macnn/electronista
08/14/2008, 2:05pm, EDT
Thursday, August 14thOWC offers 2TB USB 2.0 hub/storage combo
Other World Computing today announced it is now offering a 2TB version of its Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Drive USB 2.0 hub/storage device. The Mercury Elite is a "Plug 'N Play" external hard drive for Mac or PC that also offers three powered USB 2.0 ports. The drive runs at 7200rpm and has 64mb data buffer cache. OWC claims data transfer rates of 60MB/sec; the drive is packaged with Prosoft Engineer Data Backup for Mac OS X 10.2.9 or later, NovaStor NovaBACKUP for Windows 2000 or later, and Intech SpeedTools Utilities for Mac OS 8.6/X. A USB 2.0 cable is included with the drive. Storage capacities for the Mercury Elite series range from 500GB to 2TB, with prices ranging from $170 to $440, respectively.
Filed under: computers, peripherals, upgrades/storage
Other story tags: hard drive, USB
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WHY THE HECK USB ? ? ?
USB on a Mac is so Slow, why would they do that?
Take note of what happened to the Drobo line as they just upgraded from the USB to the FW800, and I can attest there is a BIG difference from the USB to FireWire.
Really a Bad Choice by OWC for the interface to the Mac.
This is something new
This seems to be a new variant of OWC's already extensive Mercury Elite Pro line where they added a USB hub to the package. Other entries in the line already include FW800 connections.
Only thing I can figure
Is that the USB 2.0 interface is a nod to time machine. FW 800 is definitely the very best way to connect a peripheral drive outside of SATA.
FireWire is expensive
I like FireWire too for drive that I use a lot. For back-ups, I buy USB drives because they are so much cheaper.