A Gamer’s perspective of Kingston’s 128 GB SSDNow V100 series – revisited
Contents and unboxing
Here is the retail box that you would buy with the desktop upgrade kit.
Kingston calls the SSDNow v100, “the Ultimate Upgrade!” We shall see. We also note the 24/7 promised tech service and the 3-year warranty.
Turning the box over, we are reminded that Kingston is a major international company with headquarters in Southern California. We are planning to tour their facilities in the Spring and we will bring you the story in a future ABT article.
And of course, we see the end flaps which show the advantages of the product as this SSD will also be featured in retail brick and mortar stores as well as online.
Now we open the box to see the contents. We again see the Kingston logo and are reminded of their old advertising with the hinged-head being filled with memory. Eventually the red half-head became the Kingston logo.
Inside the box, the precious contents are well-protected by the plastic shell. The SSD is rather tough anyway and Kingston even had a contest to show how durable they are
Here are the contents; the 2.5″ SSD, the 3.5″ brackets and screws, the SATA data cable, the SATA power cable (not pictured) and the cloning software CD and the installation manual.
As you can see, our SSD has the standard SATA power and data connectors.
Here is the other side (above). Below is Thermaltake’s BlackXduet USB and eSATA hard drive dock which proved very useful in reading data from internal drives that are now accessed as external drives. Look for the review published by Leon Hyman this week!
We set up Windows 7 64-bit on one of our Seagate 500GB 7200.12 Barracuda hard drives along with ten fairly new games, favorite applications and benching tools. We put about 110GB or so of data on our HDD so that we would not have any issues cloning the HDD to the SSD and while still leaving room for additional files and applications to its maximum 119GB. We used the supplied Acronis cloning software on the Kingston-supplied CD to make a exact copy of our HDD and we were able to then boot from either drive. The cloning software is by Acronis and it is very fast and very easy to use. However, before we get to the benching, let’s recap the SSD and what makes it unique from mechanical drives.
One mistake many enthusiasts make is to think of a SSD like a mechanical HDD. Instead, think of it as a giant flash drive with the strengths and weaknesses inherent to that kind of storage. MrK’s article on the previous series of Kingston SSDNow is extraordinally well-written and detailed, and it would be good to review it if you are not familar with Solid-State storage. Also, here is his article on the faster but much more expensive Patriot TorqX 236 GB SSD which goes into even more detail. MrK explains the strengths and weaknesses of the SSD. Instead of repeating his information, this section will be the briefiest of recaps and we will focus instead on secure erase and performance degradation.
Because of the way data is written to and erased from a SSD, the write speeds will go down as more and more data is written to it. There is a definite need for TRIM and other garbage collection. When Windows 7 identifies the drive as a SSD, it enables the TRIM command for the drive when files are deleted from it. The TRIM command tells the SSD controller to delete the pages on the NAND flash block when the user deletes the data. The entire block containing the data is copied into the memory cache and then the block is erased. After this procedure, the data without the user-deleted part is rewritten back to the block from the memory cache. This results in longer delete times, but allows the write performance to remain nearly like-new.
Secure Erase and Performance Degradation
A secure erase restores your drive to a like-new state where each cell is effectively zeroed out. So its performance would be like-new also as if it was fresh out of the box. Simply cloning over from an HDD to SSD would not zero out the cells like a secure erase would. This is because you’re not guaranteed to be writing over the same cells. In a clone, information is just being transferred over, not like erasing a cell first and then writing to it. On a good SSD such as Kingston’s SSDNow v100 series, there is simply no need to secure erase periodically, but whenever you format or re-image your drive, it’s a great idea.
This is perhaps the most detailed yet simplified step-by-step way to secure erase your SSD – something you must do (for safety) if you ever sell it:
http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/8/13_Erasing_an_SSD.html
Be aware that your SSD’s BIOS may have some sort of mechanism that prevents the secure erase tool from detecting the SSD for secure erase. We had no such issues with our Kingston drive but we wish that they had included a secure erase tool with the drive.
Note on testing.
We began our testing with our SSD in a brand-new state as delivered by Kingston. We also began with two brand-new identical Seagate 500GB HDDs which are the 12th generation of their 7200 rpm desktop series. We installed Windows 7 64-bit operating system and 100 GB of programs, applications and games. Next we used the Acronis Cloning software included on the included Kingston CD to effortlessly copy in just a few minutes the entire drive image to the Kingston SSD which now became a bootable drive. For certain write tests, all of the data had to be erased on the SSD and we also ran these same tests on a formatted HDD with no operating system installed. Generally, all of our testing was done with the SSD in a used condition and the drive was not erased (as many benchers do) before each bench that is run or after a single day of normal day-to-day use.
