OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual 0GB USB 3.0 & Thunderbolt RAID 0/1/SPAN/Ind Drive Enclosure

The fan noise is far too loud for a 2015 product. Worse, if you buy a quieter fan, it is likely the clip mount used by OWC will not fit it properly. I tried, and this was the result. I'd like to keep, but can't find a replacement fan. Likely will return the two I bought in December

The "OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual 0GB USB 3.0 & Thunderbolt RAID," also hereinafter "Elite Pro," with its newly-designed/quieter fan, did not disappoint! It works beautifully, as advertised. I installed two (2) Samsung 2TB 850 Pro SSDs, plugging the first one directly into the SATA interface connector, mounted directly on the circuit board, without the need for any brackets or adapters (these Samsung enterprise-grade SSDs are extremely light weight); and the second SSD was placed in and screw-mounted onto the Elite Pro's aluminum housing, using a ten-dollar 3.5''-to-2.5'' adapter found at Fry's (comes w/screws), and then simply plugged into the circuit board, using the Elite Pro's SATA cable. Installing the SSDs couldn't have been easier. However, finding the driver for the Elite Pro was a bit more involved. After searching "owcdigital.com/support" to no avail, I engaged OWC's technical support team via the "live chat" option, and, after the usual salutations, I informed "Robert" that I had come in search of a driver for the Mercury Elite Pro Dual w/Thunderbolt, to which he replied, "That device doesn't use drivers, it's a plug-and-play device." I then asked if he could walk me through the installation process, but he said that he was going to lunch, and that, if I had any problems, someone else would be glad to help me. Not surprisingly, the Elite Pro would not install properly without the driver, so, again, via live chat, I embarked upon an hour-long troubleshooting ordeal, this time with "Sam." Finally, after having absolutely no success installing the Elite Pro, Sam suggested sending the unit back to OWC for further testing. When I asked if there wasn't some kind of software or driver that we could try, before resorting to such drastic measures, Sam said, "I assumed you had already installed the driver." After sharing with Sam that which Robert had told me, Sam copied-and-pasted, onto the chat screen, a link to the driver (I wish I had copied the link, so that I could post it here), which I promptly clicked on, downloaded the driver, installed it, and then proceeded to install the Elite Pro. After all of that, I still couldn't get the Elite Pro to "daisy-chain," via Thunderbolt, to my Areca ARC 8050T2 RAID device. What finally worked was letting the ARC 8050T2 boot up first, and then plugging the Elite Pro into it. I hope this rather lengthy review was of some help ~ Beverley.

Update: This drive enclosure failed just after the warranty period expired. OWC didn't seem to care about fixing it. I wouldn't recommend getting anything from them that you expect to last a long time.Fast device and it seems to work fine so far. Unfortunately it is LOUD. The tiny fan they put in the back runs at full blast and makes quite a bit of noise. This is just bad design. Either use the chassis case as a heat sink, or install a larger, slower fan like the original Mac Pro and let it run silently. Installing a tiny high speed fan just defeats one of the key reasons anyone gets these machines - silence!I can see anyone who gets this thing for their silent Mac Pro Cylinder going nuts with the sound.Now I have to look around for a tiny small fan that is quiet. I'll let you know if I find one.Also, there are only two screws in the bottom. For some reason, they decided not to include more, even though there are 4 holes. In the instructions there is a picture of a bag of screws inside the case for attaching drives. That was not in mine, so I had to hunt around for screws to attach the drive inside.Regarding the drive placement. The first drive fits in nicely, the second is connected to cables which come off the thunderbolt controller. These cables are cut short and have to be twisted around to fit the second drive. I hope they don't pull out. They seem to be stressed.The case itself is quite solid. It's made of metal and very well constructed. It comes with a Thunderbolt cable and a USB 3 cable and is easy to connect. Performance seems go be good so far. I just got it and set it up today and it appears to be working well.But...the sound is horrible. I am seriously considering returning it for that reason.

Attached to a 2011 iMac, which has Thunderbolt 1 and USB 2 interfaces. I'm using this device with the iMac's Thunderbolt interface. I installed a single WD 3TB hard disk inside, and set the device to treat disks inside as "independent" (other options are RAID 0, RAID 1 and "span"). I intend to add a second disk later, but only need one right now. I may reconfigure to RAID 0 for performance if I add a second disk at a later time.Using the Blackmagic disk speed test app (find it on the Mac App Store), I'm getting right around 150 MB/s read and write speeds. My previous external storage was a WD Elements 2TB drive connected using USB2. I can get about 30 MB/s speeds on that disk. So: 5x speed improvement. Very nice upgrade. Put a SSD or two in this thing and watch it really take off.Kudos to OWC for including Thunderbolt and USB3 cables in the box.Disk operation and device fan are audible. Not an issue in the environment I'm using this in, but consider this if you need absolute quiet.

Pretty happy with this unit. Fan not too loud. Some odd hesitation when using the thunderbolt pass through for a monitor.

I bought this to house two 512GB drives pulled from my old MacPro tower to use as backups on my new MacPro cylinder. I've purchased a number of OWC products over the past 5 years and have always found them to be of first quality. This was no exception. Installation of the two drives took less than five minutes, and the instructions were very clear including information on configuring the drive arrangement for various options (BE SURE TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THIS BEFORE YOU CONNECT THE DRIVE ENCLOSURE WITH YOUR DRIVES, AS THERE'S NO GOING BACK IF YOU MESS IT UP!).