CES 2011: OWC unveils Mercury Aura Pro MBA SandForce processor-based SSD

Other World Computing (OWC) has at CES announced its new Mercury Aura Pro MBA Solid State Drive (SSD) - the first high performance SandForce processor-based SSD available for all 2008-2009 Apple MacBook Air models. Available in four models: 60GB ($199.99), 120GB ($299.99), 240GB ($579.99) and 480GB (TBA) with 4X Higher Capacity than Factory SSD, the drives offer data rates of up to 275MB/s. The OWC Mercury Aura Pro MBA offers owners of 2008-2009 MacBook Air models up to 41X faster performance than the original factory hard drive, over 3X faster performance than the factory installed SSD, and 20% faster than even the latest 2010 MacBook Air models.

owc mercury aura pro mba ssd

mba solid state drive

The OWC Mercury Aura Pro MBA utilizes SandForce DuraClass technology, which provides up to 100X higher data protection than ordinary SSDs and 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 along with 7% over provisioning, the Mercury Aura Pro MBA provides RAID-like data protection and reliability without the loss of transfer speed due to parity.

Based on OWC’s popular Mercury Extreme SSD “shootout” video series, OWC has created new videos demonstrating how much faster an OWC Mercury Aura Pro MBA equipped 2008-2009 MacBook Air 1.83GHz model is versus much faster processor based machines, including a 2010 MacBook Pro i7. You can view the side-by-side comparison videos here.