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OWC Mercury Accelsior Card

M

Macsparky

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 4, 2010
26
0
North Alabama
I have a Early 2009 Mac Pro 2.93 Quad-Core looking at OWC Mercury Card, wondering if anyone is using the card. There web site says just pug and play, and boots off of card. Does anyone know if it puts your apps home file ect on the card the rest on the main hd? I'm unclear on how this works. Thank You All for Your Help....:apple:
 
Macsparky said:
I have a Early 2009 Mac Pro 2.93 Quad-Core looking at OWC Mercury Card, wondering if anyone is using the card. There web site says just pug and play, and boots off of card. Does anyone know if it puts your apps home file ect on the card the rest on the main hd? I'm unclear on how this works. Thank You All for Your Help....:apple:
Click to expand...

The Accelsior card doesn't come preloaded with any OS X software, by "plug-and-play" they mean it doesn't need any special drivers to be loaded in order for it to work in the Mac Pro. You will have to format the card and install OS X any way you wish (or clone it from your existing hard disk). If you want some of your installation on the hard disk, that would be your decision and responsibility.

Those cards are wickedly fast ... I think you will enjoy it a lot! :)

-howard
 
Hello,

Just a thought: take a look at the Velocity cards: same thing as OWC, but a lot less expensive.

Loa
 
Macsparky said:
I have a Early 2009 Mac Pro 2.93 Quad-Core looking at OWC Mercury Card, wondering if anyone is using the card. There web site says just pug and play, and boots off of card. Does anyone know if it puts your apps home file ect on the card the rest on the main hd? I'm unclear on how this works. Thank You All for Your Help....:apple:
Click to expand...

This may clear up what plug and play is for you.

Plug and play
 
I think I have the same spec Mac Pro as you (with 32GB RAM) and have the 240Gb:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHW2R240/
Make sure you use the NEWER driver on the page I linked above.
In my opinion there seems to be some issue with stability. Apps start up fast which is great but I've have beachballing and and issue twice where the Boot HD needed reformatting. I think this was after I tried to sleep the comouter.
It just doesn't feel 100% right - although apps do start blindingly fast.
Please whatever you do backup/lone your boot drive regularly. I have a second SSD in the optical bay for this using Cronosync.
I'm not sure if my issues are the OWC Mercury Card or the RAID 5 I have set up at the same time (external drives).
I have included a Black MAgic speed text (not sure how to use AJA to test the boot speed). As a rough guide its about 10 secs boot time and Photoshop CS6 is ... let me test now...less than 2 seconds.
Any help I can give - please ask.
Screenshots attached.
Ged
 

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I was doing some cleaning on my Mac Pro, so I wondered if it was worth upgrading from my older SATA 3G SSD to a faster one.

I looked at the Accelsior. It's nice, but it's quite expensive. I was at my local computer store and they had the Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 for $100. Looked like it was bootable and had SATA 6G compatibility.

Anyways I picked one up along with a new Samsung 840 Pro. Works like a charm and is very fast.

Unfortunately it doesn't really feel any faster than my older SATA 3G SSD. So I think the lesson here is, as long as you get an SSD, it'll feel fast.
 
Macsparky said:
I have a Early 2009 Mac Pro 2.93 Quad-Core looking at OWC Mercury Card, wondering if anyone is using the card. There web site says just pug and play, and boots off of card. Does anyone know if it puts your apps home file ect on the card the rest on the main hd? I'm unclear on how this works. Thank You All for Your Help....:apple:
Click to expand...

I have the 960GB OWC card, so it's a bit slower than the 240 or 480GB versions. Still, this is way faster than the Apricorn Velocity (which basically just gives you a data 3 connector and as such is bandwidth constrained to Sata 3 speeds which top out around 500MB/s). The OWC card gets me 750MB/s reads and around 600MB/s real world. What's interesting is when you format the OWC with encryption, it only slows down to 400+MB/s, which is really good. It might do better with faster processors (I have a 2.66ghz 12 core 2010 MacPro).

So the Velocity is great in that it will get you out of the 250MB/sec limits of Sata 1.5, and into the 500mb/s range of sata III. The OWC will get you an extra 200mb/sec or so over sata III.

