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In a recent update to its upgrade kit offerings, Mac-centric upgrade vendor Other World Computing has issued a drive installation kit for Apple's latest Mac Mini, which allows you to install a second hard drive in a system that shipped with only one.

The Mac Mini, being a cheap and low-power system, is fairly popular because of its low profile design that allows it to fit nicely in small areas such as bookshelves. It can serve not only as a desktop system, but also as a server, and even a media center. As a result of this, Apple offers … Read more

SSD technology as a replacement for conventional hard drives has been one of the biggest advancements in modern computing, allowing for massive speed improvements along with far less power usage.

Solid-state technology has been around for years in the form of flash drives and MP3 players, but only in the past 3 to 4 years has the technology taken off, allowing for larger storage devices to be developed.

While most people envision an SSD drive to be in the form factor of a 2.5-inch notebook drive, the technology is also available in a PCI-express card format that allows for … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions about OWC's SSD firmware updaters for Mac systems, the chances of Apple offering Snow Leopard for virtualization, and details on 16GB RAM support in MacBook Pro systems. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

NOTE: The "contact us" box for e-mailing us will hopefully be back soon, but until then please use the … Read more

OWC announced today the Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G solid-state drive (SSD), which it claims to be the first on the market that fits inside the new MacBook Air (version 2011) and offers the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard.

Just in case you don't know, the new MacBook Air is known to support the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps), which offers a top data rate of around 500MBps. However, the laptop's stock SSD supports only the slower SATA 2 (3Gbps) standard. This means, despite how quickly the machine currently boots and performs, the drive could be the bottleneck that … Read more

Mac upgrade vendor Other World Computing is the manufacturer of the popular Mercury line of SSD upgrades that many Mac users have installed on their systems. Early revisions of the drives have had firmware issues that resulted in problems with some machines being put into sleep mode. In late January, OWC tweaked the firmware to address this problem; however, until now the firmware updaters have been Windows-based applications.

As a result, if you have an early revision of these SSD drives and have been experiencing sleep problems, without Boot Camp or without removing the drive from your system and installing … Read more

There is no doubt that when compared to a mechanical hard drive, the new solid state drive (SSD) technology is by far superior in terms of speed. Data access and throughput can be well above 4x faster than a contemporary mechanical drive, and using it as your main boot drive widens a major bottleneck, resulting in exceptionally quick boot-ups, application launches, sleep and wake events, and shutdowns. Beyond speed, the drives also have a number of additional perks, including cooler operation than most mechanical drives, power efficiency resulting in longer battery life for laptops, silent operation, and higher tolerance for … Read more

When it comes to 2.5-inch SATA solid-state drives (SSDs), prices are so high that so far it only makes sense to buy those with lower capacities, 256GB or less. However, with OWC's new series of Mercury Extreme Pro 6G drives, it seems you only get a good deal when you buy the top capacity.

The drive's 480GB version gives you the most storage for your money, at just $1,280. If you think that's still high (and you're right!), look at the prices of some competing products; the 480GB OCZ Vertex 3, for example, costs … Read more

Having a second monitor doesn't just make your office space look more serious, it also helps you boost your productivity. Unfortunately, most computers don't come with a video card that can handle more than one display at a time. This is when you need to resort to one of the USB ports for the second display.

Other World Computing announced on Tuesday its USB 2.0 display adapter that helps you easily add additional monitors to your computer. The adapter is basically a bus-powered USB external video card. All you need to do is plug it into an … Read more

If you do a lot of work that involves transferring data from one hard drive to another, you'll probably love the NewerTech Voyager hard drive dock.

This the first quad-interface hard drive docking station that supports FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0, and eSATA. The device can turn any 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA hard drive, up to 2.0TB, into a fully bootable and hot-swappable external drive solution.

NewerTech Voyager is compatible with both Macs and PC and features plug-and-plug installation with no software or driver needed. All you need to do is plug in a new hard drive, and format it if need be. You can of course--and I believe this is the main use of the device--put in an old hard drive to access data from it.… Read more