For MacBook owners, upgrading internal storage components is a far cry from convenience. While solutions like the TarDisk Pear have arisen in the past, Other World Computing has revealed a series of SSD upgrade kits that don’t take up your computer’s SD card slot.
Dubbed Aura SSD, the upgrade kits are available in both 480GB and 1TB flavors and are compatible with both the MacBook Pros as early as the late-2013 Retina model, as well as MacBook Air models from mid-2013 and later. Notably, the 1TB storage option would give a Retina MacBook Pro or Air up to eight times the capacity of the 128GB solid-state drive that typically ships with Apple’s base model laptops. Furthermore, 1TB is nearly double that of the largest storage option offered by Apple itself.
OWC boasts that its product is manufactured using “high-quality” components, according to MacRumors, that are “fully compatible” with the MacBook models listed earlier.
- Tier-1 Flash — Aura SSDs use only top-rated flash for amazing performance and dependability.
- Superior Error Correction — Three-level error correction with low-density parity checks provides significantly improved reliability, and RAID-like protection for your data.
- Cell-Level Data Refresh — Aura’s powerful embedded processor monitors and re-writes data blocks as needed to maintain correct charge at the cell level, improving the integrity of your data and extending the life of your drive.
- Global Wear-Leveling — A global wear-leveling algorithm helps evenly distribute data across your SSD cells, extending the life of your drive by preventing any section of flash from getting worn out prematurely.
With the purchase of one of OWC’s upgrade kits, you’ll get all the tools needed to replace your Mac’s hard drive in addition to an OWC Envoy Pro enclosure to turn your old SSD into an external drive.
Bundled with the enclosure, OWC’s 480GB Ara SSD Kit will set you back $399 while the 1TB offering will retail for $649. On the other hand, if you couldn’t care less about re-purposing your old drive, you can get the 480GB kit by itself for $348 or the 1TB variant on its own for $597. Both can be purchased from the OWC website; they’ll ship out later this month.
