The NAMM Show is not just about music or music tech gear, our friends at OWC (Other World Computing) are always at the show and this year, not only did they have a bigger booth than ever, with a stage for live performances and in-depth demonstrations, they also had some great new accessories and storage solutions to shout about. The first of these that has made its way into the studio is the new Mercury Elite Pro Dock.
The OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dock
Think of the Mercury Elite Pro Dock as the offspring from a fully-featured USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 dock and a small form factor raid storage solution and you won’t be far off the mark. The name even comes from the OWC Mercury Elite twin bay portable raid storage solution and their new TB-3 Pro Dock (both of which we have reviewed).
Storage
The new Mercury Elite Pro Dock (MEPD) has 2 internal drive bays that will fit both 3.5 and 2.5-inch drives. The model we have on test has been fitted with a pair of 2TB 3.5 inch Seagate Barracuda spinning drives in a RAID 1 configuration (I’ll come to this shortly) giving what looks like a single 2TB drive on the desktop, but it’s so much more than that.
Around The Front
The front of the MEPD features the backlit OWC logo as well as 2 drive status LEDs to let us know things are happening with the drives. This is also where you find the SD 4.0 card reader slot.
Around The Back
On the back of the unit, we find two USB 3.1 (A) slots alongside a Gigabit ethernet RJ45 socket. Next to the main cooling fan, we see a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports with enough power to happily run and charge the most demanding of portable computers. Below this, we find the 4K display port and power supply input. When using a dock or hub of this kind, one of the major benefits is that you do not need to power the computer with its own PSU the dock takes care of this. However, do remember that the dock needs powering and in the case of the MEPD the external PSU is sizeable. Not as big as the ones accompanying previous OWC docks but it’s still quite a lump.
The size of the fan also set alarm bells ringing as this unit is designed to sit on the desk next to the computer, not out of the way in a rack somewhere. I am happy to say that while you can hear the fan when it is running, it’s far from loud. Having a live voice-over mic in the same room as the MEPD would not be an issue.
RAID Settings
The MEPD has 4 settings options.
Span makes the 2 discs look appear as 1 to the computer, so 2x2TB looks like a single 4TB drive. Once the first drive is full it starts writing to the next one.
JBOD or Just a Bunch Of Drives” means the computer sees this as what it is, 2 x 2TB drives.
In RAID 0 configuration, the 2 drives again act as 1 but the data is striped across both drives and compared to a spanned volume, the capacity of a RAID 0 volume is the same. The benefit of RAID 0 is that the throughput of read and write operations to any file is multiplied by the number of disks, in this case, 2.
With I device such as the MEPD I normally choose the RAID 1 option. This means that the computer sees only a single 2TB drive but all data is stored to both drives at the same time. Meaning that if one of the drives fails you always have the other as backup. For most if not all Pro Tools sessions I have ever done 2TB is more than enough space. However, read times in a RAID 1 are slower than the faster drive and Write speeds are slower because every drive must be updated, and the slowest drive limits the write performance.
Storage Options
The MEPD is available from OWC in 4TB, 8TB, 12TB, and 24TB configurations starting at $519.99 all the way up to $1,149,99 for 24TB of storage. If you wish to spec your own drives you can also buy the 0GB driveless option for $319.88.
Features
Speed: up to 40Gb/s with (2) Thunderbolt 3 ports
Flexible storage: 2x bays for 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drives
From 4TB to 24TB options available as well as a 0GB kit.
RAID settings: RAID 0 or RAID 1 as well as JBOD and SPAN modes.
Dock: 2x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports
Gigabit Ethernet
Frontside SD 4.0 (UHS-II) card reader
Dedicated DisplayPort 1.2 for adding up to 4K display
Daisy-chain expansion: add up to five additional Thunderbolt devices
Mac OS and Windows Support
Will charge your notebook computer so no need for dedicated PSU.
What's Missing
In my opinion, there are not enough USB-A ports on the Mercury Elite Pro Dock. As a Pro Tools user, once I have plugged in my iLok and the studio printer (yes I know these can also be WIFI) that’s it I’m all out of ports. What about extra external USB drivers and USB audio interfaces? Let’s have a couple of USB-A (3) ports around the front please under the card slot. Other than that I’m happy. I’ve got the power, speed and reliability that I have come to expect from OWC in a smart, solid unit that I can place on the desk next to me. They even provide a short USB-C data cable in the box to hook the Mercury Elite Pro Dock to your machine.
You can find out more about the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dock at the OWC website. And don’t forget to check out some of the other OWC docks and storage solutions we have reviewed.