OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G SSD Review – MBA Owners Get an Upgrade Storage Choice

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)

You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading!  Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing.

The newer version automatically tests with 100% incompressible data as one might see in movies, photographs and music, whereas, the original release tested in compressible data as we see in ATTO Disk Benchmark.

OWC AURA

SAMSUNG PM830

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Considering that highly incompressible data is the food of choice for the Samsung PM830, we were surprised at the results of these tests, conducted with 100% incompressible data.  Although the Samsung did prevail in the high sequential transfer speed once again, the Aura Pro walked away with everything else to include disk access speeds, IOPS results and the Total Point Score by a significant margin.

Something that surprised us even more was the results while testing in compressible data with the Aura Pro as seen below.  The high of 91,273 IOPS at 4k-QD16 write is the single highest score achieved by typical SSD to date.

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We haven’t included the result for the Samsung PM830 for highly compressible data as there was no appreciable difference for the PM830 regardless of the data sample used.

11 comments

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    “there have been times when I just wanted to introduce them to my 20 oz. straight claw rip hammer” — 20-oz. claw hammer = adjustment tool / 5-lb. sledge hammer = FINE adjustment tool

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    Those pentalobe screws turned me off big time. Les, I truly hope you have not gone over to the dark side 🙂 I am back with Lenovo with their keyboard that is 3 times better than a flat key keyboard. Looking hard at the upcoming Carbon X1.

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      Yes th X1 is very attractive. I have to admit that I do find myself using both the MBA and iPAD quite a bit, however, even though the mainstay of my work is on our main benches. Tempted to grab a Thunderbolt Display though….patience…

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    I use the iPhone and much less often the ipad. But I really do not consider them macs. I love them both. But the flat keys on the mac laptops compared to the beautiful new keyboard on the Lenovo’s is no contest for me. The coming soon Lenovo 430u is also very interesting. I will be selling my current X1 to get one of the new Lenovo’s. And then, of course, slap a nice 240gb SSD in it.

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    My new Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A-DB51 has 128GB mSATA but I need larger one. Will this OWC fit? The UX31 SSD is also a “blade” type with one screw at the end eg. AnandTech 6/3/2012 teardown of the UX21A (looks like twin of the 31A). Really have a need for the larger mSATA.

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      The OWC drive is made specifically for Macs. It will not work.

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        Are you certain? Have you tried this? I have been looking at the pinouts for this drive and it looks exactly the same (18-PINS). “Other” MB AIR drive, like the Toshiba, Samsung, etc. have (20-PINS) the outter (2-PINS) look as is they would prohibit the drive in being used in another NON-MB AIR system, but the OWC Aura PRO doesn’t have these (2) extra PINS (they act like blockers).

        Has anyone else tried installing this OWC Aura PRO SSD in an ASUS Zenbook MOBO? Please advise. Can’t find the SanDISK U100 or the ADATA XM11. Need help!

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        The ONLY thing we can suggest is to follow the manufacturers compatibility listing.

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    Hi How reliable are these ssd’s? amazon customer reviews were not good … poor quality after repeated replacements…not sure i want to take the risk.

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    Hello Mr. What is your experience with durability of OWC SSD? I recently purchased one, but I was reading some other reviews about it and they said it does not last long, what can you tell me about it?
    Nice review by the way!

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