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Other World Computing (OWC) last week announced the debut of its new Mercury Aura Pro Express solid state drives for Apple's latest 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models. The new drives, which offer greater speed and capacity than Apple's factory options, are available in 180 GB, 240 GB, and 360 GB capacities. Based on a SandForce controller, the drives also feature a number of other technologies to enhance speed, performance, and data integrity.
The Mercury Aura SSD line features industry leading SandForce DuraClass Technologies:
- DuraWrite extends the endurance of your Solid State Drive (SSD).
- Intelligent Block Management & Wear Leveling automatically distributes data evenly across the entire SSD.
- Intelligent Read Disturb Management spreads the active read/write across the flash components eliminating data corruption caused by constant use.
- Intelligent "Recycling" for advanced free space management gradually re-writes data across the SSD over time to ensure data never gets corrupted.
- RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) protects the data on your drive similar to having a RAID setup.
- Best-in-Class ECC Protection for longest data retention and drive life.
Prices begin at $499.99 for the 180 GB drive and move up to $579.9 for the 240 GB model and $1,179.99 for the 360 GB model. Shipping estimates are currently listed at 19 days for the 180 GB version, 2 days for the 240 GB version, and "pending" for the 360 GB version.
All three drives are compatible with both the 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch MacBook Air models introduced in October 2010. Apple's own drive options begin at 64 GB for the 11.6-inch model and top out at 128 GB, while the 13.3-inch model comes with 128 GB and 256 GB options.
Taiwanese firm PhotoFast had previously announced similar SandForce-based SSDs ranging up to 256 GB that would be compatible with the 11-inch MacBook Air, but Apple quickly moved to halt sales of the drives. It is unclear if Apple is objecting to the new offerings from OWC and/or applying pressure to have them removed from sale.
