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OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2?

B

baddj

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 4, 2009
353
35
Hello,

I would like to ask somethings about this bit of hardware if someone has one they will most likely be the most help

1) Is the 0TB ones worth the cost (ill be getting my own drives) for the hardware raid?

2) How well made is the overall system does the hardware raid work well?

3) if i use it in raid 1+0 or raid 5 if a drive fails do i have to power down the box to replace the drive or is it hotswap?

4) Does Macsales (OWC) ship to Australia and how does warranty work?

5) Can you also use this with no raid?

6) Say if i turn the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 off it will kill the data if its in raid? when it if does not when i turn it back on does it have to rebuild the array? and how long does that take?

Also what do you think of this over all?
 
well i dont have the raid version .. but i just recently got the mercury elite al pro .. and put my 1.5tb hd in it .. Im not really satisfied with it .. I will probably end up selling it once i finish this semester .. since i need an external hd for my editing class

things i dont like about it

- rattles .. prolly my hdd though
- gets super hot
- cosmetically i hate the writing on the side

if i was going to do raid i would prolly get the g-raid drives or maybe a drobo
 
Yea the mercury elite al pro do not have a fan i do not think where the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 does.

and the rattles sounds like the drive maybe.

any ways still looking for them Q's to be answered.
 
I am also looking at purchasing the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. Still shopping around though. The Drobo was my top choice, until i read this review. More information on the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 i found helpful here.
 
Hey - I am sorta in the same position.

Also looking for a RAID drive from OWC - and wondering if they ship outside of USA.
 
After talking to there support team they do ship out side of the USA they told me.

So i mite order one by the end of the year. as they look good.
 
Someone that has this enclosure can comment on how it is. I want to buy one this Christmas, but I'd like to see someones experience with it.
 
Sensamic said:
Someone that has this enclosure can comment on how it is. I want to buy one this Christmas, but I'd like to see someones experience with it.
Click to expand...

I just got mine. I put three Seagate Barracuda's in it and one WD Green and so far everything seems fine. Moving over 1.1 TB of info is taking longer than it should but we will see. This sits downstairs so it is not heard.

I did initialize the disk, copy a file over, waited a few minutes, then pulled the third bay drive out to see what would happen. Everything still worked. Only thing is that the rebuild light has been flashing since. Maybe because I then started copying my data over. Not sure.

However, for a residential use, it seems nice so far. I'll keep you posted.

I consider the unit quite but not MBP or iMac quiet. I can't really put a description to it but it is audible but not over bearing but I wouldn't want it on my desk either.
 
baddj said:
Hello,

I would like to ask somethings about this bit of hardware if someone has one they will most likely be the most help

1) Is the 0TB ones worth the cost (ill be getting my own drives) for the hardware raid?

2) How well made is the overall system does the hardware raid work well?

3) if i use it in raid 1+0 or raid 5 if a drive fails do i have to power down the box to replace the drive or is it hotswap?

4) Does Macsales (OWC) ship to Australia and how does warranty work?

5) Can you also use this with no raid?

6) Say if i turn the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 off it will kill the data if its in raid? when it if does not when i turn it back on does it have to rebuild the array? and how long does that take?

Also what do you think of this over all?
Click to expand...

Answers based on memory because I haven't used mine in a while...

1. It's the cheapest RAID box that you can buy. Whether or not it's worth it is up to you.
2. It works OK. Alarmed once or twice for apparently no reason over the course of a year. No harm done, but still a little disconcerting.
3. Hotswap.
4. Don't know.
5. As a span, which is practically RAID0 without the speed advantage. It still merges all the drives into one volume though. There is no way to load and manage individual drives.
6. It won't delete data if you turn it off. And it won't rebuild when you turn it back on.

Also note that you can download the manual from the macsales.com website.

I was happy enough with it. But fathom alarms are not my idea of acceptable on a RAID box. In the end, we stopped using ours.
 
aplnub said:
I just got mine. I put three Seagate Barracuda's in it and one WD Green and so far everything seems fine. Moving over 1.1 TB of info is taking longer than it should but we will see. This sits downstairs so it is not heard.

I did initialize the disk, copy a file over, waited a few minutes, then pulled the third bay drive out to see what would happen. Everything still worked. Only thing is that the rebuild light has been flashing since. Maybe because I then started copying my data over. Not sure.
Click to expand...

