MacBook Air Gets First SATA 6.0 Gbps SSD Option

Other World Computing (OWC) has released a new, ‘world’s-first’ storage upgrade option for MacBook Air owners. The solid state drives for the 2011 Apple MacBook Air models offers higher transfer speeds and use a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface.

Marketed as “For MacBook Air 2010-2011 Edition”, the new Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G drives come with a SandForce SF-2281 controller, and 3xnm Toggle Synchronous NAND Flash memory chips.

OWC touts read and write speeds of up to 507/454 MB/s, as well as a 4k random read/write performance of up to 60,000/60,000 IOPS.

“Whether you're looking for storage capacity up to 8x the factory maximum or extreme data rate speeds over 500MB/s, an OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD is the ultimate MacBook Air performance upgrade,” says the computer hardware vendor.

The drives are designed and built in the US from domestic and imported parts, and they use 128-bit AES-compliant chip-based data encryption.

Intelligent "recycling" is used for advanced free space management and “SandForce RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology provides RAID-like data protection and reliability without loss of transfer speed due to parity,” according ti the makers.

The SandForce Processor maximizes read and write performance using 7% over-provisioning which, according to OWC, greatly extends the endurance and overall reliability of the drive.

They claim the Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD offers up to 100X greater data protection than conventional hard disk drives. Even the highest-rated ones are dwarfed by Aura Pro in terms of security, says the vendor.

The Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G ships as a single SSD drive, either with a capacity of 120GB (selling for $349.99), or at 240GB (for $599.99).