OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Owner’s Manual
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 1.1.1 Mac Requirements 1.1.2 PC Requirements 1.2 PACKAGE CONTENTS 1.3 ABOUT THIS MANUAL 1.4 PORT VIEW & CABLE CONNECTIONS 1.5 DETAILED VIEW 1.5.1 LED Indicator 2 SYSTEM SETUP 2.1 CONNECTIONS TO COMPUTER 3 FORMATTING 3.1 MACINTOSH FORMATTING 3.2 REMOVING AN EXISTING GUID PARTITION 3.3 WINDOWS FORMATTING 4 TROUBLESHOOTING & TIPS 4.1 TROUBLESHOOTING 4.2 USAGE TIPS 5 APPENDIX 5.1 FAQ 5.2 ABOUT DATA PROTECTION 6 CUSTOMER SERVICE 6.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 1 - Introduction 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 System Requirements 1.1.1 Mac Requirements •Minimum PowerPC G4 CPU, 128MB RAM •eSATA interface, Mac OS X 10.3 or later •FireWire interface, Mac OS X 10.2 or later •USB 2.0 interface, Mac OS X 10.2 or later 1.1.2 PC Requirements •Minimum 500MHz Intel Pentium III CPU, 128MB RAM •eSATA interface, Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 •FireWire interface, Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7 •USB 2.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 1 - Introduction 1.4 Port View & Cable Connections ➀ ➁ ➂ ➃ ➄ Cable Connections: The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini has multiple interfaces to work with any computer system. ➀ eSATA Port - The utmost in speed. If you’re trying to make your OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini the fastest it can be, attach an eSATA cable to this port. ➁ USB mini Port - Connect one of your computer’s USB ports to the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini here using the included cable.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 2 - System Setup 2 SYSTEM SETUP 2.1 Computer Connections The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini is designed to bus power using the FireWire 800, or USB 2.0 connection from your computer. If you choose to use the eSATA interface, connect both the FireWire (either 800-800 or 800-400) and eSATA cables to your computer, the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini will use the power provided by the FireWire interface to power the eSATA connection, which is data only.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting 3 FORMATTING 3.1 Formatting your OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini on a Macintosh with Mac OS X IMPORTANT NOTE: This procedure will erase all data on your hard disk drives in the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini. Back up any important data before proceeding! Open the Disk Utility application, which is located in /Applications/Utilities ➀ Select the device with no volumes attached to it; in this picture, that would be the 320.07 GB OWC device.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting ➁ Once you’ve selected the OWC device, you will notice the above change in the Disk Utility application. Click on the “Erase” tab in this picture. ➂ You then need to name the volume that you want to format, and erase it. Name the volume as you want, choose the Volume Format pulldown (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is default), and click the Erase button.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting ➃ Click the erase button to confirm you wish to erase the disk. ➄ After a few moments, the erase command will complete and the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini volume will mount on your desktop.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting 3.2 Removing the GUID Partition Scheme Only for XP, 2000, ME and earlier. (XP 64-BIT, Vista & Windows 7 can continue to the next section) Your new OWC Mercury Elite-AL mini is preformatted for use with a Macintosh. Unfortunately, this is not readable by Windows without special software. If you wish to use your storage solution on a computer running Windows, you will need to repartition and reformat using the following instructions.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting 3.3 Formatting your OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini on Windows 2000 and later Instructions for other operating systems can be found at http://www.macsales.com/format. IMPORTANT NOTE: This procedure will erase all data on your hard disk drives in the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini. Back up any important data before proceeding! ➀ With the drive connected to the computer and powered on, right click on the “My Computer” icon and select “Manage” from the menu.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini ➃ Your drive will appear similar to how Disk 1 does below. Notice that the space on the lower right reads as “Unallocated.” Right click in this space and choose “New Partition.” ➄ The “New Partition Wizard” will launch. Click “Next” to continue. ➅ Specify your partition type as “Primary,” and click “Next.” ➆ The wizard will display the maximum partition size for your drive. It is strongly recommended that you do not change the default value.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting ➇ If you like, you can specify the drive letter designation for your new drive. Otherwise, one will automatically be assigned. Click “Next.” ➈ Before you can use the drive, it must be formatted. On most systems running Windows 2000 or later, it is advisable to specify the file system as NTFS. Leave the Allocation unit size as “Default,” and feel free to give the drive whatever name you prefer. Be sure to check the box “Perform a quick format”.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini ➀➀ Once you have finished with the formatting wizard, you will see that your new drive (represented as “Disk E” in this case) will display a message of “Formatting.” This should only take a couple of minutes if you chose the quick format option. ➀➁ After a mo- ment or two, the drive’s status will change from “Formatting” to “Healthy.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 3 - Formatting ➀➂ At this point, you may close the Computer Management win- dow. Your drive is ready to use and can be found in “My Computer.” Using your new Storage Solution on both Macs and PCs? MacDrive takes the guesswork out of sharing files. Whether you are transferring files between home and the office, a class room lab and your dorm room or even on the same computer, MacDrive makes it painless. In fact, you’ll hardly know MacDrive is working.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 4 -Troubleshooting & Tips 4 TROUBLESHOOTING & TIPS 4.1 Troubleshooting Some of the most simple problems can be traced to power, or connectivity issues. Verify that your cables (both ends!) are properly plugged into the computer and storage solution. If they are, and the storage solution is still not working properly, try connecting to another interface such as the USB connection and see if the device works properly.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 4 -Troubleshooting & Tips Optional AC Adapter While the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini series is designed to be bus powered, there are some special situations where customers require a power adapter. If you want to purchase an AC adapter , they are available from our Web site: http://eshop.macsales.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 5 - Appendix 5 APPENDIX 5.1 FAQ Q: How do I format my storage solution? A: OWC has detailed instructions online for most popular operating systems, located at: http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/fwhdd.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini Chapter 6 - Customer Service 6 CUSTOMER SERVICE 6.1 Before Contacting Customer Service •Read this manual and review Chapter 4: Troubleshooting & Tips. •Try to confirm the problem is with the hard drive. If you have a second computer, move the enclosure to that system and verify that the solution does not function with that machine. •Visit our tech center for more support suggestions, including FAQs. http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.
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