OWC’s Helios 3S Interchange system for U.2 SSDs is a fast and versatile system for storing and swapping post-production projects

Its full name is “Mercury Helios 3S” and unaltered it’s an aluminium dual-port Thunderbolt 3 expansion box for PCIe cards with a dedicated DisplayPort 1.4 port for an 8K display and the ability to charge an 85W notebook PC. It accepts one PCIe 3.1 (x16) slot for half-length, full-height, single or double-width cards, but interestingly it also accepts a solution that combines a locking drive bay and removable — up to 16TB capable — U.2 NVMe SSD tray for speeds of up to 2700MB/s. Together with the ability to daisy-chain up to five additional Thunderbolt devices, the Mercury Helios 3S can be used as a high-performance production system for single users as well as small local teams.

I tested the empty Mercury Helios 3S (299 USD) with the U.2 form factor NVMe Interchange System (34.99 USD) which I installed myself — a 4-year old can do it. You can also buy this system with the U.2 Shuttle, a 4-slot NVMe M.2 to U.2 Carrier Shuttle tray with cooling ribs (2TB minimum retails at 449.99 USD — empty tray at 129.99 USD).

Finally, a U.2 ShuttleOne tray is available for a single M.2 SSD (49 USD). In both cases, you convert the Helios 3S into a swappable SSD drive system.

Test setup

I tested the U.2 NVMe Interchange System with a Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe SSD I had lying around. These U.2 drives are more robust than M.2 form factor SSDs as they are intended to be used in data centres. They mount slower but perform well with 1550 MB/s write and 1830 MB/s read times.

Installing such an Ultrastar drive is a matter of plugging the drive in the U.2 tray’s port and tightening the screws so it sits tight. The U.2 tray itself has a security lock which is to ensure you won’t inadvertently remove the SSD. That’s important as the Helios 3S is not hot-swappable, so if you want to exchange SSD drives you’ll have to unplug the Thunderbolt cable before exchanging the tray for another one. Finally, the Helios 3S runs very silent with a truly noiseless fan.

My test system’s single U.2 SSD was fast enough for Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X projects to run smoothly, but if you want top performance you’ll need to go with the 4-slot NVMe M.2 to U.2 Carrier Shuttle. If you buy one with SSDs pre-installed, you’ll get four of OWC’s Aura NVMe SSDs that you can set up to work in any RAID configuration you choose, including 0, 1, 4, 5 or 1 0.

Why I am sold on the Helios 3S

There are two reasons I think a Mercury Helios 3S with its Interchange System has an edge over solutions that incorporate two or more SSDs into one enclosure. The first is that it’s incredibly flexible. For example, with two Helios’s, you can keep all the files of a project together on one shuttle, auto-duplicate them with synchronisation software and store one drive in an offline backup area at the end of each day — e.g. a fire proof container. There’s no risk of hacking and no frustration of up- and downloads completing slowly as can be the case with cloud solutions.

The second reason is that if you’re working with a small team whose members are close to each other, the ability to swap drives amongst team members is faster and more secure than anything else. The drives and their shuttles, while lightweight, are built like a tank, so breaking them while taking (or throwing) them from one workstation to another is sheer impossible.

For the brave of heart, there’s also a possibility to connect each Helios 3S to its own M-processor equipped Mac’s Thunderbolt port and cluster them in RAID 0 using SoftRAID, thus achieving even higher performance. Port aggregation done in this way might introduce timing problems, though, so it would be something that you’d have to test thoroughly first.

Verdict

The Mercury Helios 3S with NVMe Interchange System is a silent, robust, fast and flexible solution for use in movie post-production, sound/audio production, and even general computing environments. It allows semi-hot swapping of drives and supports the high performance of today’s NVMe SSDs.

The Mercury Helios 3S and its NVMe Interchange System are available in Europe via OWC’s online store. The drives ship from a EU-based warehouse.