Owc Launches The Mercury Accelsior Pci Express Ssd For Mac

The movement to Solid State Drives (SSD) in our Macs is now in full force. Other World Computing has introduced an SSD card designed for the PCIe slot of a Mac Pro or an Xserve that is plug-and-play and really fast. Riduculously fast.IntroductionThe Apple Mac Pro and the Xserve have been used by professionals for extreme computing: advanced computation, simulations, video processing and imaging. While the Xserve is no longer being shipped by Apple, it would be really nice to exploit the PCIe slots of the Mac Pro for an ultra-fast SSD drive, and Other World Computing has delivered one in multiple sizes: 120, 240, 480 and 960 GB. To add to the amazement, it uses a RAID 0 stripped configuration for even more speed.The reason for the use of the PCI Express slot instead of one of the drive bays is that the SATA ports in the Mac Pros are limited to 300 Megabytes/sec (MB/sec) throughput. However, the PCIe slot can handle up to 1 GB/sec. (Roughly the same as Thunderbolt’s maximum of 1.25 GB/sec.)Image Credit: Other World ComputingHowever, the OWC Mercury Accelsior isn’t just any SSD.

Accelsior S is the perfect complement to OWC's Mercury family of high-performance SSD's, allowing up to an extra 1TB of fast storage expansion. Just Plug and Play Mount a 2.5' drive to the Accelsior S, install in any available PCIe x4 (or greater) slot, and you're up and running with expanded high-speed storage.

It’s basically two SSD drives stripped together, with a Marvel RAID controller, in a RAID 0 mode. That results in a performance in the 820+ MB/sec range for read and 760+ MB/sec for write, claimed by OWC. Compare that to a standard SATA 2 hard disk drive that’s in the 100-200 MB/sec range or a typical SATA 2 SSD that can deliver, roughly, 250-400 MB/sec.Executive SummaryThis product is a low profile PCI Express card that’s very easy to install in a Mac Pro, is pre-formatted for a Mac, and was tested to obtain a least 600 Megabytes (that’s bytes) per second of throughput for sustained reads or writes. You can install OS X just like any HDD and boot from it. Extreme landings for mac. A 480 GB storage version sells for $800 and has a three year warranty. Read on for the technical details and benchmarking.CompatibilityThe Mercury Accelsior is compatible with the following Macs and Xserves. Mac Pro, mid 2010 (5,1).

Mac Pro, early 2009 (4,1). Mac Pro, early 2008 (3,1). Mac Pro, 2007 (2,1). Mac Pro, 2006 (1,1). Xserve, early 2009 (3,1). Xserve, early 2008 (2,1).

Xserve, late 2006 (1,1)However, there are some technical details that customers should be aware of regarding the various models and slot specifications. OWC explains:“For full throughput on Mac Pros:. 2009-2010 Installing Accelsior into any open x4 or x16 PCIe 2.0 slot will deliver full throughput up to 785 MB/sec. 2008 Mac Pros have two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots, which enable Acceslsior to deliver full throughput up to 785 MB/sec. Installing Accelsior into of the two x4 PCIe 1.0 slots will result in Accelsior being addressed as a gen one, one-lane card with performance limited to real world 190-200 MB/sec data rates.

2006-2007 Mac Pros utilize PCIe 1.0 slot which cannot be configured (even with the Expansion Utility in OS X) to address Accelsior as anything but as a first generation one-lane card. As a result, Accelsior performance will be limited to 190-200 MB/sec data rates.

If maximum data rate speed up to 285 MB/sec is desired, we recommend the installation of a 2.5 inch OWC Mercury SSD in an open Mac Pro drive bay.”Physical & Electrical DesignThe Mercury Accelsior is a single, low profile PCI Express card approximately 7.1 x 4.74 x 0.81-inches (180 x 120 x 21 mm). It uses dual LSI Sandforce SF-2281 series SSD processors and a Marvel RAID 0 controller. The 480 GB unit I tested has a listed formatted capacity of 447 GB.

Starting with Snow Leopard. Using base 10, one sees about 479 GB available. Of note is the listed operating temperature range of from 32F to 158F.

(It can get warm inside the Mac Pro, even with multiple fans.) The non-operating (storage) temperature limit is over 300F.The are found on OWC’s product page.Unlike a standard SSD, like the ones found in Apple’s iMacs and MacBooks, this device, operating as a RAID system, does not support the TRIM function. Nor does it need to, according to the product manager who directed me toFeature ListOWC lists the following features of the Mercury Accelsior PCI Express SSD. Plug and play installation. No Drivers required. Out of the box, formatted as HFS+ and GUID partition.

The only Mac bootable PCIe SSD card on the market. Sustained transfer rates greater than 750 megabytes/sec. Intelligent block management and wear leveling. Error correction and corruption prevention. Slight over provisioning ( 7%) allocated for data management and to maintain the SSD’s high-performance level. Up to 960 GB capacity.

Three year warrantyMac OS X 10.6 or later is required. This product can also be used with PCs (Vista or later) and Linux (Ubuntu Linux 9.04 and later or Fedora Linux 14 and later.)InstallationI installed the unit in my “early 2009” Mac Pro, 2.66 GHz, quad core, in the x16 slot.

This is slot #2. (Slot 1 has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 GPU.) According to the Mac Pro notes above, I could have installed it in one of the x4 slots, that is #3 or #4, but elected not to because an early version of the Quickstart guide was slightly out of date and steered me towards the x16 slot. I could have used any slot in this model.Inside the 2009 Mac Pro (Image Credit: Apple)Installation was very easy and fast.

I released the knurled knobs that hold the restraining bar for the slot covers, removed it, then removed number 2 slot cover, and dropped in the Accelsior. (Of course, I was well grounded to avoid any static build-up.) On my Mac Pro, there’s a thin, cylindrical bar that the card rests on. The card doesn’t clip in, but rather just rests on the bar to keep it away from the motherboard and remain level. See photo below.Installation detail. Image Credit: authorI secured the restraining bar with the knurled knobs, closed up the Mac Pro and rebooted. It was a simple affair.

As OWC says, if you can install memory, you can install this card. (It’s probably even easier.) I should note that there is an extra part in the package, a PCI slot attachment plate. It’s for PC/low profile server applications, not used for the Mac Pro.All cozy in the x16 slot, #2. Image Credit: AuthorThe first thing I did was take a look at Disk Utility in order to verify that the the Mac saw it properly. It was exactly what I wanted to see, a formatted drive up and running.Install. Bliss.Note that, unlike a conventional drive, this device does not support S.M.A.R.T status monitoring (because it utilizes RAID).The next thing I did was to install OS X 10.7.4 “Lion” and prepare for some benchmark testing and boot timings. All told, this was all very easy to do.