Customer Reviews

Intel 40 GB X25-V Value SATA II MLC Solid-State Drive - Retail Box SSDSA2MP040G2R5

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As I mentioned in the comments to another review that did not rate this drive so highly:

I own this and the Intel 80gb G2 SSD, and, yes, the 40gb is slightly slower at loading up windows than the 80gb. Moving from a WD Caviar Black to the 40gb Intel dropped my Windows 7 boot times on my desktop from 34 to 18 seconds, and i think the 80gb boots W7 in under 15 seconds on my laptop, but once Windows 7 gets to the password screen, I can no longer tell a difference between the more expensive 80gb and this 40gb version. Everything loads instantly - there is no lag time on opening of programs any more. If cost is a factor, the only reason to choose this over the 80 or 160gb versions is if you're putting this in a laptop and need extra room. Otherwise, just use the 40gb as an OS drive and keep all your music, pictures, and video on your old hard drive.

This has easily the best performance/cost ratio on the market today. Just make sure you download the Intel SSD Toolbox and run the cleaner every once in a while, and your SSD will stay nice and fast.

Rejuvenate your aging notebook! Drop in an Intel X25V SSD to make it super fast. My 2008 mid-range notebook is now getting up to 180MBs on sequential reads and 41MBs on writes. That's a jump of 5x in read speed. The write speed has stayed the same. No more disk defragging for me, no more disk crashes, runs cooler and quieter. The only downside is living within the limits of 37GB. You can always buy a larger SSD too.

Windows 7 installed easily. Best practice with this drive is to do a clean Windows 7 install, not an upgrade, clone or restore. I read that Windows 7 will not install on drives smaller than 32GB so this one is ok. Windows 7 automatically recognized and optimized for SSD use. Windows 7 Ultimate 64 + Firefox + Open Office + Skype + Slysoft filled up only 20GB. That's leaving plenty of room for word processing, web surfing and even a DVD or two.

This drive features TRIM which when used in conjunction with Windows 7 keeps the drive performing to its full speed. I verified that TRIM is properly enabled on this drive.

Good idea to update firmware to the latest version. My drive was not shipped with the latest firmware. Updating firmware requires burning a CD and then booting from it. It automatically installs the firmware. Search Intel's site using keywords "X25V Firmware". The update is not destructive to the drive's contents.

I am using one of these drives as my boot drive, with the bulk of data being stored on a RAID-0 set of conventional drives. I have to say, in all my years of using PCs I cannot think of any one single component that has had as much of an impact as this little SSD. Random access speeds are simply phenomenal compared to mechanical drives. Applications installed on the SSD open almost instantly. With Word and Photoshop, I barely catch sight of the splash screen before the application is fully loaded on the screen, sitting there like an obedient dog waiting for you to throw the stick again :).

In quantitative terms, my Windows 7 Experience Index for this drive is a 7.7. I had previously run RAID-10 with four conventional drives, and my score in that configuration was 5.9. That's a significant jump and I am enjoying it all the more!

If you're looking for an inexpensive way to seriously boost your system's performance, this drive is a no brainer. Yes, there are bigger and faster SSDs available, but this drive establishes a whole new price point without sacrificing much.

One downside: after putting this drive in your system, you may not be able to tolerate using any other computer!

First off I must say that I HATE Intel....I am a AMD woman!.. and as much as it kills me to swallow my pride about Intel greedy arse, I must give credit when credit is due. I looked at alot of other drives before purchasing these, but reviews of other drives left alot to be desired so I sprung for two of these and I am so happy I did. I bought two of these and put them in RAID 0. Combined they perform BETTER than the more expensive 80GB single drive. When I first took these out of the box, I disable AHCI and flashed each of the Intel drives with the latest firmware. Then I set up RAID 0 and began to install Windows 7 Ultimate X64 which took around 8-10 minutes to install. Next, I went to the WEI and these drives give a solid 7.9! My overall WEI is now 7.3 due to my stock clocked AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition. I haven't ran any benchmarks yet, but I will later. Thus far, I am VERY pleased with these drives. I am putting all of my games on my 2X74GB Raptor setup and I am using a 500GB WD Green Drive for storage of porn, movies, game files, and etc.

