OWC

Name: 480GB OWC Aura Pro 3G Solid-State Drive for 2010-2011 MacBook Air
SKU: OWCSSDAPAE480
Price: 634.99 USD
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 4.73 (74 reviews)

480GB Aura Pro 3G
Solid State Drive

for MacBook Air 2010-2011 Edition

OWC's Aura Pro SSD provides up to nearly 8x the capacity over the maximum available factory SSDs while offering up to 68% Faster Performance vs. Factory Options.

More SPEED up to 275MB/s...68% faster than factory.*
More STORAGE up to nearly 8x more capacity!**
More OPTIONS choose from 180GB, 240GB, 360GB or 480GB models.

The Aura Pro 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.

Once again, OWC provides Mac users an upgrade path that delivers higher performance, functionality, and reliability! Whether you own or are considering a 2010 or 2011 base model 11″ MacBook Air with a 64GB Solid State Drive or the top of the line 13″ model with a 256GB SSD, OWC's Aura Pro SSD offers 68% higher speed than the factory SSD.... up to 275MB/s and up to 6X more storage capacity than factory options.

Highlights

One of the fastest internal SSD
available...and built in the USA!
Ultra-efficient Block Management
& Wear Leveling
OWC Free Install Videos make
it easy to upgrade!
3 year OWC warranty

OWC's A Closer Look

Take a closer look at
OWC's SSD Family.

And unlike the factory pre-configured models with no other SSD choices offered. Now thanks to OWC and the Aura Pro SSD line, you can buy the MacBook Air you want today and enjoy the flexibility of upgrading for higher performance when you need it.

Better by Design

"Mean Time To Failure" - We all know that nothing lasts forever. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't get the most out of your investment. OWC SSD with DuraWrite™ Technology, optimizes writes to the flash memory over conventional controllers increasing the overall endurance and reliability of the complete SSD. Highly intelligent block management and wear leveling also extends the overall endurance. With this technology, even MLC-based SSDs can operate for years in demanding use applications without daily write restrictions. This adds up to a MTTF that is higher than most enterprise class hard drives and SSDs on the market today.

Additionally, as there are no volatile memory elements in this storage device, the need for cache is completely negated. The drive is just that fast from the get-go!

High Performance Internal Storage

Replace your conventional hard drive with a reliable solid state drive. Unlike traditional hard disk drives, OWC solid-state drives have no moving parts, resulting in a quiet, cool, highly rugged storage solution that also offers faster system responsiveness.

*OWC SSD 275MB/s vs 2010 factory SSD speed of 215MB/s
**OWC SSD Maximum total flash capacity 512GB before 7% overprovisioning with 480GB actual usable capacity compared to Apple 128GB Flash maximum option for 11.1" model that provides a formatted capacity of 121GB (121 x 4 = 484).

The Aura™ Pro is compatible with... Learn how to find your Mac's model ID

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2011)

(July, 2011)

Model ID: MacBookAir4,2

1.7GHz, 1.8GHz

Detailed specs

Install Videos

MacBook Air (13-inch Late 2010)

(October, 2010)

Model ID: MacBookAir3,2

1.86GHz, 2.13GHz

Detailed specs

Install Videos

MacBook Air (11-inch Mid 2011)

(July, 2011)

Model ID: MacBookAir4,1

1.6GHz, 1.8GHz

Detailed specs

Install Videos

MacBook Air (11-inch Late 2010)

(October, 2010)

Model ID: MacBookAir3,1

1.4GHz, 1.6GHz

Detailed specs

Install Videos

NOT COMPATIBLE
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012)

(June, 2012)

Model ID: MacBookAir5,2

1.8GHz, 2.0GHz

Detailed specs

Install Videos

NOT COMPATIBLE
MacBook Air (11-inch Mid 2012)

(June, 2012)

Model ID: MacBookAir5,1

1.7GHz, 2.0GHz

Detailed specs

Install Videos

Includes

Aura Pro SSD

Gallery

480GB Aura™ Pro Specifications:

Specifications

Capacity¹

480GB useable capacity
Total Flash Memory Components - 512GB
32GB allocated to real-time data redundancy & error correction

Formatted Capacity²

447GiB

NAND

Tier 1 Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory

Controller

SandForce Processor with full SF1200 Series 7% Over Provisioning firmware set.
For the latest firmware update click here.

