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Speed-Bumped MacBook Pros Released

Monday, October 24th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Apple released some updated MacBook Pros today. There’s not much new about them, except that they’re sporting some faster processors. The 13” model now has the option of a dual-core 2.8GHz Core i7 or a 2.4GHz Core i5 dualie. The 15” model has stock options of quad-core i7 processors in 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz, with a 2.5GHz option available as a custom configuration. The 17” model now comes stock with the aforementioned 2.4GHz i7 quad-core processor, but also has a 2.5GHz option available.

Other than the processor boost, a faster graphics card on the 15” and 17” models, and  a small bump in stock hard drive size on the 13” to a minimum of 500GB, the specs on these MacBook Pros are effectively the same as the models that came out earlier this year.

That means that all the upgrades, compatibility, and installation videos for the Early 2011 MacBook Pros should be equally as valid for the Late 2011 models.

As for the other issues that have popped up around the 2011 Macbook Pros, we’ll be checking those when the new ‘Books come in tomorrow, and will post our findings as we get them.

 

Upgrade Your 06-08 Mac Pro’s Internal Bays to SATA 3.0

Friday, October 14th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Most of the time, your average Mac has a longer useful life than its PC counterpart. Unfortunately, the fast evolution of technology means that, after a while, that older Mac may seem a little slow and may not be able to take full advantage of current tech.

Such is the case for earlier Mac Pros. As they currently sit, they only move data at SATA 2.0  speeds, roughly three gigabits per second. If you wish to put the drives in to a RAID array, you are limited to either a mirrored RAID 1, losing half your capacity, or a RAID 0, which is faster, but increases the risk of data loss. On top of that, those RAID levels are all software-based, which can reduce overall performance.

Fortunately, if you happen to have a 2006-2008 Mac Pro, you can improve the performance in those bays, with only one small thing to lookout for. Article Continues…

Drive Adapters Galore—Which Is The Right One?

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

I think that by now, we’ve established just how amazing our line of Solid State Drives are - from in-house benchmarking to glowing reviews and even the amazing response to our firmware updater tool all indicate just how popular and reliable our SSDs are.

In fact, the only reason they’re not even more popular is their form factor. Since the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 3GMercury Electra 6G and Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G all have the same 2.5″ form factor commonly found in laptops, many people assume that they won’t work in machines that use the larger 3.5″ drives.

Fortunately, that’s not quite true. While these drives don’t “naturally” fit in a 3.5″ drive bay, they work wonderfully when installed with the use of an adapter. That, of course, is where things may get a little confusing.

You know that phrase about there being “more than one way to skin a cat”? It applies to adapting a 2.5″ drive to fit a larger bay, too.

In fact, between OWC and NewerTech, we’ve got five different ways to adapt our SSDs for a larger drive bay. Which one is the “right” one? It all Article Continues…

OWC Customer Reviews his OWC-Upgraded iMac

Monday, September 19th, 2011 | Author: Guest Blogger

[Editor’s Note: Due to its very nature, it’s been somewhat difficult to get a professional media review of our Turnkey Upgrade Program for the 2011 iMac, so we’re posting a customer testimonial, instead. If you’re a reviewer and want to review the upgrade program, please contact us.]

Why I Chose the OWC Turnkey Upgrade Program for the 2011 iMac.

by Ken H., OWC Customer

In January, I had a 2TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro RAID hard drive that wouldn’t mount. Since none of the data on the drive was backed up, I started to look into data recovery and found out how expensive it was. Fortunately, OWC Tech Support helped me determine that that the problem was simply a power adapter problem and not a drive failure.

After coming so close to losing valuable data, I decided to come up with a backup plan. I bought a 12TB OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 and configured it as RAID 5. I also bought an empty Qx2 and placed the 2TB drives from two 4TB Mercury Elite Pro RAIDs into that for an 8TB RAID 0 drive. That way, I could put all of the videos and photos from several drives onto one large drive and keep a backup of the large drive.

Article Continues…

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

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

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…

Category: Press Releases

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

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

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.

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 | Author: OWC Grant

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:

  1. they put overhead on the bus which can reduce performance
  2. 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!

Friday, August 12th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

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.