I completly love my system more now than I did before. Waiting for things to load is a thing of the past. I am so upset that I waited so long to get one of these.....well two in my case. For all that are reading reviews wondering if they should get one or not.....DO IT! You will be completly happy with your purchase. Windows boots in 14 secs! Shuts down in 6 seconds! These drives laugh at applications. I installed Crysis on the drives and the load times are better.....Not that much better, but still better. Everything else I do is NOTICEABLY faster! I think I may even be holding these drives back due to the SATA II limits of 300MB sec. Can't wait until someone makes a SATA III controller card that supports RAID 0 so I can really see how these drives really perform.

I bought this drive about a month ago and I must say that it really sped up the boot time and application load time for my computer, an Intel Core i7 860 with 8 GB of RAM.

PRO:

In a word, SPEED! It increased the Windows 7 hard drive score from 5.9 to 7.2 (the maximum score is 7.9) and, even better, really sped up boot and application load times. This is a noticable upgrade unlike some other upgrades, i.e. I noticed no speedup when I increased the system RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB for the same cost as the SSD.

It runs silently and uses little power and is not susceptable to damage from vibration or dropping, which would make it a natural for a notebook application. Because it uses so little power is does not add much heat to the system, making the fans run slower and quieter.

NEUTRAL:

I have the same complaint that everyone else has, the cost per gigabyte. SSDs are still not cost effective, leading to small drives. I use this drive as a boot drive and put my most used applications on it, but there is not enough room for all my apps; all of my data is stored on other drives.

I had to download a firmware update to use the Intel toolkit with the TRIM utility. Fortunately, this update is non-invasive and does not wipe the data off of the drive unlike firmware updates from other manufacturers (Patriot). I guess that this drive had been in the warehouse for a while as the firmware update had been out a few months. Intel recomends that you run the TRIM utility once a week or the performance will degrade. This takes only seconds on my drive which is approximately 2/3 full.

Like all drive manufacturers, they rate a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes rather than the binary measurement of 2 to the 30th power or 1,073,741,824 bytes. This means that the drive formats out to 37.1 GB on my Windows 7 system using NTFS. This is not a knock against this drive specifically as this is an industry-standard practice, but be aware of this issue as 40 GB is already a tight fit for most folks.

CON:

This drive is not as fast as some other SSD drives because of its single channel architecture. Intel's larger drives (and other manufacturer's larger drives) are faster because they use a dual channel architecture. However, remember that it is a VALUE drive, and quite a bit less expensive than the larger drives.

CONCLUSION:

All-in-all this was a very good purchase that makes my system run faster, cooler, quieter, and use less power. I only gave it a four-star rating because of the comparison to the larger, faster, but more expensive SSDs. Highly Recommended!

I recently purchased my first Intel 40GB X25V SSD solid state drive in response to one of Amazon's special advertisements. The timing of the advertisement was perfect as I had just mailed one of my "primary" drives I use for my operating systems back to the manufacturer for warranty replacement. It seems that the high speed (10,000 RPM) drives of a well known manufacturer just won't hold up more than 2 to 2 and a half years, so after reading the Amazon advertisement and several customer reviews I immediately went on line and ordered one. (And what good is a 5-year warranty when the product breaks down in less time?) Even though it was a one-item order, to my amazement Amazon delivered the new drive to me by USPS mail in three days. Since I will follow my habit of using one drive only for the operating system and programs and other drives only for data storage, at 40GB it has more than ample space for even the largest operating system and programs.

