Customer Reviews

Kingston SSDNow V Series 64 GB SATA 3 GB/s 2.5- Inch Solid State Drive SNV425-S2/64GB

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rare that a product has so many winning benefits. My 2008 mid-range notebook is now getting up to 200MBs on sequential reads and 60MBs on sequential writes. That's a jump of 5x in read speed over the original HDD. The write speed is somewhat faster. Notebook now boots 3x faster. No more disk defragging for me, no more disk crashes, runs cooler and quieter. The only downside is living within the limits of this drive's capacity. You can always buy a larger SSD too.

The usual recommendation for an SSD is to buy one which supports the TRIM feature and use it with Windows 7. TRIM keeps a drive running at optimum speed. Yes, this drive supports TRIM. Very good. However, PCPerspective published an authoritative review on this drive questioning the commonly held notion that TRIM is a sine qua non feature when buying SSDs. Apparently, the drive's controller, a JMicron JMF618, has the smarts to keep the drive running at optimum speed without TRIM. If this is correct, it means that this drive can be coupled with non-TRIM operating systems such as Windows XP, Vista and RAID systems. A very radical claim indeed.

I strongly feel that SSDs are so fast and so much more reliable than a notebook's HDD that you really must buy one ASAP. You won't be disappointed. This is a very compelling SSD to buy because it has both TRIM and a superior drive controller. You can't go wrong.

installed with AHCI mode enabled, fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (goodbye Vista 64 you whore!). Installed latest video drivers (nvidia) and all recommended Microsoft updates. Turned off disk caching. Must be more tweaks to do but that's it for now. Supposedly win7 aligns itself for an ssd automatically...

Despite the small drive space and the problems that poses, and the slow write speeds reported by benchmarks, this SSD is a noticeable speed boost.

Overall system responsiveness is much smoother, snappy, and eerily quiet. No waiting for a crunchy hard drive! Everything works faster than before, even external hard drives! Windows snap open. Thumbnails of pictures load immediately. No file access lag opening photos, videos, etc. Again, this applies to the external USB and Firewire drives too. Weird. I don't know why this is, but I'll take it. Maybe it's because of the fresh Win7-64 install?

The Internets is fast on tap now.... using Chrome browser Web pages open immediately. Everything, Youtube, etc. Fast. (Comcast Cable connection). Youtube videos load and play super smooth, like an appliance!

I was using Vista 64 before, and in IDE mode (Western Digital 1TB Black), so maybe some of the differences are that Windows 7/AHCI is much faster. ?

My only complaint is that since this is still relatively new technology and there's still some sketchy details as to how to get the most performance (and longevity) from the drive (use IDE or AHCI mode, OS version, OS tweaks, etc) you have to research it and make the best semi-informed decisions how to set up the drive. Google is your friend. The installation Manuel that comes with the drive is not your friend. The manufacturer dodges the issues by making no mention whatsoever.

After I got this up and running I read something online that Intel said that when used with ICH10R chipset (the motherboard Southbridge) their ssd's should be installed with the bios in RAID mode but the drives configured as non-raid. They call this "Raid Ready". I might reinstall with those settings....

system:

Intel Q9550@3.775ghz

8gb G.Skill ddr2-1066

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P

GTX480

EDIT:

I might go with an Intel X-25M 80gb instead. It's reported to be a much better ssd. Plus, it comes with the desktop AND laptop install kits, and 15gb more space... so the $[...] premium is kinda reasonable over this $[...] drive which has no mounting kits. Still, this is the best economy ssd on the market, a good taste of the perceived benefits these type of drives offer.

Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3 GB/s 2.5- Inch Solid State Drive SNV425-S2/128GB

This is my first Solid State Drive purchase and a replacement for the Hitachi 500GB Travelstar SATA 7200 RPM in my MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009) - Model A1342 Polycarbonate Unibody. I based my purchase mostly on the Kingston Brand name and The low price ( I don't think I've sacrificed anything on that part ) I am very happy with the results of the upgrade and incredibly fast application load times that I'm now experiencing. Photoshop CS5, Aperture 3, iTunes 9 and Word 2008 just for a few examples are loading in just three seconds. Safari 5 page loading times have also increased ( All running under Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 and 4GB DDR3 CL7 PC3-8500 1066MHz of memory ).

I would highly recommend to anyone who wants a serious increase in hard drive and application performance to buy the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3 GB/s 2.5- Inch Solid State Drive SNV425-S2/128GB.

SPEEEEEED LOADER. :)

I own 3 kingston ssds this version is by far one of their fastest and reliable ssds. With speeds up to 240 reads 120writes its fast and the price is unbeatable by any other ssd manufacturer. Why pay more when you can't feel the difference in speed. Best price for the money

lot of highly detailed, elaborate reviews here, so I'm keeping this one short.

