Filed under: Hardware, Peripherals, Odds and ends
OWC announces portable, bus-powered external SSD drives
I'm pretty paranoid about making sure that backups are done on all of my Macs. That's why I carry a small Western Digital MyPassport hard drive with me wherever I go with my MacBook Air, since I do at least one Time Machine backup a day -- even when I'm on the road.This is my second MyPassport drive. That's not saying that anything is wrong with the Western Digital drives; it's just that the first one I owned fell off of a classroom desk while a backup was in progress, pulling out the USB cable and dropping about three feet onto a hard floor. The drive appeared to be OK, but never worked again.
That's why I was happy to hear that OWC announced the Mercury On-The-Go Pro series of portable bus-powered SSD drives yesterday. Solid-state drives, since they have no moving parts, can put up with a lot more abuse than traditional platter-based drives. They also offer better read performance than regular hard drives, and are often less power-hungry.
The drives come in three different capacities -- 64 GB (US$279.99), 128 GB (US$449.99), and 256 GB (US$729.99) -- and all offer 64 MB of cache, as well as Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Being bus-powered, they don't need an AC adapter, making the On-The-Go Pro series perfect for road trips.
While SSD drives are still more expensive than traditional hard drives, they're definitely more rugged, and in the long run that might be less costly than replacing a dropped hard drive. I've had extremely good success with OWC's products in the past, making this a doubly-attractive proposition. Of course, making sure my students don't cause my drives to take a dive off of a desk is a cheaper solution!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jorn said 2:21PM on 9-11-2009
"I'm pretty paranoid about making sure that backups are done on all of my Macs. That's why I carry a small Western Digital MyPassport hard drive with me wherever I go with my MacBook Air, since I do at least one Time Machine backup a day -- even when I'm on the road."
So why not supplement your backups with something like Crashplan. It's loverly.
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Tom Smale said 2:17PM on 9-11-2009
For me this is just straight no.
$730 for 256 GB? When 1 TBs are going for $99?
That's a 3-to-1 per GB ratio worse than the notoriously overpriced Xbox 360 HDs.
I mean -- holy hell -- at $730 you're closing in on the price of a full-on low-end $999 MacBook. You could buy a Mac Mini for that price and use that HD for back-up.
I'm religious about backing up too. But the ONLY selling point for these SSDs is that they have no moving parts. That being said, they are not necessarily more durable. And if they are, does it justify paying a 30-to-1 per GB premium?
Combine a couple of platter-based drives (for at home and the road) with a cloud-based storage option and you have all of your bases covered.
I cannot foresee a single scenario where it would make sense to purchase these devices.
Having said that, I really like the look of the enclosure. Not enough to pay actual money, but it's attractive.
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oakie said 2:44PM on 9-11-2009
yes, they are more durable compared to a platter drive. 1500g shock resistance during operation minimum for even the cheapest of ssd's.
the question of value for data durability is up to the user, but the durability of an ssd is without question.
NoAndThen said 2:48PM on 9-11-2009
Relax, buddy. No one's forcing you to buy these. I remember buying a 40GB HDD for like $250+. It's gotta start somewhere.
matthew said 2:50PM on 9-11-2009
Um, where can you buy a FW 400/800 bus-powered portable 64MB cache 1TB platter drive for $99? I'd like that. The best I've seen for $99 for a bus-powered portable right now is a USB 2.0 5400rpm 500GB with a 16MB cache.
Maarten said 3:20PM on 9-11-2009
Besides the "no moving parts" argument, these drives will also be faster (in some applications a LOT faster) than a normal drive. Besides that, they are lighter and use less power. These last two arguments are pretty important for the average laptop user. Then again, if you need those features a USB Flash drive might meet your needs as well...
LDMartin said 5:43AM on 9-12-2009
Besides that, they are lighter and use less power.
It's an external drive, these points are irrelevant for this application, even speed is mildly irrelevant considering you're limited by bus speed.
rwzehr said 2:40PM on 9-11-2009
You could also buy one of their enclosures and insert any SSD you like. Try dvnation.com for an array of choices.
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oakie said 2:50PM on 9-11-2009
also newegg.com with their wide selection and competitive pricing.
i can also recommend the Corsair P128 and P256 ssd's based on my ownership of the P256... they're rebadged oem samsung drives with sammy controllers and therefore not subject to the stuttering write problems inherent to drives with the jmicron controllers.
Ben said 2:43PM on 9-11-2009
I've got one of their enclosures for an old Macbook HDD, and I really like them a lot. As far as an SSD drive, I'll keep waiting for the prices to drop on those.
Thanks for the review, and it's good to know that other folks like the OWC enclosures as well!