The packaging of the retail version and excellent installation instructions made it possible for me to finish the simple task in no more than 5 to 10 minutes in my machine which is running an AMD Phenom IIX4 955 processor with 4GB of DDR2 memory. My introduction to the wonders of the drive speed came with installation of my PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE operating system -- an excellent Windows-like choice for anyone growing tired of fighting with the bad guys who make contact with the Internet dangerous as Linux is free of such tribulations. (Go to [...] which has created a great selection from which to choose and have them burn a copy for you as they maintain only an electronic inventory they custom burn for each customer) The Linux install process on the new Intel drive was considerably faster than ever before, even on a high speed 10K drive. The first boot of the Linux operating system, which took less than 10 minutes to install (including its many programs) was noticeably faster than it has ever been on any other drive and programs open and start almost instantly with a single click. Because of my curiosity, I recently timed the boot process beginning with pressing the computer start button to the ending of the "introduction music" at 1 minute and 12 seconds -- considerably faster than any mechanical drive I have ever used.

As the solid state drive is much smaller than the mechanical drive (being about the size of a half deck of playing cards), Amazon also offers a bracket that allows two of the SSD drives to be installed in "piggy back" fashion in one desktop computer drive bay and their reduced power consumption should eliminate any power problems or need to consider a larger power supply. Additionally, the increased speed of the drive will give an older machine "new life", especially with a Linux operating system that will further extend its functional life and increase the pleasure of its use. Needless to say, even after less than a month of use, I am a big fan of the SSD drive and would suggest that anyone who wants to replace a drive, choose one of these "harbingers of the future."

Regarding the lifetime of SSD drives, I believe the jury may still be out, but until they are proven to be troublesome, I would suggest that anyone buying one would be best served by purchasing one manufactured by a leading, proven manufacturer such as Intel. Since Intel has a proven record of producing long-lived processors, I believe their SSD drives will prove equally dependable and long-lived -- especially when used as the home for operating systems as the number of write processes are less than those of a data drive that will in all probability experience many more write and rewrite processes.

As always, the service I received from Amazon was excellent, fast and I was kept informed of the status of my order. I recommend your consideration of both Amazon and the Intel SSD drives as I believe you will be greatly pleased with both.

Will I buy another Intel SSD drive from Amazon? Absolutely, I will without hesitation at my next need to add or replace a drive. Granted, they are still more expensive than the traditional platter drive, but I believe their added cost is not prohibitive and is justified in light of their added speed and potential of a longer trouble-free life. First consideration for my next one would be in one of my external USB drives where their low heat generation and speed are my two prime considerations.

Allen W

Don't buy the adapter like i did bcause it included . Amazon don't mention this for whatever reason and i bought the stupid adapter and now i got to send it back.

I can honestly say that with this, ANY computer or laptop made in the past three years can be made FASTER than 90% of computers on the market today.

In all computers, the hard drive is the bottleneck. The CPU, memory, graphics card: All of these are heavily advertised as being the latest and greatest. Hard drives are marketed with size in mind, if at all.

What's missing? Hard drive speed.

I installed this 'Value' SSD in a two-year-old, regular black Macbook. It wasn't really slow by anyone's standards, but with the SSD, it became mind-numbingly quick. It boots in 18 seconds. Opening Photoshop? 3 seconds, max. Launching Chrome or Safari takes no time at all.

And for most people, I think, that's all that matters.

There is one caveat. Capacity. Right now, 40GB of this costs the same as a 750GB internal hard drive, or a 2TB external. I can't store as much of my music on my laptop as I'd like. However, I've got an external hard drive so I just keep everything at home on that and copy it as I need it.

Save yourself some money and get a cheap new laptop and put an SSD in it. It'll be faster than the one that cost thousands more.

My 1st solid state HHD. Using as my boot drive on a Dell desktop. Installed like any other drive. Boot time went from about 5 minutes to 45 seconds! Yea, really! And since this is a "value" drive, it's supposed to be slower than other Intel SSD. Small capacity, but I only install programs I use daily on it (Win 7, Norton, Office, etc). If prices ever drop on SSDs, yea I'll buy a larger capacity and put this drive in my netbook, but for now...WOW!

Used as a boot drive and for applications, the installed programs and media load instantly. For those obsessed with their Windows Experience Index, I switched from a WD 120gb 7200rpm hard drive to this and it raised my HDD score from a 5.2 to a 7.4. For anybody who can't wait the additional .5 - 8 seconds for an application to load, this thing provides instant gratification.