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OWC Mercury Aura Bundles let you replace your MacBook Air's SSD, use it as external storage
Got a Macbook Air from 2010 or 2011 and want to upgrade the storage without dropping its pre-existing SSD module all together? Well, you're in luck, thanks to OWC's new Mecury Aura Bundles. After upgrading your Air with one of the company's Mercury Aura Pro Express SSDs, the included Mercury Aura Envoy lets you re-purpose the factory SSD as a bus-powered, USB 3.0-compatible external drive. Better yet, the Envoy is made of aluminum, matches the Air's tapered design and weighs just 1.5 ounces. Owners of the 2010 Air can opt for a 180, 240 or 480GB 3Gb/s drive, while those with the 2011 model can bump up to 6Gb/s bus speeds with the same storage allotments and a 120GB option. Pricing for the bundle starts at $200 for the 120GB variant, maxing out at a hefty $780 and $800 if you want to move up to the spacious 480GB offerings. Thankfully, like the SSDs, the Mercury Aura Envoy is available as a stand-alone enclosure, and it'll cost you just under $50 bucks. Hit up the press release after the break for the full details if this dual-drive setup piques your interest
OCZ Ibis touts 2GBps High Speed Data Link, vanquishes SSD competition
What's after ludicrous speed? If you ask OCZ, the answer is HSDL speed, which is the company's new interface idea for bypassing the bandwidth limitations of standard SATA/SAS interconnects. Using a high-quality SAS cable to hook up its new Ibis drive to a PCI Express host card, OCZ has managed to deliver a cool 2GBps of total bandwidth -- that's one gigabyte up and one gigabyte down... every second. In order to feed this massive data pipe, the company's gone and stacked four SandForce SF-1200 controllers inside the Ibis and RAIDed them together for good measure too. The upshot isn't too dramatic for desktop applications, where'll you'll see performance that's merely world-beating -- reading at 373MBps and writing at 323MBps -- but if you throw in some deeper queues and enterprise-level workloads you'll be able to squeeze out 804MBps reads and 675MBps writes. Needless to say, the Ibis scooped up many a plaudit in early reviews, and though it may be expensive at $529 for 100GB, it still seems to represent good value for those who have the workloads to saturate its High Speed Data Link.
Apricorn rolls out pocketable Aegis Mini 240GB 1.8-inch hard drive
240GB 1.8-inch hard drives have been out and about for a little while now, but they're still a bit of a rare sight in actual products, which is something the folks at Apricorn look set to rectify with their new Aegis Mini portable hard drive. As you can see above, the whole package isn't much larger than the hard drive itself and, better still, it's available in your choice of USB 2.0 or FireWire flavors, which'll run you the expectedly premium price of $269 and $279, respectively. If that's a bit more than you need, you can also grab an 80GB or 120GB drive, which also pack the same shock protection and retractable cable as their more capacious counterpart, plus Apricorn's own Data Protection Suite software.[Via iTech News Net, thanks Sze]
Toshiba announces 240GB 1.8-inch HDD
Funny that Toshiba is announcing a 240GB 1.8-inch drive just a day after Microsoft took the Zune to 120GB and the same day Apple dropped the iPod classic's 160GB SKU -- doesn't seem like very many people need this much storage. Still, that's a lot of bits in a tiny drive -- and we'd bet that shoving one of these things in either an iPod or Zune wouldn't be too hard, modders. Hint, hint.
Toshiba's DTR technology hints at 240GB iPod drives by 2009
With Apple launching their new iPod classic, pretty much everybody is now aware that 1.8-inch hard disks max out at 160GB. Thing is, that disk -- be it from Toshiba or Samsung -- is actualy spinning a pair of 80GB platters at its core. So what would you say to Toshiba's announced 120GB single-platter drive? Hoozah, seems appropriate. The new prototype applies Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology to boost the areal density of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) techniques by a full 50% -- that's 516Mb per square millimeter (333Gb per square inch). Tosh plans on mass producing the 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch (laptop) drives in 2009 which means that a 240GB "iPod HD" can't be too far away, eh Apple?