SMART Attributes

Standard

RAID Support

Yes

Manufacturer Model Number

OWCSSDAPAE480

RoHS Compliant

Yes

Format

Unformatted (Instructions on formatting here)

Reliability³

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)⁴

2,000,000

Data Reliability

ECC Recovery: Up to 24 bytes correctable per 512-byte sector

Security

Chip Based Data Encryption: 128-bit AES-compliant

TRIM Support

Yes

Nonrecoverable Read Errors

Less than 1 sector per 10¹⁶ bits read

Warranty

5 Year OWC SSD Limited Warranty
(Standard return policy applies.)

Performance

Sequential Read (up to)

285MB/s

Sequential Write (up to)

275MB/s

Random 4K Read⁵

Up to 30,000 IOPS

Random 4K Write⁵

Up to 30,000 IOPS

Read Latency

less than 0.1ms

Write Latency

less than 0.1ms

Power

Read Power

2.2 Watts

Write Power

2.5 Watts

Idle Power

0.09 Watts

Power Nap compatible

Environmental (Operating)

Temperature (°F)

32°F to 158°F

Temperature (°C)

0°C to 70°C

Environmental (Non-Operating)

Temperature (°F)

-67°F to 302°F

Temperature (°C)

-55°C to 150°C

Acoustics

Idle (Typical)

0.0 bels

Seek (Typical)

0.0 bels

Installation

How to Install the Aura Pro in MacBook Air 2011

1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending upon operating environment (typically 5-10% less). The actual total capacity will depend on your own defined file settings/preferences.
In terms of standard gigabytes, 1GiB ≈ 1.074GB and refers to the actual formatted capacity of shown under Mac OS 10.5 or earlier and Microsoft Windows OS.
Specific application environments such as temperature and duty cycle will affect the overall reliability rates.
Based on SandForce processor operation.
Specifications provided by SandForce.

Manufacturer provided specifications for Other World Computing p/n OWCSSDAPAE480 UPC#: 736211768650

Reviews

Best of Show 2011 - Macworld

Award Winner 2011 Mac Hardware - MacLife

Best of Macworld 2011 - Notebooks.com

Stevies Award Finalist 2011 - The American Business Awards

"The best upgrade that you can get for the MacBook Air." - Jason O'Grady, ZDNet

"Does more than promised...a viable option compared to the stock SSD in the...MacBook Air." - Brian Beeler, Storage Review.com

"Delivers on its speed promise... consistently faster performance" - Chris Foresman, Ars Technica - 240GB

"...the Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD has been a lifesaver... I found myself in awe of the experience..." - Will Moore, Cult of Mac - 240GB

"...a great upgrade, offering a nice little speed bump..." - Kevin Purcell, Notebooks.com - 480GB

"...significantly faster than both the Samsung and Toshiba... Big Winner: Aura" - Rob-Art Morgan, BareFeats - 240GB

"...the OWC Mercury Aura Express 6G is a must buy ... scorching performance ... it's easy to give this product a massive two-thumbs up." - Brian Beeler, StorageReview.com - Aura Pro Express 6G 240GB

"Performance is just staggering... a well executed SSD upgrade for 2011 MacBook Air owners." - Anand Shimpi, AnandTech - Aura Pro Express 6G 240GB

"The 480GB OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G simply thrashes both stock SSDs Apple offers with the MacBook Air." - Kevin O'Brien, Storage Review.com - Aura Pro Express 6G 480GB

"...the biggest and fastest SSD that you can put in the 2011 MacBook Air." - Jason O'Grady, ZDNet - Aura Pro Express 6G 480GB

"...snappier than my stock SSD... nearly doubles its storage capacity." - Chris Vandergaag, Canoe Tech - Aura Pro Express 6G 240GB

"...the Envoy is absolutely essential...exactly what I was looking for in an SSD enclosure..." - Jason O'Grady, ZDNet - Mercury Aura Envoy

"...MacBook Air is fast, adding the Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD is like turbo charging it." - Tomas Ratas, Test Freaks - Aura Pro Express 240 GB & Envoy

"More storage capacity and faster performance in a single package is a no-brainer... an amazing upgrade..." - Mike Wuerthele, MacNN - Aura Pro Express 240GB & Envoy

"If you need more storage space for your MacBook Air, OWC's Aura Pro 6G and Envoy bundle is a good way to go." - Andrew Ku, Tom’s Hardware

"... a simple, painless process ... well worth the much smaller investment to fix the MacBook Air I have rather than spending the money for a new laptop ... Now I have a "new"
MacBook Air ..." - Tony Bradley, Forbes — Aura Pro 6G for MBA 2011

"How would you like to have Two Terabytes (2TB) of flash storage inside your Mac Pro? Meet the Aura SSD." — Rob-ART-morgan, Bare Feats

"The hardware install part of the upgrade took me less than 5 minutes ... they have really thought of everything ... wow is all (I) can say ... 5 out of 5 stars on the TechTable." — Dave Helmly, DAV's Tech Table