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Peter Payne said 2:49PM on 9-11-2009
I used an SSD in my laptop for a while and went back to a hard drive. Reading is like 40% faster but writing is not really any faster. Hence, backup SSD? Kind of fail, hate to say.
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HerTech said 2:53PM on 9-11-2009
This is SO ironic... I just upgraded my 120 GB [white] MacBook hard drive last night to 500 GB with an OWC on-the-go USB 2.0 kit to turn my original internal HD to an external HD with the enclosure similar to the one above. I also maxed out my RAM to 4 GB from 1 GB and have a totally new love interest with my MacBook. Having the extra 120 GB of storage sets me at ease since I know I have backup and don't have to fear losing any of my data!
I'm glad I followed my gut on this one... Thanks TUAW for the confirmation! ;~)
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mentalsticks said 3:29PM on 9-11-2009
what's ironic about it?
enjoy your setup though!
Jason said 2:57PM on 9-11-2009
Looks like a great product, but I can't for the life of me see myself using this thing on the bus.
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laurion said 4:24PM on 9-11-2009
Wow! A 256GB drive costs more than 12 years worth of BackBlaze service, and I get to do the work of remembering to plug it in and run a Time Machine backup? Hmmm....
Not saying this drive doesn't have some great uses (Bet it's pretty good for video, as far as portable external drives go), but backup doesn't seem to be one of the more logical uses of it.
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mmendoza27 said 8:57PM on 9-11-2009
What bothers me is the fact that it's using FW400/800. SSD sequential read and write speeds are bottle capped by the direct SATA II interface... why would you want to use FW800 on an external SSD? I say might as well buy a 1 TB external.
As for boot drives, well that's a different story. I can tell a HUGE difference when transferring files from Drive Bay 1 to Drive Bay 2 in my Mac Pro.
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alansky said 10:43PM on 9-11-2009
Gotta admit the prices for solid state drives are utterly ridiculous.
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TUAW icg_logistics said 2:46PM on 9-12-2009
>> It's gotta start somewhere.
Fantastic. Then let me be the first to thank you personally for spending excessive amounts of money in the service of eventually bringing SSD technology down to the realm of reasonable pricing. Your sacrifices are not in vain.
Of course, I won't be joining you on your quixotic quest, nor will the vast majority of other consumers.
All sarcasm aside WHY does it "gotta start somewhere?" You are suggesting SSD is an inevitable progression? Often technologies priced far above their value simply perish a worthy death, never to be heard from again. Paging Betamax. Paging minidisc. If 30-to-1 dollars-to-gigabytes and a slight edge in durability over platter drives is SSD's argument for inclusion, then I say don't let the door hit your ass on the way down the elevator chute.
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Tom Smale said 3:01PM on 9-12-2009
>> Um, where can you buy a FW 400/800 bus-powered portable 64MB cache 1TB platter drive for $99? I'd like that. The best I've seen for $99 for a bus-powered portable right now is a USB 2.0 5400rpm 500GB with a 16MB cache.
The operative takeaways in this post are: 1) external, 2) back-up.
This is not about having an internal SSD.
That's what this device is. An external back-up. Therefore, the bus, RPM issue is not relevant for back-up. Who really cares if back-up is 20% faster? Is it worth spending ten times as much? If you answer yes, then I congratulate you on having a salary which allows for extravagant spending in exchange for minimal performance gain.
I back up my stuff at night.
It can take longer or shorter. I don't care.
If it takes 25 minutes, instead of 20 minutes, I'm still snoozing.
And likely I'm snoozing more peacefully knowing I have $700 in my bank account that was not spent on frivolity.
And I still dispute this urban myth/old developer's tale that "SSDs are more durable than platter drives." That SOUNDS reasonable, but has anybody actually tested it? Dropped similar drives from two feet? Four feet? Six feet? Carried both drives around for a week in a laptop bag, luggage, messenger bag?
I'm skeptical that the one reason -- durability -- which allows these devices to even enter into the conversation is valid. That'd be something for TUAW to do. Test the hypothesis about SSD's "superior" durability.
>> While SSD drives are still more expensive than traditional hard drives, they're definitely more rugged, and in the long run that might be less costly than replacing a dropped hard drive.
Thou sayest.
Is it true?
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sailorman.jim said 4:53PM on 10-11-2009
I have purchased from OWC three times. Two of those turned out badly. Mostly because their customer service seem to be, "We have your money, now stop bothering us." I intend to go to an SSD external for back-ups, but I will never purchase anything from OWC again and cannot recommend it to anyone else. As long as everything goes well, no problem, but if you need service, you'll be very sorry.
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