Today I will be taking you through a romantic pictorial waltz through the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro quad Interface external drive enclosure. I hope you enjoy it. Don’t get too fresh, or I’ll slap you with my glove. Keep your hands above the waist!

The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro is a case that can hold a single 3.5″ SATA hard drive of any capacity. It has Firewire 800, 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA ports. That’s a lot o’ ports. For the full specs and sales pitch stuff, head over to our sponsor MacFixIt’s website, as the OWC website is all in US$ and stuff and you should buy it locally to support local businesses and our sponsors ok?

Here’s the box. See how they put the planet Mercury on the front? I heard the marketing manager used to work for NASA. Inside the box comes a power supply. The usual black box type job. It will lie on the floor and be covered in dust and be a fire hazard, like the other 20 power adaptors under your desk. A Firewire 800 and a Firewire 400 cable, eSATA cable and USB cable also come in the box. A nice touch, getting all those cables, saves me rummaging around in my nerd toolbox for a spare cable. There’s also a manual and a DVD with some crappy useless software on it. Well, the software isnt’ that crappy, but I have no use for it. For those that want to know, it comes with: ProSoft Engineering® Data Backup for Mac OS X v10.2.8, NovaStor NovaBACKUP® Solution for Windows®, Intech® Hard Disk SpeedTools Utilities™ for Mac OS X and Carbon Copy Cloner. There.

The enclosure itself is a nice and sturdy aluminium. It has a nice feel, much like the aluminium of the MacBook Pros and Mac Pros.

The rear of the enclosure has a plethora of ports. The image says it all. There’s a Kensington lock on there so you can chain it to something to make sure no-one steals your precious data.

To open the case up, there are two screws on the bottom. Unscrew them and the inner tray slides out. I don’t know why it says the warranty is void if the case is opened on that sticker. How am I supposed to put in a drive? I doubt they’d be able to tell anyways. Unless you’re totally unco and slide your screw drive across the PCB. You moron.

This is what you’re greeted with once the case is open. A circuit board with chips and resistors and capacitors and stuff. There’s also a SATA header there. You just slide a drive right in. No cables. Just slide the rear of the drive in to the plug there.

The money shot. This little chip is what makes this enclosure so good. The Oxford 924. This is the brains of the unit, handling all the Firewire and USB and eSATA stuff. There are many cheaper, but significantly inferior chips that fulfil this role, but the Oxford 924 is the fastest and most reliable. Accept nothing less than the Oxford 924 if you want your data to be read reliably day in, day out.

This is the little stand the enclosure comes with. For standing the enclosure on. You don’t have to use it, you can lie the enclosure flat too. If you have a couple of these cases, you can stack ‘em.

Plug in the HDD, close up the case, plug in the power and this is what you’re greeted with. The brightest blue LED your retinas will ever be grazed by. At night, this thing lights up a room. It’s easy too bright. I had to stick a little piece of blu-tack over it unfortunately.

So you’ve got your HDD plugged in. It appears on the desktop as a drive. Done. I don’t know how to test an external HDD really. I’ve been using it as my Time Machine drive for about 2 months (yeah, I’ve been slow getting this review out, sorry!) and it’s been solid as a rock. I’ve used cheaper enclosures in the past and they sometimes mount, sometimes don’t mount. It sucks. The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro however, mounts every time (that sounds kinda seedy doesn’t it?).

I did some pretty useless benchmarks using Xbench, comparing the OWC enclosure to a Sarotech FHD-354USF Hardbox, but only on FW400, as the Hardbox doesn’t do FW800 and I don’t have an eSATA port or card for my Macs. Either way, the case shouldn’t really make much of a real-world difference to performance. I also threw in my MacBook Pro’s internal 7200rpm HDD for shits and giggles. They’re far from scientific, but make of these benchmarks what you will.

Internal HDD – Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00

• Sequential Uncached Write – 56.97 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Write – 51.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 11.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 57.34 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 1.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 29.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 0.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 23.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]

OWC FW800 – SAMSUNG HD103UJ

• Sequential Uncached Write – 69.21 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Write – 61.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 12.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 70.84 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 2.06 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 50.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 0.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 28.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]

OWC FW400 – SAMSUNG HD103UJ

• Sequential Uncached Write – 30.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Write – 33.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 11.35 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 37.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 2.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 29.55 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 0.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 22.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Hardbox FW400 – SAMSUNG HD103UJ

• Sequential Uncached Write – 20.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Write – 30.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 11.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Sequential Uncached Read – 38.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 2.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Write – 30.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 0.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
• Random Uncached Read – 22.79 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Mmm, stats…

So there you have it. The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Quad Interface external drive enclosure is one bitchin’ fast enclosure. Partner it with one of those snazzy Western Digital Black drives and you’re on to a winner. Thanks to that Oxford 924 chipset, you really can’t go wrong. Sure, it’s pricey at $159 for just the enclosure, when you can pop down to Big W and buy a 1TB USB external drive for $179, but personally, I wouldn’t use a 3.5″ external case that doesn’t have an Oxford chip in it if I want my data to be read reliably. Backups are supposed to be safe ya’know.

If this review made you want to buy one of these wonderful cases, pick it up from MacTalk sponsor, MacFixIt, who can even sell you one bundled with a drive already installed.