OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G 240GB SSD Review

OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G Internals

With the same design as the 120 GB version, the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6g 240 GB drive opens right up with the removal of four hex screws and the PCB itself is partially secured with these same screws.

The first difference we noticed was that the PCB is a little more blue in color than the 120 GB version and absent is the somewhat unsightly bridge wire that was present on the 120 GB drive we received. OWC had told us they were replacing it with a trace circuit and at the end of the day, has no impact on performance so we only mention it as a matter of ancillary information. In usual fashion, the flash modules are aligned in two rows of four (or four rows of two depending on your perspective) with eight of the sixteen residing on this side.

A closer look shows the MLC NAND to be Micron in manufacture yet different from the models found in the 120 GB drives. At 16 GB in density, this ONFI 2.2, synchronous NAND is graded at speeds of up to 166MT/s and collectively totals 256 GB.

Flipping the board over, we find the remaining eight NAND chips in the same configuration as the other side along with the SandForce controller slightly off-center near the SATA connectors. Also note the OWC logo which indicates they are using custom PCB.

For those new to SSDs, the SandForce SF-2200 is one of the latest generation controllers supporting a SATA III interface and widely lauded as one of, if not the top consumer SSD controller. Of course, it supports TRIM and features the same DuraClass technology we’ve seen with all SandForce controllers. Its responsibilities include implementing wear-leveling algorithms, error-correction and drive maintenance, among other things. AES-256 and AES-128 data encryption helps keep your data safe and real-time data compression is the key to attaining its maximum performance.