OWC Mercury Extreme SSD - First Look at a 50GB SandForce Drive
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 26, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Words
Update: Since the publication of this review OWC appears to have switched controllers for the Mercury Extreme SSD. The current specs look similar to that of SandForce's SF-1200 controller, not the SF-1500 used in the earlier drives. Performance and long term reliability (in an enterprise environment) are both impacted. For more information, read this.
With half the capacity of the 100GB Vertex LE we looked at last week, OWC's 50GB Mercury Extreme shows that while there is a performance drop with SandForce's SF-1500 50GB platform it is limited strictly to small file random write speed. Even with the performance drop, the drive is no slower than Intel's X25-M G2. And in sequential write performance it's still significantly faster.
As I mentioned in my Vertex LE review, the SandForce controller used in this drive is still largely unproven. OWC does offer a 5 year warranty on the drive, so presumably you'll be covered if something should happen to it - I would just recommend backing up regularly.
As a SSD, 50GB is enough for a notebook or a boot/applications drive assuming you don't have too many large applications. With more inherent spare area than any other consumer SSD on the market, the Mercury should be a bit more resillient as it approaches its full capacity. Despite a competitive price tag, this 50GB drive is easily the most expensive small capacity SSD you can buy in its class. Not in terms of overall price, but in terms of cost per GB. Intel's 80GB X25-M will give you around 50% more usable space for roughly the same price. You do get more performance out of the 50GB OWC drive, but with only 50GB of space it's really a tradeoff. If you only run one or two I/O intensive applications, then the 50GB drive may be best suited for you. If you run more than just a couple of apps, you may be better off with the Intel X25-M.
I am still unsure about the long term reliability of these drives based on SandForce's controller. It will take several months for me to get to a comfortable point with them. If you're fine with being an early adopter here, by all means go for it. If the capacity doesn't turn you off, the performance at first glance looks quite good.
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ayembee - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
...given my 200GB Vertex 2 LE lasted 6 days :however, based on the OCZ support forums it could be the OCZ firmware rather than a specific hardware issue, as it seems they they are getting very similar-sounding bricks on several kinds of vertex models.
Hrel - Sunday, March 7, 2010 - link
Now I only need to wait for SSD's in this price range to drop under $1 per GB; and let me add that after getting used to 12cents per GB I think I'm being extremely generous!OWC Grant - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
As far as reselling review units, most manufacturers DO sell their review units and other products clearly marked as "open box", B stock, or refurbished and thus provide users with another purchase option. We offer these types of products in our monthly "clearance/garage sale" promo and are very well liked by our newsletter readers as great "insider" deals.Our statement of all the drive sizes (50/100/200GB) offering the same performance in terms of raw sustained data transfer rates was and is still true. As noted in Anand's final summary and direct communication with us, the overall performance of the 50GB model "looks quite good" and "performance is nearly identical in call cases except one." (a small random write file) We are looking into that one instance and will advise on any outcome.
Thanks as always to Anand and you readers for your interest in SSD's in general and our offerings in that category.
jed22281 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
"As noted in Anand's final summary and direct communication with us, the overall performance of the 50GB model "looks quite good" and "performance is nearly identical in call cases except one." (a small random write file) We are looking into that one instance and will advise on any outcome."So what was the outcome?
Thank-you.
skimike - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
Out of curiosity, do you know if OWC has a secure/sanity erase utility for the OWC Mercury Extreme 100GB drive? I called OWC's tech support line and they didn't know anything about it. And the drive password used by hdparm in Linux isn't set to NULL so I can't use hdparm, either.monomer - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Dailytech posted an article on Friday saying that JMicron will be releasing a new controller with a 128MB DRAM cache soon. Does anyone know if they actually fixed their random access problems, or did they just throw more cache at it to try to cover it up?tuskers - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Something I'd love to see is how much software compile times improve with an SSD. As a professional software engineer, I'd love to see whether SSDs would improve a common real-world task like this.hyc - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Yes, noticeably.I write code all day. All of my machines now have SSDs as their primary drive. 256GB G.Skill Titan in my desktop, 256GB Samsung in my current laptop, 128GB Transcend PATA in my old laptop, 120GB OCZ CoreV2 floating on an eSata adapter for quick bulk copies.
arklab - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Pardon my ignorance, but I'm new to SSD's.I (think) I read in your first review that only Sand Force is able to make utilities for these (OWC and OCZ LE) drives.
Does this include the trim command (for Windows 7 use), or can we just use some "generic" command?
What would OSX users do?
Thanks!
fictionfree - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I've purchased a couple items from OWC in the past - can't say I'm a fan of the company. It wouldn't surprise me if they resold review drives. I purchased an external Firewire drive from them a few years ago, and when the internal drive died, I took the case apart to see that it was a refurbished drive. I didn't buy a refurb drive, I bought a brand new drive - but they filled the case with a refurb. Not cool - and they refused to do anything to make it right.Just my 2 cents, but I find them to be shady.