Topic 'Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G' in forum 'All Things Macintosh' - dslreports.com

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:05:59 EDT

Kearnstd posted :

Sounds like the same Mini. It baffles me that 5,400rpm drives are still made, let alone put in a modern computer.

I am sure on the laptop front they will still cite power consumption.

Anything like a mini or bigger though they have no excuse, anything not a tablet or laptop is running off AC power so there is no battery life worries.

for full sized 3.5" HDD I am kind of surprised no other company has pushed into the 10k RPM market. Seems only Western Digital with their gamer angled Raptor drives is above 7200 for non-SCSI/SAS
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Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:12:21 EDT

not quite right posted : Sounds like the same Mini. It baffles me that 5,400rpm drives are still made, let alone put in a modern computer.
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Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:06:18 EDT

HiVolt posted :

said by happy4ya:

The Mini was very sluggish with the stock 5400rpm drive in it. I never realized how bad it was until I bought a 2006 iMac on here for my son with a C2D in it and it seemed to run circles around my Mini.

Yeah it's a shame that they still sell machines with 5400 rpm drives... Whats the point of having a decent cpu & memory when the disk is such a bottleneck...

Maybe this Fusion Drive thing will catch on and will get a lot less expensive in the future...
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Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 01:24:20 EDT

happy4ya posted :

said by not quite right:

I was going to get the OWC Electra, but Fry's had a smoking deal on the Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD. Between that, and 16GB's of RAM my Mac Mini just flys through everything I throw at it! I now wonder if I stick a regular HD back in as well Mountain Lion will treat it like a fusion drive?

Which Mini do you have? Same deal here, have a mid 2011 I5 Mini, picked up the same SSD as you and upped the Ram from 8 to 16GB and this thing flies. Everything happens about as fast as I click the mouse button.

The Mini was very sluggish with the stock 5400rpm drive in it. I never realized how bad it was until I bought a 2006 iMac on here for my son with a C2D in it and it seemed to run circles around my Mini.

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:32:09 EDT

dennismurphy posted : Interesting link ...

»blog.macsales.com/9438-not-all-s···ontinues

and by-the-by, I got the iMac upgrade done this morning, a fresh install of Mountain Lion done and most of my apps restored already ... this thing is SCREAMING FAST. Holy it-shay!

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:40:54 EDT

Thinkdiff posted : Micron has a plant in Virginia and there are plenty of PCB manufacturers in CA alone, so it's possible most of it is from the US.

Even Hynix has an Oregon Fab. Not sure what parts they make there, though.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_se···n_plants
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University of Southern California - Fight On!

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:29:11 EDT

dennismurphy posted :

said by HiVolt:

said by dennismurphy:

Where else will you find an SSD that says "Made in the USA" on it?

Is it really? Maybe "Assembled" into the casing, packaged, etc, but the PCB and its components are made in asia.

Of course, it says it contains domestic and foreign parts. You and I both know that there's no memory plants here in the USA, of course.

But it is assembled here, and that's a huge step. If they could source memory from the USA, I'd be willing to bet they would.

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 11:00:52 EDT

HiVolt posted :

said by dennismurphy:

Where else will you find an SSD that says "Made in the USA" on it?

Is it really? Maybe "Assembled" into the casing, packaged, etc, but the PCB and its components are made in asia.

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 07:34:05 EDT

dennismurphy posted :

said by not quite right:

There is some voodoo you can do to make a Fusion drive, but I think I'm going to go the traditional route (2 separate disks)....managing it isn't a concern for me.

I'm a huge fan of OWC and even if it's a few dollars more, I'd rather support them. Where else will you find an SSD that says "Made in the USA" on it?

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:47:12 EDT

not quite right posted : I was going to get the OWC Electra, but Fry's had a smoking deal on the Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD. Between that, and 16GB's of RAM my Mac Mini just flys through everything I throw at it! I now wonder if I stick a regular HD back in as well Mountain Lion will treat it like a fusion drive?
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Not many people know this, but I happen to be quite famous...

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:29:37 EDT

happy4ya posted : Just added 2 Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD'S to my computers, one to my 2011 Mac Mini with the OWC "add a second drive mounting kit" and one to my Toshiba Windows laptop. Made both of them like new machines, especially the Mini since it only had a 5400rpm drive in it.

The OWC kit was great and since I was reinstalling from scratch, I got a copy of Mountain Lion on it (had Lion), run a VM fusion Win7 VM inside it for work, and run another VM inside that VM for a car service manual and everything runs so fast you would never think there was so much running at the same time. I don't think I would use a hard drive as the OS drive on any of my computers anymore.

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:21:06 EDT

skeechan posted : Ditto on OWC. I don't have their SSD but I have their 2nd HDD mount for the mini, 2.5" mount for MP and their FBDIMM. Their mounts offer great fit and I always get fast service from them. I had one of my FB-DIMM take a dump after a couple of years and they swapped it out no problem. I'm now looking to pull the trigger on their MBA 256GB SSD and that little external case for the old one.

Re: OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 08:13:13 EDT

rjackal posted : Yes, another vote for OWC here! I have a 60GB Mercury Electra 3G as my boot and application drive in my mid 2012 13" MBP. I replaced the optical drive with another bay, and put my 320GB spinning HD in there. A killer combination! I will not go back to a spinning HD for boot and apps ever again!

OWC Mercury Electra 3G

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 01:26:56 EDT

dennismurphy posted : 2 weeks ago, I installed an Electra 3G 240GB SSD into my wife's iMac 24" (Early 2009; iMac9,1)

Insanely fast. Buys me at least another year or two before I have to even think about replacing the iMac.

This week, it's my turn. I just bought the same drive as an 'open box' from OWC for $195 for "my" iMac. (27" Late 2009; iMac10,1)

Can't beat that deal with a stick!

I'm in love with the OWC Electra line.... the Sandforce controller really does a magnificent job. Very happy indeed. The Electra 3G is one of the very, very few drives to use the Sandforce 2181 controller - has all the benefits of the "usual" 2281 controller you see on the SATA3.0 (6G) SSD's but runs at 3G speed. This makes a difference in older iMacs like mine which have a SATA controller issue that can throttle down a SATA3.0 6gb link to 1.5gb.

Anywho - the net net is that the Electra 3G is a "latest generation" SATA2.0 SSD - as fast as this 'ol iMac can get.

Can't wait for it to get here. :)