OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini USB C Bus-Powered External Storage
€40
Price: $39.99
(as of Aug 16, 2025 03:06:13 UTC – Details)
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini USB-C (10Gbps) Bus-Powered Portable Storage Enclosure The bus powered enclosure universally USB compatible for recording, accessing and backup • Universal compatibility: plug-and-play with old, present, and future Mac, PC, iPad, Chromebook and Android tablets • Ready for life: save, access, backup and edit business and personal files with real-world performance ranging up to 542 MB/s • Easy backups: ready for Apple Time Machine and Windows file history • Game on: Ideal for storing games with PlayStation and Xbox consoles • Entertainment center: watch videos, listen to music and view photos on your Smart TV • Portable: bus powered and robust to go from the desktop to the top of the mountain • Bootable: start and launch applications in seconds • Quiet: Aircraft-grade aluminum housing dissipates heat and fanless ventilation ensure cool, near-silent operation • Ready for deployment: preconfigured solutions undergo rigorous multi-step performance certification • Connected: Universal connection to any USB or Thunderbolt computer or device with the included USB-C cable with connected USB-A adapter Limited 1-year warranty completed by OWC
Universally compatible: Plug and play with past, present, and future Macs, PCs, iPads, Chromebooks, and Android tablets
Life ready: Save, access, backup, and edit work and personal files with up to 542MB/s real-world performance
Portable: Bus-powered and rugged with heat-dissipating, aircraft-grade aluminum housing and fanless venting provide cool, nearly silent operation
Connected: Connect universally to any USB or Thunderbolt computer or device with the included USB-C cable with tethered USB-A adapter
1 Year OWC Limited Warranty
Customers say
Customers find the external storage drive works well and appreciate its well-made enclosure, with one noting its precision-grade aluminum construction. The drive shows maximum speed performance, is easy to install SSDs, and is perfectly sized for portability needs. They consider it a great value and like its attractive design.
John B. –
Affordable solution that works
To me, an enclosure with a good 2.5″ SSD in it is the best storage compromise you can make. Generally more reliable than ready made external drives. Less heat issues compared to NVME enclosures. Still more portable compared to 3.5″ drives. Faster than spinning rust, and relatively affordable.I plugged a TeamGroup Vulcan 1 TB drive into my OWC enclosure. It was super easy to install, just pushed into the SATA connection. A few screws to put the enclosure back together and I was finished. I’ve had no issues reading it on Linux and Win11. It’s fast enough that I was able to install Battlefield 2042 on the drive and game on it while plugged in to the USB-C port on my laptop.My only regret is that I probably should have equipped it with a 2tb capacity or larger. It holds plenty of data as is, but for a gaming and multimedia drive, more is always better.
Amazon Mango –
Great Item
I had a SSD lying around and wanted to use it as portable storage (instead of a flash drive). I received this unit and I was very surprised at the quality. It’s precision grade aluminum with logo on front. The wired connection sits firmly in place with no looseness (does not wiggle around). I tested the drive with usb-c, and it performed very well (568 MB/s using diskmark).
WoodTurner –
Nice, but Crucial Drive Difficult to Install
After all was said and done this turned out to be a nice, little enclosure. It’s small, well built, snappy and stays cool so far.Installing a Crucial 4TB MX500 drive wasn’t what OWC’s video made it out to be. Their video simply shows their drive connecting to the board easily. The Crucial on the other hand required disconnecting the board, plugging it into the drive then reconnecting the board to the enclosure. No big deal really, just expect it and have a small Torx or Allen wrench on hand. Knowing what to expect I’d purchase another.
Mister B. –
As we move forward I still use HDDs for backups, this works well.
If you’re shopping by price you could probably do better. That’s fine. I’ve had good luck with OWC enclosures so I grabbed one of these for the MANY redundant backups I keep. Old spinning disc drives still have some value, maybe not as fast but in a worst-case scenario I don’t care about speed. Used DriveDX to find a decent 2TB drive from the pile and put it in, no issues.It’s all probably for naught but all it took was a single external drive enclosure somehow killing a HDD and itself so I stick with brands that haven’t failed me. That event over a decade ago has driven home the importance of regular, redundant backups on trusted hardware. Never again.This is made of typical extruded aluminum body, basic construction and assembly, nothing special. Vented end looks pretty, comes with a decent cable.Not sure what the max speeds are but I’ll post a screenshot of BlackMagic with Seagate Barracuda 2.5″ 5400 RPM HDD. Your results may be higher with an SSD? This is plugged directly into the back of an M2 Mac Mini via TB cable.Long story short: I’ll be plugging this in at regular intervals for backups, bus powered, probably not a speed demon but does the job.
JoieDeMort –
Extremely High Quality and High Performance
Just like everything else from OWC, this is extremely high quality and high performance. No surprises. Solid metal construction. Doesn’t slow down after a while like other brands do. I love it!
Amazon Customer –
Great little enclosure
Love this little enclosure. I had a couple of 2.5â SSDs that I wanted to use and this include fit the bill. Installed the drive and had in running on the computer in about 5mins.Being bus powered is another advantage in that I donât have to worry about turning a separate item on and off.
Bruce Crutcher –
Better than others I’ve tried
This enclosure was a breeze to mount an 8TB SSD in and allows the full speed of the SATA SSD. Even faster than it should be as long as you are connected to USB 3.2. With ATTO I saw maximum speeds of 525 MB/sec writes and 567 MB/sec reads on block sizes over 64K.The aluminum case works well as a heatsink. When transferring 200GB of files the case did get slightly warm showing that it works.I would recommend this for an external drive. Much better than several cheaper ones I have.
Sinna Max –
Failed after a couple weeks
Had Samsung SSD drives in both. What are the chances that both enclosures fail within a couple weeks? As always OWC warranty process is a joke, waste of time and the out of pocket cost enormous. Just simpler to go with a different brand.
Manuel Negri –
Ottimo case, si integra benissimo al design del Mac mini. Consigliato.
Cliente Amazon –
Bien acabado y resistente. Transferencia muy rapida de datos.
Rusty –
As an existing user of the OWC elite mini (USB 3) version, this new USB 3.2 Gen 2 setup is great. As a scratch drive, I paired it with a 1TB WD Blue. Managed to saturate the drive with no issues using both Macbook Air (with OWC Thunderbolt dock) and Mac Studio, so the purchase paid for itself.With no active cooling, the SSD provides a 0dB work setup (there are rubber feet to prevent any motion at all), and the blue LED on the front is less bright than the previous generation so working in a low-light setup will not be an issue.All in all, very pleased.
Joao –
Adquiri esta caixa OWC para utilizar um SSD que tinha num iMAC anterior como disco de arranque principal no meu iMAC actual. Após analisar as opções, este OWC parecia ser dos que garantia melhores velocidades utilizando a porta Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C 3.1 gen 2) do iMAC. Nos testes de escrita/leitura a velocidade foi de 450Mbps, mesmo assim inferior à velocidade do disco interno ( 2Gbps). A construção em alumÃnio, não só permite melhor dissipação do calor como parece que foi feito para combinar com a construção em alumÃnio do iMAC.
jean gould –
The OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini is very light, a lot lighter than his older brother. Its motherboard seems very small. Nice feature : only one cable with an adaptor plug hooked with it.