36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
Easiest way to upgrade your laptop to an SSD that I've ever seen.
I consider myself a technology enthusiast who has replaced multiple hard drives in multiple notebooks and desktops over the years. I usually just install a clean copy of Windows whenever I install a new hard drive, but I've also used various types of software to clone hard drives so that I don't have to re-install Windows.
BRICKnow
Yo I love SSDs and had an Apple BTO SSD in my 13" MacBook Pro at work. SSDs are awesome!
So for my personal laptop, I grabbed at this budget SSD and installed it. It performed like a dream for 12 hours before first failing at the filesystem level, then the partition level, then the device level.
This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
I consider myself a technology enthusiast who has replaced multiple hard drives in multiple notebooks and desktops over the years. I usually just install a clean copy of Windows whenever I install a new hard drive, but I've also used various types of software to clone hard drives so that I don't have to re-install Windows.
I can honestly say that this is the easiest upgrade kit and easiest cloning software I've ever used. Just remove your old hard drive from your notebook, install the new SSD, install the old hard drive into the provided external enclosure and connect it to a USB port on your notebook, then insert the install CD into the drive and follow the on-screen instructions.
Best of all, the solid state drive (SSD) provides trouble-free shock protection for all your data (no more crashing hard drives) and it will make your laptop feel faster as well. Just be sure that you're using this kit with a laptop/notebook that has a SATA hard drive and not an older IDE hard drive interface.
Pros:
-- Includes an external USB enclosure so you can use your old hard drive after you've replaced it with an SSD.
-- Includes the easiest cloning software I've ever seen.
-- Provides a nice boost to laptop performance at a fair price.
Cons:
-- No printed copy on the installation instructions. You have to print out the instructions from the PDF document included on the CD.
-- If you have a larger hard drive you need to delete files off your old drive so that it takes up enough room to fit on the smaller SSD before you can clone the drive.
-- Since this is a budget-priced SSD it is faster than a traditional hard disk drive but isn't as fast as some of the more expensive SSDs offered by Kingston and other companies.
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This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
My laptop's old 80GB drive was overheating and causing blue-screens. A friend recommended an SSD to eliminate the heat problem. There are a lot of SSD options, not all budget friendly and not all actually reliable. One online "shootout" noted that while the Kingston SSD worked flawlessly, another more expensive device ran faster but only until its wear-leveling algorithms faltered (after which it performed worse than a hard drive). Having read that, and frankly quite tired of the blue-screens from the overheating hard drive, I selected the Kingston for its low cost and the completeness of the kit. Installation was very easy. Pay attention to the notes in the packaging: remove your laptop drive, place it into the supplied external enclosure, and put the SSD into the laptop. It wasn't my first guess about the sequence but it makes sense in hindsight. The transfer software worked first time, taking about an hour. The laptop booted and all applications have run perfectly. Consistent with the online "shootout" I read before purchasing, the Kingston SSD is 2x faster than my prior 5400 RPM drive. Database programs and virus scans take half the time. A drive test program rated its read rate at 118 megabyte/second. For comparison, a friend's expensive 15K HD drives were running at only 80MB/s. It's been a month now and no blue screens, consistently fast operation, and absolutely no heat from the drive. For me, the Kingston SSD kit hit a sweet spot of price, performance, and features.
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I received this drive for father's day. My kit did not include the brackets but was just the drive but it did come with a usb cable and external case. installation is simple with SATA as the drive just plugs into the carrier. I popped the new drive into the external case and popped in the CD ROM booted from the CD and was able to clone the drive in a few clicks. Then ran some benchmarks (HDTach) swapped out the drive and rand HDtach again. The startup time is much faster, HDtach shows 3x the speed and thuput doubled. I have not noticed an improvement in battery life, so far. I am hoping that with some use it will show an improvement I am using a Dell 1705 and have the larger battery it is showing 4Hrs of battery life currently.
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This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
Purchased this SSD for my Macbook Pro 13". It was very simple to install (about 15 minutes tops). The included housing for your old drive was a great extra and facilitated the upgrade.
Be aware that installing an SSD does not necessarily increase battery life. In many cases, battery life actually suffers. With this Kingston drive, the battery life is more or less than the same as with the original hard drive; perhaps you lose a few minutes of life.
But in exchange, you get a much faster drive (even noticeably faster than a 7200 rpm drive!). The speed increase is really phenomenal and worth the few minutes loss in battery life.
The drive is also lighter and so the weight of the computer is lessened. Finally, it runs cool all the time and it is much more durable (no moving parts!).
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This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
I put this drive in my HP Touchsmart Laptop...result? Zippier system that is quieter and cooler. Installation was a piece of cake and the included Acronis HD Clone software made it a breeze. About the only thing I had to do was reallocate the distribution of the partitions. For those who don't speak tech, HP shipped the laptop with a "C" drive and a "D" drive. Really, it was one drive that was divided into two separate sections (partitions), with "D" holding the recovery information for the laptop. When Acronis went to take my 320GB Hard Drive to the 128GB Kingston SSD Now, it only allocated 10.66GB to the D drive, which would only have left around 40 MBs left, so I changed it to give it a little extra room.