-- runs VERY fast, no delays in Win-7.

-- bought two of these Kingston drives so far, would definitely buy more in the future.

-- read in quite a few places ---> avoid running defragmentation on an SSD <---

I installed Windows XP and then Upgraded to Windows 7 Pro in only 29 minutes using my home built system which is an Intel Atom 330 @ 1.6Ghz w/ 2GB of ram! I could not be happier with the speed of this drive! The hardware install was a breeze in my little homebuilt PC. If you are looking to put this into a tower and not a laptop may I suggest buying a hard drive caddy as well. I purchased the SILVERSTONE SDP08 3.5 to 2 X 2.5-Inch Bay Converter which is also located here on Amazon for $7.99. No complaints, it just works and it's fast, oh and let my not forget it's quiet, the only noise I now here in my computer room is the stupid celling fan which needs some grease and my keyboard and mouse clicks. From what I have seen on install speed alone I wouldn't go back to an old clunky drive with moving parts for my Operating System, SSD is the way to go!! You will be 100% satisfied!! Unless of course you maybe using this for gaming?!? Since I don't have any PC games I can not vouch for the user that gave this drive a 1 star as I come from the era of Consoles. Also on a side note Windows 7 ratings gave my disk transfer a 6.8 rating out of a 7.9, WOW! Anyways I will also be purchasing another one of these fine Kingston Drives for my Wifes laptop. Good luck and happy buying.

I have been waiting out the ssd price for about a year now.

My iMac internal drive drop a platter and it was time to replace.

I was going to go for an intel 40GB for about $100, but couldn't get over how small 40GB is. I then came across this kingston for about the same price but at 64GB.

I ordered Kingstons 3.5 to 2.5 adaptor and this baby fit perfect to my new imac. I'm getting sustained Read speeds of 229.2MB/s and Write speeds of 100MB/s.

I love how flipping fast this. Everything is faster. Photoshop launches in 3 sec, final cut in 4 sec.

If you use this as your boot disk you will not be sorry.

I bought this 64GB V-Series initially for a netbook. It worked great in there, making the netbook feel faster than a core duo laptop. But I felt it wasted in the netbook, as I never really use that "toy" anymore.

So I pulled it from the netbook, cloned it to an old mechanical HD to put back into the netbook, erased the Kingston (zeroing the drive so to reset the read/write data), and then installed Mac OS X 10.6 on it fresh. I'm using it externally via FW800 to boot my iMac (don't try to use the kingston USB enclosure, it's not designed to house the SSD or for everyday use). I'm using the internal 500GB traditional HD for my home folder (as well as lesser used applications).

The speed up of my already fast iMac 3.06GHz is palpable, despite the Kingston being in an external enclosure rather than running internally over the SATA interface. Boot time is well under 30 seconds to completion, even shorter to "usable desktop", shut down takes under 5 seconds. Apps launch immediately, and this is with a hybrid SSD/Mechanic setup with the SSD external rather than internal. I'd recommend this solution for anyone, as a boot drive in any type of system. It will breath new life into your computer no matter how it's connected, and the hybrid setup saves mucho dollars, as you don't need to spend $500+ on a large SSD to hold your seldom used data.

This solid state drive was pretty dang fantastic. The price was lowish and the size (64gb) was high. I run this ssd in the sata setting ahci, which is the only way you can hit the advertised speeds or better. The mb/s read is very very good, but the write is horrible. the write speed is usually around 60 mb/s. the read speed has good and bad days. on a bad day which is still a good day, i get around 200 mb/s. on a good day with no association to any sort of bad day, i will get over 300 mb/s.

My rig has

intel i7 920, set at 3.0 ghz

6 gb ddr3 1333 mhz

9800gtx+

amd im booting off of the the ssd with all my programs installed onto a 1.5 tb seagate

My boot up time including the bios stuff is 15 seconds

my shut down time is 3 seconds

that is much faster than before.

I also have crysis installed onto my ssd. without the ssd crysis runs at about 20fps with everything on high. when on the ssd it goes up to 27-30 fps. very exciting

anywhosle, if youre only gonna install a couple things onto this hard drive, i highly recommend it. if you are gonna be installing stuff all the time you should probably get something with a faster write speed cuz it can get painful waiting for things to finish

I replaced a 30 GB standard HD in my wife's laptop with this SSD. All went well, speed is great. The laptop is a Dell Inspiron E1705. There was no problem with the SSD being recognized. I simply copied the files from the old drive to the new one using an external SATA drive adapter and the Linux systemrescue CD. Copied the boot sector via dd command and stuck it in the laptop. Booted up into XP without complaint.