit for 2011 27″ iMac Includes:

This post has 24 comments.
Category: Press Releases
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NAND Flash Turns 25

Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Relatively speaking, solid state drives like the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro, Aura Pro, Legacy, and  Electra series are fairly new players to the computer world only really coming into prominence within the last few years, as prices became more affordable. The technology behind them, though—flash memory—was developed during the early 1980s by Dr. Fujio Masuoka for Toshiba, who produced the first chips during the first week of April, 1987.

In the quarter-century since, the market for NAND flash memory has grown considerably. Now, NAND flash has become the de facto choice for compact storage – from USB thumb drives, to memory cards for cameras and phones, to high-capacity solid state drives, to the built-in memory on your favorite portable devices.

Comment on this post.
Category: Random Thoughts & Topics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

OWC Introduces “techKNOWlogy” Video Series

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 | Author: OWC Chris S.

One of the things that we constantly get comments on are our Instructional Series of videos, which show you how to install memory, hard drives, and other upgrades into your Mac.

Now, we’d like to announce our new series, techKNOWlogy, which, instead of concentrating on the physical installation, looks more at using your Mac once your new hardware is already installed. In each episode, one of our OWC staffers will walk you through one of a wide range of topics – from showing you how to create a backup plan for your home computer to explaining the benefits and drawbacks to different RAID configurations.

For our first episode, we’re addressing a common scenario: if you’re adding a faster second drive (such as an SSD/Data Doubler kit), how do you set up your Mac so that the OS runs off the faster (but probably smaller) drive while seamlessly keeping your data files on the (probably larger) original drive?

Well, we’ve put together a method to make sure everything gets where it needs to go and OWC Vic will walk you through it, step by step.

Check it out below and be sure to stop back here at the OWC Blog often for more updates. Article Continues…

This post has 11 comments.
Category: Installation Videos, OWC Difference, Tech Tips
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

OWC Lowers Prices, Adds Higher Performance Drive And Storage Capacity Options To Turnkey Upgrade Service For 2010-2011 Apple iMacs

Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today it has lowered prices and added new drive performance and capacity options to its OWC Turnkey Upgrade Installation Program for the 2010 27″ Apple iMac and 2011 21.5″ or 27″ iMac models. Starting from less than half the cost of factory SSD options, iMac owners can have OWC professionally install up to three award-winning OWC Mercury 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 4.0TB 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…

This post has 11 comments.
Category: Press Releases
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Firmware Update Part II – The Results

Friday, February 24th, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

In case you missed it, we released a new firmware update for our SSD line yesterday. At the same time, we’ve been running tests to determine if there was any impact on performance.

Well, there is a bit of an effect in that this latest revision seems to smooth out the performance of the drive, lessening the variance in write performance considerably.

It’s probably just easier to show you.

We tested a 240GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD using the DiskTester diglloyd Tools both before and after the firmware update, and got these results.

As you can see, read rates stay right around the same speed and variance, but take a look at how much less varied the write rates have become after the update. You’ll also notice that while the variance has narrowed, it has narrowed toward the faster range. Now the minimum speed is right around the level that used to be considered the middle-0f-the road for this drive; it’s now slightly faster.

Granted, this increase in speed isn’t likely to be perceptible to most users – you’d have to be writing files in the multi-gigabyte range just to see a couple of seconds shaved off. However, the stabilization of and increase of  write speeds may be an additional benefit if you choose to upgrade your firmware.

This post has 46 comments.
Category: Benchmarking/Performance
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

OWC Announces Firmware Update For Industry-Leading Mercury Solid State Drive (SSD) Line

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Other World Computing announced today it has released a new firmware version—MP5.0.1—to deliver optimum performance and stability from its industry-leading, SandForce Driven Mercury Solid State Drive line when installed in the latest Macs and PCs. The GUI driven, Mac experience friendly and bootable updater for Solid State Drives is freely available from OWC for use exclusively with OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, Mercury Electra, and Mercury Aura Pro SSD models.

The Only Mac Friendly Update Experience

OWC’s proprietary firmware updater, now available with support for all of Apple’s latest Mac models, as well as nearly all prior machines, eliminates the need for a PC, ownership of Windows or other operating system, or the creation of a specially designated drive partition that many SSD updaters have required. Mac users only need to download the updater from OWC’s site, obtain and burn a DVD, and then boot from that DVD to launch an easy to use, point and click GUI for installing the latest firmware revision to their OWC Mercury SSD. OWC’s Mac-friendly firmware updater continues OWC’s unmatched firmware update support for Mac users of SandForce-based SSDs. OWC also provides update support for PCs running the Windows or Linux OS.

“We recognized SSDs would be an ever-evolving product, so we made it our priority to ensure users of OWC Mercury brand SSDs would immediately be able to utilize the benefit from any hardware and/or firmware updates,” said Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing. “As such, this latest firmware update is quick, easy and performed with no guesswork or doubt via the only point and click Mac-friendly updater; as well as standard upgrade packages for Windows and Linux Operating System users.”

This post has 94 comments.
Category: Press Releases, Tech Tips
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »