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OWC Mercury FireWire On-The-Go Drive a Clear Winner

OWC Mercury On-The-Go!Other World Computing’s Mercury FireWire On-The-Go is a 2.5-inch external Firewire hard drive that performs as well as it looks. Rather than the “usual” hard drive enclosure OWC did something a little cooler – they encased their FireWire hard drive in clear lucite so that you can see the guts. Combined with the bright blue LED status indicator this is one mean drive. Read More…


OWC Mercury On-The-Go!Other World Computing’s Mercury FireWire On-The-Go is a 2.5-inch external Firewire hard drive that performs as well as it looks. Rather than the “usual” hard drive enclosure OWC did something a little cooler – they encased their FireWire hard drive in clear lucite so that you can see the guts. Combined with the bright blue LED status indicator this is one mean drive.
The drive weighs in at less than 12 ounces and is super quiet and the FireWire interface perfect for road warriors that don’t want to haul around an extra power cable on the road. The Merc features a custom Oxford 911 bridge chip and has two FireWire ports and one USB port.
Mercury FireWire On-The-Go’s large capacity (up to 80GB) and speed (up to 7200 RPM) make it suitable for audio/video applications and run-of-the-mill backups too. The drive I am testing is the 60GB, 7200RPM, 8MB cache configuration and it screams compared to the pokey FUJITSU MHT2080AT (4200RPM) hard drive in my PowerBook 15-inch 1.5GHz. This drive totally saved my bacon when I needed somewhere to archive my PowerBook before a data move.
The Merc drives ships bundled with Dantz Retrospect Express 6.0, Intech Speed Tools and a cool carry case. Prices range from US$139 (20GB, 4200 RPM) to US$299 (60GB, 7200 RPM) and are available now from Other World Computing (800-275-4576).

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.