OWC Mercury Elite-AL question

[bob5820]

I'm looking for a 1TB external back up solution. One possibility that I'm considering is the OWC Mercury Elite-AL 1TB RAID 0. Now I don't really want RAID 0, I'm only looking to back up my internal drives so the increased speed I would get from RAID 0 is not an issue, but the less secure nature of RAID 0 is. What I'd like to do is configure the drives as a single contiguous drive (I think this is called JBOD). OWC told me they have firmware that breaks the RAID stripe on the Mercury Elite so that it will be seen as two seperate drives. Once this is done will OSX or someother software allow me to configure the drives as JBOD. I'm not set on the Mercury Elite so if you have other suggestions please let me know. My only requirement is external, 1 TB. I've been looking at FW800 and possibly eSATA interfaces but as this will only be used for back up I'm wondering if even the FW800 is overkill.

 

[hodgjy]

Why?

Why aren't you set on the OWC Mercury Elite? It's a great drive system. It's fast, has a great warranty, and has the best chipset (in my opinion). I love mine.

If you want total customization, why not just get a case and slap some Seagates in there.

 

[bob5820]

Why aren't you set on the OWC Mercury Elite? It's a great drive system. It's fast, has a great warranty, and has the best chipset (in my opinion). I love mine.

If you want total customization, why not just get a case and slap some Seagates in there.

I'm still locking at my options. Good to hear you are happy with the Mercury Elite. If you don't mind my assking which one did you get and how are you using it, back up or as additional storrage?

 

[hodgjy]

Hd

I got the Mercury Elite Pro AL 250 GB. It has firewire 400 and usb 2.0. The disk inside is a Seagate 7200.9. Super fast, even across firewire.

I got it to install OS X on it (boot for emergencies and to run disk maintenance on my internal drive) and use as my primary data backup.

The case is very rugged and the drive itself is very quiet. There's no heat problems, even when sending my 20 GB music library over to it. The chipset is good (Oxford 911) and I've never had any mounting problems with it, unlike my old LaCie that it replaced. My LaCie was very fickle about mounting at times.

I recommend the OWC drive. I'm not familiar at all with RAID or the type of continous drive you want to set up, so I can't help there. But it does everything I ask of it.