But many of you must be wondering why this drive is so cheap. Here are the drawbacks to this drive:
1) This uses old technology that was seriously flawed. The good news is that Kingston and their suppliers got together and created a workaround that fixed the flaw and it appears from my system and reviews that the workaround was successful. The bad news is that your experience may vary since the flaw would only show itself in very specific instances. From all reports, though, it has been fixed for this product (the problem was stuttering of the computer during certain operations...I have yet to see any stuttering while surfing and using MS Office products and general computer usage. However, the use of these parts makes it less expensive.
2) It lacks a way for the consumer (you) to upgrade the firmware. This is VERY important since this drives ships without TRIM support? What is TRIM? Very complicated, but essentially, the way computers and drives work together cause SSD performance to degrade over time as they fill up (even if later, files are erased). So, even if you have 75GB free, if you have HAD 128GB on this drive, you will likely see a degradation of performance, potentially to the point that your old mechanical drive is faster. TRM solves that problem. Microsoft released TRIM support for Windows 7 in October of 2009. Unfortunately, with no consumer-based way to upgrade the firmware on this drive, you, the purchaser, will never have TRIM support. More expensive models already have it or have firmware upgrade capability so it can support TRIM.
So, installation was easy, performance is good. Package with the hard drive enclosure is a great bonus. Long-term, I know I will have to replace this drive, so only 4 stars despite the very low price.
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This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
I have been chomping at the bit for over a year now waiting for SSD's to come into orbit with regard to price. Kingston has hit a home run with this product in price, installation ease, and performance. While not as fast as the V+ series, this drive will offer significant improvement over a traditional spinning disk.
My experience:
Installation took me around 45 minutes which included swapping out the hard drive and cloning the old drive to the new drive. Everything is included in the kit from a box into which you put your old drive (This then becomes a stand alone drive from which your new drive copy is derived) the cloning software, and a USB cable. All you need is a screwdriver!
As a previous review said, make sure you print out the instructions from the disk FIRST. That way you can have a reference as you go through the process. If you go to the Kingston website, you can dowload the instructions there as well and watch an installation video. I would recommend watching the video, especially if you are not used to working inside a computer. That being said, the process is very simple and straightforward. I would put the geek requirement factor at about a 2 out of 5.
Once everything was completed, I booted up and measured the time to do a few tasks:
Before(mm:ss) After (mm:ss)
1) Boot to No drive activity: 5:10 2:10
2) Open MS Outlook: 1:07 0:36
3) Open ACT! (A contact manager) 0:42 0:15
4) Open iTunes 1:10 0:35
All Microsoft programs worked without having to re-enter any keys.
The whole operation of the notebook just feels faster. Especially databse programs (Like ACT!) Which were sometimes unbearable before.
One thing that I did that Kingstonrecommended was to delete my defragging program as it is not necessary and can cause premature wear on the drive. You can still defrag manually with the MS program if you feel the need, but they recommend that you turn off any auto defrag.
Highly recommended.
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I bought this to try to hod rod my sluggish Acer 751h netbook. Bottom line is after installation the boot time went from 2 minutes to 30 seconds. Program startup is way faster. Everything that was sluggish is now snappy. The drawback is installation. It comes with a version of Acronis True Image. However, the Acer will not boot from the latest version of this disk (the Linux kernel fails to load). Tech support at Kingston was pleasingly prompt but advised that I return the drive. I did not do that, but what I did do was to buy Acronis True Image Home online. Now, that failed to clone the drive when run from my original disk (and Acronis tech support went home 5 minutes early on a Friday, grrr). However, it all worked very well when I made a custom recovery disk using the program. Overall, it is a fine value in an SSD that can give a major boost to a sluggish netbook. However, I do not think I should have had to pay $50 extra to get a version of Acronis that would work.
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This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
Replaced My Sony Vaio VGN-N385N's 105GB 5400RPM drive. Vista runs almost as well as XP now. Old hard drive peaked at 15MB/s, with the SSd I have seen peaks as high as 130MB/s. I would highly recommend this product despite its high price; the performance increase was worth every penny.
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The description for this product is correct, but the photo shows the desktop version (as of July 1, 2009). I installed this SSD in a in Lenovo S10e netbook. Overall I'm satisfied, this drive is faster than the original 160GB hard drive, but the difference is not dramatic. It does run silent and cool. Included with this package is a plastic external USB enclosure for your old drive, a USB cable (mini connector on the enclosure end), and a CD with self-booting Arconis software to transfer everything from your original HD to the SSD. The software can also repartition the SSD. The software worked very well, but if your netbook doesn't have an optical drive you will have to borrow or buy one to run the software. Also very pleased with the service and prices from Amazon.
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This review is from: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive with Notebook Upgrade Kit Bundle SNV125-S2BN/128GB (Electronics)
These SSDs from Kingston must be selling like hotcakes at the asking price. The included 2.5" USB drive case and Acronis imaging software make cloning the old hard drive totally painless. After the new SSD drive is up and running (much faster than hard drive!), you will also have an extra external USB drive to use for backing up (or whatever).
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