OWC has added four new "prosumer" SSDs to its Mercury Extreme Pro SSD line. There will be four capacities, 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB which can manage sustained read rates up to 285 MB/s with no speed degradation.

The four SSDs can manage write speeds of up to 275 MB/s, and sustained random 4KB write performance of 10,000 IOPS (with a burst of up to 30,000 IOPS). It is all controlled by a fairly powerful SandForce processor, which can manage seven percent over-provisioning to ensure a high level of data reliability. The SandForce DuraClass has a better Block Management and Wear Leveling technology to prevent the loss of data transfer speed over the long term.

According to the press releasem the Mercury Extreme Pro SSD is able to provide up to 100X higher data protection than provided by ordinary SSDs as well as leading enterprise class hard disk drives.

"By combining the highest level of Error Correction Code (ECC) and SandForce RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD provides RAID like data protection and reliability without loss of transfer speed due to parity," claims OWC.

The SSDs aren't cheap the 60GB version is $219.99 and the 480 GB version is $1,579.99.