Otherworld Computing, more commonly known as simply OWC, made a splash this year at CES with its line of Mercury Aura Pro SSDs for 2008 and 2009 models of the Macbook Air and other Macbooks. It’s the first of its kind made specifically for the MBA. The drive trounces standard HDD performance, and shows a 400% performance increase against the stock SSD from the 2009 model and a 200% performance increase against the 2010 model of the MBA.
The drives are available now starting at $180.
Check out this video for a bootup speed test. The Aura Pro-using MBA on the left trounces the HDD-using MBA on the right even when given an eight second head start.
OWC showed off its NewerTechnology brand, as well. The Guardian Maximus Mini is a bus-powered Firewire 800 external drive with hardware RAID support.
Also, OWC showed an update to its Ministack, a storage-bearing, bus-powered hub for use with Mac Minis. It adds eSATA, FireWire, and USB ports to the minimalist Mac Mini in a similar form factor. The update changes the form factor to match that of the new, slim Mac Mini and adds USB 3.0 support — something Apple itself has yet to do to any of its products. Expect to see this unit in 2011 for an as-of-yet undetermined price.
