Upgrading from a normal hard drive to a solid state drive can be quite expensive and for most people it really does not make that much sense. Solid state capacities are getting larger, but that just brings the price of the drives up even higher. Kingston wants to help people out who want to take advantage of the blazing speeds of solid state drives, but don’t want to break the bank. They have just released the SSDNow V-Series 30GB solid state boot drive. This drive will retail at around $100 and will allow you to load your operating system and applications on it for fast load times, and then you can just put all of your media on a normal SATA drive. This is a great upgrade option for people looking to get a solid state drive, but might not have that much extra money for one.
Features and Specifications
Sequential Speed: up to 180MB/s read, 50MB/s write
Performance: enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
Innovative: 2.5” for factor; uses NAND flash memory components
Silent: runs silent and cool with no moving parts
Reliable: less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
Shock Resistant: no moving parts; handles rougher conditions than a hard drive
Supports S.M.A.R.T.: Self-monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
Guaranteed: three-year Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
Capacity: 30GB
Storage temperatures: -40C to 85C
Operating temperatures: 0C to 70C
Vibration operating: 20G peak, 10-2000Hz, (20min/Axis)x3 Axis
Vibration non-operating: 20G peak, 10-2000Hz, (12Cycle/Axis)x3 Axis, x 20min.
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 MTBF
Packaging
The 30GB V-Series boot drive comes in Kingston’s retail packaging. The front of the package tells us that it’s a 30GB drive and that we received the desktop upgrade kit. On the back there is a list of features and package contents.
Opening the package up everything is nicely protected in a plastic clamshell. Opening that up we have the 30GB drive, 3.5-inch brackets, SATA power and data cable, mounting screws, and the CD that contains the installation guide and cloning software.
Yes, Kingston, yes. This is a gateway drug.
I got my hands on a 128 GB Kingston SSD and am booting Ubuntu Linux on it in 12 seconds. While my Windows 7 installation is on a SATA HDD because I don't particularly care about boot time for it, my games are stored on the other partition of the SSD–I want game load times to be nothing. UT3 loads in less than 30 seconds. Mirror's Edge levels load in ~10 seconds.
How about 2 * 30GB for RAID 0? You should be able to boost up speed further more~ and that won't cost you much. Maybe US$180 only.
How about 2 * 30GB for RAID 0? You should be able to boost up speed further more~ and that won't cost you much. Maybe US$180 only.