I would really recommend against the WD Green drives for a RAID setup. On a standard drive, if a bad sector is observed, the drive will simply mark it as bad and move the data to another sector. This takes some time though for the remapping. On a WD Green drive, it is designed to drop from a RAID setup if this happens. In short, it might often fall from the array.

The constant activation of the rebuild light is something I never really understood on this unit.
 
Thiol said:
I would really recommend against the WD Green drives for a RAID setup. On a standard drive, if a bad sector is observed, the drive will simply mark it as bad and move the data to another sector. This takes some time though for the remapping. On a WD Green drive, it is designed to drop from a RAID setup if this happens. In short, it might often fall from the array.

The constant activation of the rebuild light is something I never really understood on this unit.
Click to expand...

Dang. This is not cool to hear. I have a Synology 1511+ coming to my work this week and I ordered all WD Green drives for it (5 and one spare). I normally don't use WD drives but Seagate had a drive limit of three on Amazon so I just ordered all WD drives.

Update: I broke the array, moved dial to different array, powered it back up and then formatted. Repeat to put back in Raid 5.

Everything is now copied and the rebuild light is off. OWC, via the phone, could only deduce that the different firmwares on the drives were the cause or a bad board but since everything works as expected so far, maybe it is the firmware versions. Which leads me to my next thought. Why are they so determined to have the same firmware ona box with a three warranty when they know I am going to replace a drive eventually that is different???

So far so good. Having 6 TB sitting there is very nice. Let's hope nothing fails. ;-) Doing it over, I may have just went for the 1511+ at home since it has two Gigabit ports and triple the read and write speed since it has network capability.

OWC does claim that if you turn the drive off during rebuild, once powered back on it will still rebuild. Not sure if this is true or not but a poster above stated differently. Maybe he has experience here.
 
12TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2

I know this is an old thread, but as an FYI:

I own 3 - 12TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2's (Note that these "-AL" drives are as of this date obsolete - The "newest" is their Mercury Elite Pro Qx2.
All 3 are set for RAID 5 (span with parity).
I bought them with drives in them.
I have used all 3 enclosures as storage drives (not much use, actually) and used Firewire 800 to connect them to my iMac.

The "youngest" one is about to turn 3 (In warranty! Yea!) and a drive went bad (we think).
The other 2 I bought about a year earlier.

Some things to think about:

1. For the RAID to Rebuild (which can take quite a while on this big of drive) you can not just put in any drive which is the same capacity. It has to be the same manufacturer, same model and even the same firmware. So - Beware if you see "Hot Swappable" it doesn't mean you can put in just any drive of the same capacity or bigger.

1a. Nor can you just get an identical enclosure and put the drives in them. If the enclosure hardware fails you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to spend mega bucks to pay a recovery service.

How my problem started: I got the flashing red on my B drive in this unit. After a reboot and restarting the enclosure (turned it off, removed the "failed" drive, turned it back on and then plugged it into the iMac) the light for the removed B drive was then red solid (as per instructions).

2. Technically the box should run on 3 drives. Mine does and mounts on the desktop.

3. I had bad "luck". Using the Finder I tried copying files off to a 16TB I just bought. It would copy some files and then the Finder would freeze with the B drive solid red, the C drive blinking red and no disk activity. Had to reboot, restart the enclosure (as above) for it to mount again.

4. Fired up a program which I have which saved me a few drives in years past - Data Rescue 3. I don't know how it is addressing the three remaining drives but so far I have copied off almost 2 TB of almost 7 on the drive and it is faithfully copying the files. It is a slow process. I am copying to a 16TB eSATA drive

NOTE: The drive's index appears to be OK. I did do a "Verify" in Disk Utility which said it's OK. So - In Data Rescue 3 I used the "Quick Scan" option. In part I note this because I understand how things like Disk Utility work on single drives. I had no idea whether it would work or not on a RAID enclosure like this, especially with one drive removed from the box. Apparently it is working OK and "better" than the Finder which kept crashing when trying to copy the files.

I hope this helps someone with the same problem. If I can answer any questions don't hesitate to ask.
 
Last edited:
Beeping Unit and Drive B Blinking Red

Elsmar said:
I know this is an old thread, but as an FYI:

I own 3 - 12TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2's (Note that these "-AL" drives are as of this date obsolete - The "newest" is their Mercury Elite Pro Qx2.
All 3 are set for RAID 5 (span with parity).
I bought them with drives in them.
I have used all 3 enclosures as storage drives (not much use, actually) and used Firewire 800 to connect them to my iMac.

