OWC Introduces Mercury Elite-AL Pro Mini Portable Hard Drive

by Jennifer Johnson — Tuesday, December 08, 2009, 01:25 AM EDT

OWC announced a new line of portable hard drives that features aluminum cases, bus powered drives, and quad interfaces. Because the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini case design is a small version of the case that is used in the company's Mercury Elite-Al Pro line, it should be familiar to OWC customers.

Measuring 3.8 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini case is small enough to easily fit in a laptop bag or backpack. In terms of connectivity, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini drives come with an eSATA port, a USB 2.0 port, and a pair of FireWire 800 ports. For users who wish to connect via FireWire 400, OWC includes a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable. FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and eSATA cables are also included with the drive.

For power, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini case can use FireWire, a powered USB port, or a power adapter which is sold separately.

Available models include:

320GB, 5400 rpm drive with an 8MB cache ($140)
500GB, 5400 rpm drive with an 8MB cache ($170)
750GB, 5200 rpm drive with an 8MB cache ($250)
320GB, 7200 rpm drive with a 16MB cache ($150)
500GB, 7200 rpm drive with a 16MB cache ($200)
256MB SSD drive with a 64MB cache ($820)

A model without a drive is also available. The empty case sells for $90 or $98 with a Mac-compatible software bundle that includes Intech SpeedTools Utilities, Prosoft Engineering Data Backup, and Carbon Copy Cloner. NovaStor NovaBACKUP for Windows is also included. The aforementioned software bundle is included with all models that come with hard drives listed above.

Tags: Hard Drive, SSD, Storage, OWC, Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini, Mercury Elite-AL Pro

Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer grew up around technology. From an early age, she was curious about all things related to computers. As a child, Jennifer remembers spending nights with her dad programming in BASIC and taking apart hard drives to see what was inside. In high school, she wrote her senior term paper on her experiences with building custom computers.

Jennifer graduated from the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After college, she began writing full-time for various PC and technology magazines. Later, she transitioned to the Web. In these roles, Jennifer has covered a variety of topics including laptops, desktops, smartphones, cameras, tablets, and various consumer electronics devices. When she's not playing with or writing about the latest gadget, Jennifer loves to spend time with her family, capture memories with her camera, and scrapbook.

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