The equipment made by the people of OWC emphasizes the power of technology without unnecessary decoration. The industrial design of the company's products is usually minimal, simple and ergonomic. When we looked at the OWC Mercury Pro U.2 Dual Thunderbolt NVMe SSD array, the company showed a black box that does one thing very well: data storage is extremely fast.
There are two NVMe SSDs inside the device, each with a capacity of 1TB. This is the basic configuration-if you wish, you can also order a device with multiple storage spaces. The NVMe U.2 SSD technology used here combines the connection speed of the Thunderbolt port, and has a data bandwidth capacity of 2800MB/s.
OWC recommends that the NVMe SSE array of this device "makes full use of Thunderbolt's 2800MB/s data bandwidth capability, so it runs nearly 6 times faster than a typical SSD."
The device is 3.3 inches wide, 5.8 inches high, and 9.4 inches deep. After installing the drive, Mercury Pro U.2 Dual weighs approximately 4 pounds.
The device is pre-configured with APPLE RAID 0 for MacOS devices. Users who use Windows can use this drive with OWC's software called MacDrive. Each unit is also pre-tested and fully burn-in certified to ensure "performance and reliability."
The device’s additional USB-C Thunderbolt allows it to work as a hub, allowing the use of up to two 4K Thunderbolt displays or one 5K display, as well as a bunch of other Thunderbolt USB-C peripherals.
The additional Thunderbolt USB-C port of the device can implement a daisy chain drive. If you are using OWC's SoftRAID software, you can add up to five more Thunderbolt storage devices and merge these devices together. SoftRAID is not free, but it can be downloaded and used for free for 14 days before any fee starts.
Therefore, if you already have a USB-C Thunderbolt storage device and you want to continue using the device but want more storage space, you can use this OWC device without losing another USB-C Thunderbolt port on your computer To another drive. You can connect Mercury Pro U.2 Dual to your computer first, and then connect other USB-C Thunderbolt drives to Mercury Pro U.2 Dual – easy!
If you buy the basic configuration of OWC Mercury Pro U.2 Dual (two 1TB NVMe SSDs), the starting price is US$549. To upgrade to 4TB (2x 2TB), you will pay at least US$879. The maximum stand-alone configuration is 2x 8TB, a total of 16TB storage, and the price is 3299 US dollars.
You can also get multi-cell arrays, using SSD models with SoftRAID. The 8x 8TB array (for 64TB storage) provided by OWC will cost you approximately US$12,799 in total. The release date of OWC Mercury Pro U.2 Dual is November 4, 2021, and it can be ordered today from OWC (via its MacSales website).
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