The "youngest" one is about to turn 3 (In warranty! Yea!) and a drive went bad (we think).
The other 2 I bought about a year earlier.

Some things to think about:

1. For the RAID to Rebuild (which can take quite a while on this big of drive) you can not just put in any drive which is the same capacity. It has to be the same manufacturer, same model and even the same firmware. So - Beware if you see "Hot Swappable" it doesn't mean you can put in just any drive of the same capacity or bigger.

1a. Nor can you just get an identical enclosure and put the drives in them. If the enclosure hardware fails you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to spend mega bucks to pay a recovery service.

How my problem started: I got the flashing red on my B drive in this unit. After a reboot and restarting the enclosure (turned it off, removed the "failed" drive, turned it back on and then plugged it into the iMac) the light for the removed B drive was then red solid (as per instructions).

2. Technically the box should run on 3 drives. Mine does and mounts on the desktop.

3. I had bad "luck". Using the Finder I tried copying files off to a 16TB I just bought. It would copy some files and then the Finder would freeze with the B drive solid red, the C drive blinking red and no disk activity. Had to reboot, restart the enclosure (as above) for it to mount again.

4. Fired up a program which I have which saved me a few drives in years past - Data Rescue 3. I don't know how it is addressing the three remaining drives but so far I have copied off almost 2 TB of almost 7 on the drive and it is faithfully copying the files. It is a slow process. I am copying to a 16TB eSATA drive

NOTE: The drive's index appears to be OK. I did do a "Verify" in Disk Utility which said it's OK. So - In Data Rescue 3 I used the "Quick Scan" option. In part I note this because I understand how things like Disk Utility work on single drives. I had no idea whether it would work or not on a RAID enclosure like this, especially with one drive removed from the box. Apparently it is working OK and "better" than the Finder which kept crashing when trying to copy the files.

I hope this helps someone with the same problem. If I can answer any questions don't hesitate to ask.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing. My OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 with 4 2.0TB drives (RAID 5) started beeping two nights ago. The unit is not quite 2 years old since purchasing, but it has been running 24/7. Opening the enclosure, I found drive B blinking red as well. However, after a reboot, it started rebuilding with no flashing red lights and OWC indicated that this may take 48 - 72 hrs.
 
Last edited:
I just called OWC when it started beeping and asked them what to do. They said return it and I did. They did tell me to shut down my iMac and turn of the enclosure, remove the blinking drive, turn the enclosure back on, and then reboot my iMac using the old P R Option Command key combination to clear the Parameter RAM. I did and the drive did mount on the Desktop.

They had it back to me with (I assume - I didn't check drive serial numbers) new drives. Same case.

I was "lucky" in that I didn't lose any files - BUT - Copying files through the finder would stall a lot or crash the Finder. I tried Data Rescue 3 as I said above and it took almost 2 days but Data Rescue 3 found and recovered all files. It did find 9 "blocks" that it had to "slow down" to read (It gives detailed error messages and a report). And - By the time about 2/3s of the files were transferred the light started blinking on one of the 3 remaining drives. I was afraid I was out of luck on the remaining files and that anther drive would "fail". Luckily Data Rescue 3 kept on chugging away and copied all the files on the new drive. That, of course, is when I packed it up and shipped it back to OWC.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: Why did you get blinking light to begin with? That is not normal - So - Will it happen again?

My drives are on 24/7/365. Then again, they are data storage so there isn't much read/write activity. And - Mine are set to not spin down after a certain time period so they're always ready without a wait. I'm sure this shortens the drive life time.

Last thought: RAID5 appears relatively "safe" if a drive fails, but it isn't a direct mirror so… We are taking chances.

Also - These Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2's drives are discontinued as an FYI.

As always - YMMV
 
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Yes - You pay to return to them. They ask for you to also return all cables and such that came with the original order. Luckily in my case I save all that stuff (like cables other than the ones I use) in the original box and store the box in my barn so I even had the same serial number on the box because it was the same box that I received it in. I do not know if they will be so strict requiring all the cables but I did have mine.

Yup - If you have to ship to the US from Australia I'm sure it's expensive. To ship mine from Ohio in the US via UPS it was US$18
 
Beeping Unit and Drive B Blinking Red

I sent my unit back and they replaced all four hard drives with Toshiba Drive DT01ACA200. Turnaround was two days.
 
DT01ACA200 replacement drive

After a little over a year of use, one of the replacement DT01ACA200 drives failed.
 
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