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New OWC Mercury SSD line, which to get or APPLE?

D

dreamsandart

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 11, 2004
47
0
Deciding which SSD drive;

1. make it easy and with APPLE warranty and order my MBP with the 256GB

or

2. from what I've read the OWC Mercury

But I just checked the OWC web site and they've upgraded their Mercury SSD selection. Now there are 2 lines. An EXTREME Pro and the EXTREME Pro RE with "RAID-READY Enhanced"

The EXTREME PRO line is new, ups the GB and cheaper, a 240GB SSD drive for 'only' $699.99 compared to the RE model 200GB for $729.99

So what am I going to be missing? Is the RE really needed for a SSD drive to run applications (along with an external drive for data)?
 
dreamsandart said:
Deciding which SSD drive;

1. make it easy and with APPLE warranty and order my MBP with the 256GB

or

2. from what I've read the OWC Mercury

But I just checked the OWC web site and they've upgraded their Mercury SSD selection. Now there are 2 lines. An EXTREME Pro and the EXTREME Pro RE with "RAID-READY Enhanced"

The EXTREME PRO line is new, ups the GB and cheaper, a 240GB SSD drive for 'only' $699.99 compared to the RE model 200GB for $729.99

So what am I going to be missing? Is the RE really needed for a SSD drive to run applications (along with an external drive for data)?
Click to expand...

Raid support certainly wouldn't be needed, unless you wanted to run two drives at once. (one in the optical bay spot) I imagine the RE drives are geared more towards servers.

Also, based on the storage capacities of the RE line, I'd guess they don't use the sandforce controller. I'd shoot OWC an email to be sure, but I'd just stick with the non-RE models as the sandforce controller is amazing :)
 
Interesting now that they've got two lines.

I'd like to see what the effects on write performance over time are with the new line with only 7% over-provisioning on the OWC drives.

They both use the SF 1200 controller; the difference is how much space is set aside for over-provisioning.

I've heard nothing but good things about the OWC drives ever since they squashed the problem with sleeping your Mac. They really seem to be terrific drives (at least, the Pro RE models.) If I was in the market now I'd give the OWC drives a real hard look. I'm happy with my intel G2 drive currently though.
 
It will be interesting to see what effect the reduction in over-provisioning has on performance of the drive. If I had to guess from what I've read there may not be much of a difference with fresh drives but as the drives fill up the additional over-provisioning of the original drives may start to show some benefits. Just a guess on my part, I certainly wouldn't put too much stock into it until we see some test results. That being said I have the 120GB OWC and its a fantastic drive. The release of the 120GB doesn't diminish my satisfaction in the least. I'm a bit surprised the new drive is actually a bit cheaper per drive $379 for the 120GB and $399 for the $100GB and quite a bit cheaper by GB $3.19/GB for the 120 and $399/GB for the 100GB.
 
Just got off line 'live-chat' with someone at OWC. From what I was told its basically the same drive, read/write speeds, except the 7% vs 28% over-provisioning. So the RE may be 'safer', but the non-RE should be fine, and just as good as everyone else in that regard.

Anyway... now with a bit more space and a bit cheaper price I have to think this is the way to go over the APPLE SSD that I'd been seriously thinking of.
 
I wonder if the price difference is more about the 5 year warranty of the original drive vs. the 3 year warranty of the newer drive.

It would also be interesting to see how the additional over-provisioning of the original drives would make them better choices in a RAID config then the new drives.
 
I asked about the 7% vs 28% 'safety net', and as the on-line help person said "that's 7% more than everyone else". RAID in part is all about 'safety' of data, so as long as you are backing up - and there are no major flash problems - OK.

The difference in warranty times is a bit strange as if they are made the same should be reflected in the same warranty time to me. The price difference is only $30, not sure how the over-provisioning feature adds that much to cost production?
 
dreamsandart said:
I asked about the 7% vs 28% 'safety net', and as the on-line help person said "that's 7% more than everyone else".
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that's entirely true. There are a few 120GB SSD's out there. I believe all of these cards have a total of 128GB of flash of which about 8GB or so is reserved for use by the controller. In other words OWC's new SSD uses just about the same amount of over provisioning as everyone else's 120GB SSD's
 
I'm not so sure about this, or how other SSD rate there GB capacity may be a bit misleading. The OWC drive is a 240GB drive, all the others I see are 256GB, that equals out to about 7%. So either the other manufactures are not telling you that they are using 7% of their drive capacity for over-provisioning or something else is in play?

Either way, the new 'larger' OWC drive should be a good option, fast and its passed all the degradation tests I've seen (shouldn't be any difference between this version and the RE).
 
Also consider Mushkin's new Callisto series of drives. They're a tad bit cheaper than OWC's offerings and almost certainly identical internally. The cheapest I found it in the 256GB configuration is $657.00 here, plus S&H. You can also get 2% cashback through Bing, so that's how I would order it if that model appeals to you. I'm personally on the fence about it; I want it badly, but I don't know if I can justify spending that kind of cash.

snowboarder said:
I asked Lloyd last night about the differences and his thinks it's the same drive,
the only difference is the backup spare space.

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/2010-05-blog.html#blog20100511MPGPro


I got the 200GB drive and want to get another one, I think I'll pick up
the 480GB one...
Click to expand...
The amount of over-provisioning is controlled by the firmware, so that's probably the only difference between the two.
 
Raid later ....

I am looking to buy one now and then in a half a years time another one, and then stripe them in raid 0 software raid.

Do you need the RE version of the drive if you ever want to use the SSD in raid or can you use the regular version in raid aswell ?
 
Data said:
I am looking to buy one now and then in a half a years time another one, and then stripe them in raid 0 software raid.

Do you need the RE version of the drive if you ever want to use the SSD in raid or can you use the regular version in raid aswell ?
Click to expand...

The RE has the over subscription to try to give you longer life from the SSD. You can certainly do a RAID 0 of the drives without the RE, but you will lose out on the oversubscription and additional warranty from OWC.
 
Great thanks for that info, then i guess that raid ready is sort of missleading for people like me,lol, it sounds to me like the other one won't be able to do raid , but that is not the case then, they can both be used in raid no matter wich of the model line you choose.

Antoher Q then, i have the apple raid cart in my 2008 macpro 8core, i have 4 x 15.000 rpm sas drive's in raid 0 in it, and all i get is 200MB/s, can i use the owc's with that apple raid card , or should i just take out the card and do a software raid 0 instead for better speed. I mean the mac is fast enough to do a raid without losing any speed in comparising to the card i think. And is there any speed difference in the ssd's size wise, i mean is the 50 gig version just as fast as the 200gig version.
 
I went with a owc 40gb as the boot and replaced the optical with a 500gb hdd, works a treat. Highly recommended.
 
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