OWC launches FireWire 800 storage devices

Other World Computing (OWC) this week launched its Mercury Elite Pro FW800 series of storage devices, its first products that support the IEEE 1394b (FireWire 800) standard. The new standard is expected to provide data rates up to 800M bit/sec.

OWC says the devices offer data rates of more than 60M byte/sec (480M bit/sec), as much as 50% faster than previous FireWire/USB 2.0 products. The devices are compatible with machines that have FireWire 400 (1394a) or USB 2.0/1.1 ports, and have storage capacity ranging from 80G-bytes up to 250G-bytes.

The products include two nine-pin FireWire 800 (1394b) ports, one six-pin FireWire 400 (1394a) port, one USB 2.0/1.1 port, a 7,200 RPM “nearly silent” hard drive, either 2M bytes or 8M bytes of cache, and a copy of Intech HD Speed tools. The systems support Apple OS v8.5 – 9.2x, OSX (all versions) and Windows 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP, or any other operating system that supports FireWire or USB ports.

The devices will range in cost from $249.99 (for 80G-bytes and 2M bytes of cache) up to $519.99 (for the 250G-byte drive with 8M-bytes of cache). Other details and models are available at the Other World Computing Web site.