"The safest option ... is to buy the appropriate drive from macsales.com, since they're specifically compatible." — Christoher Phin, Lifehacker UK

"It is quite evident that the Envoy Pro enclosure ... enjoys a minimalist design, good solidity and strength and also ensures excellent performance." — Liborio Fedele

"... I wanted to upgrade the hard drive and this is another area where OWC is second to none. The whole Aura SSD installation took me exactly 6 minutes." — Gregg Ellman, Idaho Statesman

"MacBook Pro and MacBook Air owners with qualifying machines can come out of the storage dark ages with OWC's new Aura PCIe flash storage upgrade." — Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac

BENCHMARKS

Write stress test consists of playing one 720P HD movie in Media Player Classic, one 480P SD movie playing in VLC, three movies downloading simultaneously through iTunes, and one 1080i HDTV stream being recorded through Windows Media Center over a 15 minute period. Higher IOps and MB/s rates with lower latency times are desired.Block Management & Wear Leveling offers highest endurance, performance and power efficiency in a SSD.

Read stress test consists of loading each of the following games: Steam, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mass Effect 2, as well as textures as the game progresses.

One of the leading benchmarking applications for comparing side by side drive performance.

Benchmark results provided by: StorageReview.com

Customer Ratings

Write a Review 4.7 / 5 71 out of 74 (96%) reviewers would recommend this product

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Anonymous Location: Volos. Greece (Europe) Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Home User Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 4/5 Some problems with my MBA-OWC gave the right solution July 21, 2014 I bought it as a replacement for my MacBook Air (2011). At first sight my MBA didn't recognised the disk. After sending an email to OWC, they sent me a new one in...REM mode! Great A+++ seller in my opinion, and it's not so easy (I'm living in Europe).

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 240GB OWC Aura Pro 3G Solid-State Drive for 2010-2011 MacBook Air.

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Anonymous

Rating: 5/5 Easy to install, huge improvement. March 13, 2013 The ssd was very easy to install, took only about 5 minutes. Once in, transfering mac os was very easy to do also. The extra storage space from the original 60gb ssd, is definately worth it. The envoy housing for the original drive is an ingenious solution and even when connected through usb 2.0, it is fast enough to boot and run mac os.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 240GB OWC Aura Pro 3G SSD + Envoy Kit for MacBook Air 2010-2011: Complete Solution with Enclosure.

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: DJPace Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 The way to go to upgrade a MBA 2010/2011 SSD March 18, 2012 -Product performance is great and works as advertised. -Very easy to open the Macbook Air and install it with the provided screwdrivers. -Quick shipping to Canada.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 180GB OWC Aura Pro 3G Solid-State Drive for 2010-2011 MacBook Air..

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Chewie Location: London, UK Age: 35-44 Experience Level: IT Professional Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 Recommended upgrade to factory SSD February 1, 2012 Apple MacBook Air 1.4GHz (11.6-inch Core 2 Duo) - Late 2010

My factory installed 60GB SSD was maxed out with essential apps and data. Fortunately an Engadget RSS feed about OWC at MacWorld pointed me towards the Mercury Auro Pro range that they were advertising at the event. All credit to OWC for actually having the product available now, rather than teasing us with future products at MacWorld! From the sizes available - 180GB, 240GB and 480GB, I chose the 240GB as the best compromise on size/price. I ordered it Sunday and it arrived in the UK on Tuesday morning via FedEx.

I cloned my factory SSD with Carbon Copy Cloner to an external USB drive before starting the upgrade. I watched the installation video on the OWC site first, which showed how simple the upgrade would be. OWC had provided both types of screwdriver needed to open the MacBook Air case and to remove the single screw holding the SSD board in place - both tools were good quality and saved me having to buy new bits for my screwdriver. Replacing the old SSD with the new OWC unit was a breeze.

With the case back on, I booted from my cloned copy on the USB drive, ran Disk Utility to initialise the OWC SSD, ran Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the USB drive clone back to the OWC SSD, shutdown the laptop and removed the USB. When I powered up the laptop again - voila! MacBook Air running Lion on OWC 240GB SSD! Happy camper!

The OWC SSD performs with the speed that I've now come to expect from SSDs. Unfortunately, I forgot to run a "before" speed test with the factory SSD, but I'm seeing consistent 94MB/s write, 212Mb/s read from the Disk Speed Test app from the AppStore using the 5GB test. I'm very happy with the performance.

On the same order, I also bought an OWC Elite Mini USB 3/eS6G external caddy so that I could still make use of the factory SSD. That works a treat and was really simple to install too. I recommend buying one of these if you are upgrading an old SSD like I did.

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 240GB OWC Aura Pro 3G Solid-State Drive for 2010-2011 MacBook Air.