The OWC card has been solid for me, it boots/works without any drivers, but clearly they are putting out drivers to install to overcome bugs, so that means things are not perfect under all circumstances.

Also, the OWC card is oddly pricey in that its about 1500 for the 960gb version, and they sell a sata 1.5 drive for around 1100 with the same capacity. So $400 premium for the raid/pci card construct.

As always, YMMV
 
jkheit said:
I have the 960GB OWC card, so it's a bit slower than the 240 or 480GB versions. Still, this is way faster than the Apricorn Velocity (which basically just gives you a data 3 connector and as such is bandwidth constrained to Sata 3 speeds which top out around 500MB/s). The OWC card gets me 750MB/s reads and around 600MB/s real world. What's interesting is when you format the OWC with encryption, it only slows down to 400+MB/s, which is really good. It might do better with faster processors (I have a 2.66ghz 12 core 2010 MacPro).

So the Velocity is great in that it will get you out of the 250MB/sec limits of Sata 1.5, and into the 500mb/s range of sata III. The OWC will get you an extra 200mb/sec or so over sata III.

The OWC card has been solid for me, it boots/works without any drivers, but clearly they are putting out drivers to install to overcome bugs, so that means things are not perfect under all circumstances.

Also, the OWC card is oddly pricey in that its about 1500 for the 960gb version, and they sell a sata 1.5 drive for around 1100 with the same capacity. So $400 premium for the raid/pci card construct.

As always, YMMV
Click to expand...

The Apricorn and OWC card are more similar than different. The only real difference is that the Velocity allows you to use a pair of SSDs of your own choosing vs OWC that integrates a pair of their own Sandforce blade SSDs. Both solutions utilize SATA3 for the SSD interface and a x4 PCIe interface. Both are capable of the same performance. The advantage of the OWC card is convenience, but that comes at a hefty price premium. It also uses SandForce SSD controllers which are notorious for premature failure.

In the end, the Velocity Solo X2 is cheaper, more flexible, likely more reliable (depending on your choice of SSDs), and just as fast.
 
VirtualRain said:
The Apricorn and OWC card are more similar than different. The only real difference is that the Velocity allows you to use a pair of SSDs of your own choosing vs OWC that integrates a pair of their own Sandforce blade SSDs. Both solutions utilize SATA3 for the SSD interface and a x4 PCIe interface. Both are capable of the same performance. The advantage of the OWC card is convenience, but that comes at a hefty price premium. It also uses SandForce SSD controllers which are notorious for premature failure.

In the end, the Velocity Solo X2 is cheaper, more flexible, likely more reliable (depending on your choice of SSDs), and just as fast.
Click to expand...

My bad, you're right. I didn't realize the Velocity had raid 0/1 and allowed for a second drive. Really, the OWC just gives you convenience of not pulling a power source for the 2nd drive and saves space internally (i.e., not requiring you to find a spot to park the 2nd 2.5" enclosure.
 
jkheit said:
My bad, you're right. I didn't realize the Velocity had raid 0/1 and allowed for a second drive. Really, the OWC just gives you convenience of not pulling a power source for the 2nd drive and saves space internally (i.e., not requiring you to find a spot to park the 2nd 2.5" enclosure.
Click to expand...

Indeed.
 
Thank You All for your info on the card, very helpful. I like OWC products I have a 120 ssd in my Mac Book Pro 13 2009 model as well as ram and have there ram in my Mac Pro as well the ssd is 3 years old and never been a problem. I think there a solid company. The card peeked my interest and I like to find out all I can about it before I make a move. Thanks Again and Happy New Year to You All......
 
VirtualRain said:
Both solutions utilize SATA3 for the SSD interface and a x4 PCIe interface.
Click to expand...

I must be sleepier than usual this "morning".. Aren't both solutions using a PCIe x2 interface? That's the whole reason that a pair of Velocity X2 cards are necessary to support a pair of high-end SSDs properly.
 
If I wish to RAID my Boot Drive using a pair of 512GB 830s, I would need two of the Velocity Solo x2's to drive them. Do I have this correct? If true, great, as that allows me to also RAID my 4-2TB spinners into two 2TB RAIDs for redundancy, and my Boot disk will be a RAID as well.

Thanks in advance, and Happy New Year!
 
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