Performance Experience with OWC Mercury Electra and OWC Accelsior

[Mark D Segal]

I am requesting experience reports from longer-term users of two products:

(1) OWC Mercury Extreme 3G 480GB SSD drives for a MacBook Pro (mid-2010 model 6,2), and
(2) OWC Accelsior in any size configuration for a MacPro Tower mid-2010

Re the OWC Mercury Extreme 3G, two of them have packed-in within the space of 12 months, both trying to accommodate large file transfers via Firewire 800 with the laptop in Target Disk Mode. Running Drive Genius 3 indicated the existence of bad sectors and running Mac Disk Utility failed to correct it, nor would the drive allow Disk Utility to do a deep erase. I'm wondering whether others out there have experienced such problems. OWC has been very good about it on both occasions and will exchange the drive, but the issue remains one of reliability, and how to avoid such events.

Re the Accelsior, I am tempted to install a 960 GB version in my MacPro tower (mid-2010 with 24GB RAM and 24 virtual cores), but given the experience with the Mercury Electra I'm reluctant to tempt fate as the 7200 RPM HDs that this computer came with have been flawless. The only reasons would be a speed boost and extra internal storage. I know there are other options, but this seems to be the best all-round, as long as it can be counted on, and that is what I would like to hear about.

[Jim Pascoe]

I would very much like to hear about this too as I am contemplating a similar investment.

Jim

[David S]

Using the 960 G model on a 2009 Mac Pro (4.1) for all my photographic files. Now into my second year, the set-up has worked without issue using Lightroom 5.6.

Dave S

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks for the feedback David.

[Ellis Vener]

(1) OWC Mercury Extreme 3G 480GB SSD drive

I use that drive in a late 2009/early 2010 27" iMac as a boot/applications Lightroom catalog drive . It works flawlessly and is very fast.

[Mark D Segal]

(1) OWC Mercury Extreme 3G 480GB SSD drive

I use that drive in a late 2009/early 2010 27" iMac as a boot/applications Lightroom catalog drive . It works flawlessly and is very fast.

Hi Ellis,

Yes you are correct: when they work they are very speedy. Have you ever tried using it for making transfers of large data between computers using Firewire 800 and Target Disk Mode? I ask because of a hypothesis I received that heat generated from sustained high data transfer rates may cause it to fail.

[Alan Goldhammer]

I'm not sure about this high temp theory.  CPUs which are far more complex in terms of what they have to do can run at 60-70C during prolonged stress tests without failing.  I don't know how long your file transfer time would be here but I suspect it's not nearly as long as doing a stress test (minutes vs several hours).  SSDs run cooler than standard mechanical hard drives and if you are using them for a storage transfer I suspect you are not using them regularly.  from what I've read it's the read/write process that causes SSDs to fail eventually (for routine use the MTBF is rated very high several years depending on size and use frequency) rather than temperature.  You could strap a temperature probe on the SSD and measure the temperature during transfer to see what it goes up to.

I don't know this brand of SSD at all.  I've been only using Samsung and Crucial SSDs and so far have not had any issues.

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks Alan. They don't run for long at all doing these file transfers, so you could well be right that there is not enough time for heat build-up to reach the point of causing damage. However, this possibility was suggested to me - only as a possibility - by an engineer with decades of experience designing computers, hence why I mentioned it. I have no such expertise. Your suggestion that the problem may be read/write process issues sounds very much in context.

OWC (www.macsales.com) is a very well-known, reputable outfit supplying the Mac community. They make two versions of the SSD that has failed twice on me - I bought the Mercury Electra 3G instead of the Extreme 6G because for the amount of use I give them they, obviously in good faith, advised me at time of purchase that the 3G would be fine. Well, seems that it isn't, and now they are being extraordinarily stubborn about replacing it with the better drive, notwithstanding that of course I offered to pay the $111 difference in price. How to fathom why otherwise sensible companies would sully their reputations in this foolish manner, but there we have it. I'll report back on this commercial issue if I see movement from them.

Meanwhile, thanks for thinking about it, and if you or others have further views on both the Mercury Extreme 3G failure problem and the performance of OWC's Accelsior, I am all eyes and ears.
 

[Josh-H]

Mark, I have been running the OWC Mercury Accelsior card in my 2010 Mac Pro server for about 18 months. Its been rock solid and VERY fast. I just use it for boot and apps. All storage on internal RAID10 spindle drives.

[Mark D Segal]

Good to know Josh, thanks.

[kers]

i have a 2008 MacPro with in it a 120 gig 3G SSD for my system.
It works fast and reliable now for over almost 3 years... because the search times are very short so it can find many little files fast as you will see in a program like Mail...

- i more recently bought the  Accelsior 240 Gb to boost my photoshop work...
Although the Accelsior is very speedy the 2008 Macpro has its limits ( i use the 16x PCI lane) - also Photoshop has its limits in writing and reading.
in reality photoshop opens/ writes files not faster than say 200mb/sec- usually even about 100-150mb/sec
So overall i did not gain that much with the accelsior if i compare it with 2harddisk raid0- both do about 250MB/sec
Maybe it is different with a macpro 4.1 or 5.1...
I use the Accelsior also for caching and maybe then it is faster  but for me it is hard to measure it.

PS I check my new harddisks directly on problems before i use them... i had some faulty ones before..
Also i check all my harddisks every year.  ( i use scannerZ)