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: ChrisC Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Age: 55-65 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 Exceptional drive, easy install December 30, 2011 I bought one of these a while ago for my late 2010 MacBook Air. I have had absolutely no complaints with it. The performance and quality are rock solid, and the installation (with the help of the video available on the OWC website) went off without a hitch. (The hardest part was keeping track of all the little screws, but the actual installation was no harder than plugging in a toaster.) Like the other person who rated the drive, my only complaint would be the cost. This drive cost about 3/4 of what the whole laptop cost me- definitely too much. But if you want more than 256 gb of drive space, this is the only option I'm aware of. Looking past the price, I've got nothing but good things to say about this product. I've never had an issue with it in the 8 months I've had it installed. If you can afford the price, you won't regret the upgrade!

I would recommend this item to a friend!

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: bardi Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Hobbiest Owned Product: 1-3 months

Rating: 5/5 excellent upgrade! easy to fit.... October 24, 2011 XBench result for a MacBook Air 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 180GB OWC SSD...

Results 253.31 System Info Xbench Version 1.3 System Version 10.7.1 (11B26) Physical RAM 4096 MB Model MacBookAir3,1 Drive Type OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD Disk Test 253.31 Sequential 151.57 Uncached Write 280.72 172.36 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 265.95 150.47 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 64.49 18.87 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 280.83 141.14 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 770.48 Uncached Write 858.34 90.86 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 457.26 146.39 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 2016.21 14.29 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 744.28 138.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 180GB OWC Aura Pro 3G Solid-State Drive for 2010-2011 MacBook Air..

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: Bittles Location: SLC, UT Age: 25-34 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 4/5 For those with deep pockets and a longing for more MBA storage. October 21, 2011 A few months ago I missed out on the 360GB version of this SSD for $700. At the time, I thought that the price was not justified for the amount of storage that the hard drive offered. Day after day I kept getting frustrated with the fact that I needed an external hard drive for all my computational needs. I finally decided to buy myself an early Christmas present and bought the 480GB OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express Solid State Drive. Holy cow! I cannot believe this stick of silicon holds 480GB of information! The speed tests on the site are irrelevant to me as I hadn't tested the stock hard drive before swapping out the drive and have no inclination to swap out the drives just to test speeds. Suffice it to say that the speed is fast. My computer shuts down in 1-2 seconds and starts up in about 10-14 seconds flat while resuming opened application windows. The capacity is great but the price is HORRIBLE...however, I have absolutely NO buyer's remorse. Despite the insane price I love this drive. The only drawback I've experienced so far is with the release of 10.7.2 and the "Find My Mac" feature of iCloud, I get the following text, "Some configurations, such as a software or hardware RAID do not support a recovery partition and can't be used with Find My Mac." Not a deal killer but too bad it doesn't work.

*4 stars because of high price and no Find My Mac support

I would recommend this item to a friend!

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: amders Location: indonesia Age: 25-34 Experience Level: Noob Owned Product: over 6 months

Rating: 5/5 good product August 29, 2011 I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 240GB OWC Aura Pro 3G Solid-State Drive for 2010-2011 MacBook Air.

Verified Buyer

Reviewer: TG2500 Location: New York Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month

Rating: 5/5 WOW - Just what I needed April 15, 2011 My new MacBook Air 13" is my first MAC - coming from a SONY VAIO Z with 512GB SSD, one of my biggest concerns about the MAC was limited storage and, before long, I was bumping up again the 255GB SSD limit.

I was thrilled to learn about the Aura Pro and will say it was well worth the wait. Install was as easy as seen in the video (though I did have to use my fingernail to scrape down the side of the circuit board to remove some of the shavings from manufacturing that were still attached to the side and preventing the board from fitting into the pocket on the AIR but, once I figured out what needed to be done, it fit easily and great!). I made one call to tech support to ask about the fit and was helped quickly and courteously.

I used CarbonCopy (free) and a USB hard drive to clone my mac to the drive then clone it back after install.

As a specialty product, it isn't cheap and it took a month plus to arrive after ordering though it works (granted I've only had it installed a few days) exactly as promised and I like my MACBOOK Air even more now that I have the extra storage!

I would recommend this item to a friend! This review is from 360GB OWC Aura Pro Express Solid-State Drive for 2011 MacBook Air.

OWC 480GB Aura™ Pro
Solid State Drive Mfr P/N: OWCSSDAPAE480 OWC SKU: OWCSSDAPAE480 for MacBook Air 2010-2011 Edition 3 Year OWC Limited Warranty

Reviews (74)

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Tools Required:

MacBook Air 2010-2012 SSD Installation Kit Use to install your OWC Aura Pro drive into your 2010 or 2011 Macbook Air. only $11.99

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