Legit Storage Reviews
Kingston 30GB SSDNow V Series Boot Drive Review
| Manufacturer: | Kingston |
| Product: | Kingston 30GB SSDNow V Series Gen 2 Boot Drive |
| Date: | Mon, Mar 08, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Joe Evans - |
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Kingston 30GB SSDNow V Series SSD
Kingston has released another SSD boot drive and this time it is of the 30GB variety with a JMicron/Toshiba controller and being the lowest capacity drive in the SSDNow V Series lineup. SSD boot drives are an economical approach to getting into the SSD hardware realm without spending a ton of money. If you recall, when the first 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptor hard drives were released, they were 36GB in capacity and a lot of people bought them to run just their OS, with some buying two to RAID them for even greater performance. Not much has changed over the the past seven years and enthusiasts are still looking at small, but fast 'boot drives' to run their operating system on.
The Kingston V Series is their budget or “value” line of SSD’s. As such, performance isn’t going to be the best in the industry but you should expect an SSD to still outperform most hard drives, especially when it comes to read performance. The idea with the 30GB boot drive is to install your OS and apps but store music, pictures, etc. on other traditional spinning platter hard drives. Since this drive does now support the TRIM function, users on Windows 7 will find their drive performance maintained rather than deteriorating over time as happens with drives that do not support TRIM.
The Kingston 30GB SSDNow V Series 'boot drive' drive (part number SNV125-S2/30GB) can be purchased as a standalone or in a desktop bundle which includes a molex to SATA power cable adapter, SATA cable, rails to attach so it fits in 3.5” drive bays and a CD with instructions and Acronis HD cloning software. That’s the version we will be looking at today and obviously, since this is marketed as a boot drive, you wouldn’t expect to see a notebook bundle as there are with the larger capacity drives in this series. Kingston also hinted at a twin-pack bundle for those who may want to utilize a RAID 0 configuration to increase performance.
Kingston has also told us that these will be shipping today, and the desktop bundle will debut for a special promotional price of $79.99 after rebate (for a limited time only) from Amazon.com, Buy.com, Fry’s Electronics, Micro Center, Newegg.com and TigerDirect. That seems like a great price but let’s see how they perform before making that determination.
The rated features and specifications Kingston lists for the V Series 30GB boot drive are as follows:
- Part Number: SNV125-S2/30GB
- Sequential Speed*:
- Up to 180MB/sec. read
- 50MB/sec. write
- Performance: Enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
- Innovative: 2.5" form factor; uses NAND flash memory components.
- Silent: Runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
- Reliable: Less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
- Shock Resistant: No moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions.
- Supports S.M.A.R.T.: Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology
- Guaranteed: 3-year legendary Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
- Storage Temperatures: -40°C to 85°C
- Operating temperatures: 0°C to 70°C
- Vibration Operating: 20G Peak (10–2000Hz)
- Vibration Non-Operation: 20G Peak (20–2000Hz)
- Power Specs:
- Read: 1.4W (TYP), 2.5W (MAX)
- Write: 1.7W(TYP), 4.2W (MAX)
- Idle, Standby, Sleep: 55mw (TYP)
- Life expectancy: 500,000 hours MTFB
* Test Sytem: Intel DG9451D Desktop Motherboard; Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU; 4GB DDR2 800MHz system Memory, On-Board SATA 3Gbps with AHCI-Enabled in BIOS, Windows 7 Professional x64 or Windows XP Pro x86 SP3.
+ Some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions and this is not available for data storage. For more information, please consult Kingston's Flash Memory Guide at www.kingston.com/Flash_Memory_Guide.
Let's pop open the case on this guy and see if any surprises are in store.
Next Page - A Closer Look & Test System
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - Kingston 30GB SSDNow V Series SSD
Page 2 - A Closer Look & Test System Page 3 - ATTO v2.41 & AS SSD Benchmarks Page 4 - HD Tune Pro v4.01 Page 5 - HD Tach v3.0.4.0 & CrystalDiskMark v3.0 Page 6 - PCMark Vantage Page 7 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions |
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