Although we have evaluation copies of some of the SW we tested, we used the freeware or shareware version if there was a choice. There are some remarkable tools available for testing hard disk and solid-state drive performance and all of the ones that we used are considered excellent.
About Kingston Digital, Inc.
Kingston Digital, Inc. (“KDI”) is the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Established in 2008, KDI is headquartered in Fountain Valley, California, USA. For more information, please visit www.kingston.com.
I was actually impressed with the performance in most everything but the games dont look nearly as impressive as say the windows start up time. The numbers are there and for gaming SSD should be low on the list of priority; A luxury that should only be considered last, if there is money left for it, after all other components are bought.
Considering the size of modern PC games, I would consider a large drive very important. 128GB would hold only a hand full of games and even less with the OS on it. I would recommend 500gb minimum for a PC gamer and thats the lowest. With the SSD the higher capacity drives are insanity expensive, 500gb drives cost nearly $1200. So a single SSD of 128gb isnt practical for the modern PC gamer and the only way it makes since is a system that has more than one drive. The SSD along with a large mechanical HDD would be the best route for a gamer that really wanted to enjoy the technology. With the OS and the most used programs on the SSD and use the other larger drive for storage.
I can see plenty of advantages in SSD. Its lightning fast for sure. I can see the potential and will go out on a limb to say the SSD will eventually replace mechanical HDDs all together. But for now, for the average PC gamer, I just dont see it as worth the price at all, especially not a system running purely SSD. If you have extra cash to blow and you just want the best of the best tech, a hybrid system with a small SSD and a large mechanical drive will give you all the speed of an SSD without any sacrifice of capacity. There are some nice 60gb SSDs for a just at 100$ and it would serve well for a hybrid system with a small investment. Enough for your OS and for your most used programs at blasting SSD speeds. You can easily move the data to storage when its not being used as much to keep the SSD with the most used programs and keep the fast. This is the best use i can imagine for a PC Gamer and the SSD.
Your conclusions are very close to mine. I got ten games on a 128GB SSD and it eventually ended up with 5 games and a lot of programs. I really never play more than about 4 or 5 games at one time although I benchmark nearly 30 games. This SSD may not be practical for my desktop but it definitely has a future in my notebook! After all, I do everything *but* game and edit video on my dual-core Athlon Compaq notebook.
However, your pricing is way off. This same $235 SSD has been on Buy.com and NewEgg.com for about $125 after a mail-in-rebate. So pricing has come way down and that $125 doesn’t buy such a great upgrade any longer.
Setting up the SDD to work seamlessly with the HDD is not difficult and the size of the SSD that you choose should reflect how many programs you want to be really fast and on the SSD itself. Windows 7 takes up a nice chunk of drive real estate and a 128GB drive becomes “full” with about 119GB of data.
If you just want a fast start-up and shutdown and maybe a few apps, then even a 30GB SSD might be sufficient.
I am just reporting that the state of the SSD art is up a level and that pricing is down. If you are looking to speed up your PC, it might be a good upgrade for a gamer.
I still wouldn’t touch an SSD. You can get a fast 2 TB HD that in most practical cases will be just a bit slower while costing far less and offering much more capacity.
Also SSD technology is still unproven in terms of reliability. I have a 13 GB HD from 2000 that still goes the last time I tried it.
As long as both technologies keep improving at the same rate, mechanical will continue to be far ahead of solid.
I felt *exactly* like you do before I got one.
– and I stand by my conclusion. It is unnecessary for a gamer; it’s just “nice” to have one in a gaming PC.
However, this SSD has a permanent home in my notebook. 5400 rpm notebook HDDs suck and 128GB is a good size for me.
I do not think I have ever seen an SSD review that good.
In fact, I did not know that an SSD review could be that good!
Hey BFG10K, at least an upgrade to SSD would show you so many more “felt” benefits than upgrading from say, 6GB to 12GB memory, or even from 4GB to 8GB. If I had to choose, I’d rather spend that $$ on a good SSD like this one here.
thats what i feel. I think the ssd technology is extremely stable thus far and a smaller drive does make since, lots more since than 12 gb of ram!!!! Also apoppin, are you saying my pricing was off on the 500gb SSDs? The cheapest 500gb SSD that i seen on new egg is $1179, if you know of some cheaper ones do let me know, i am looking at getting one for a new OS installation.
I’m sorry, I may have misunderstood you, Ocre. When you mentioned 60GB SSDs for $100, I thought that was rather expensive since this 128GB drive is only $125 after M-i-R.
Two 128GB SSDs can be set up in RAID to make the equivalent of a single 256GB capacity solid-state drive. That might just work for a gamer for a reasonable price.
no apologies please, i was hoping there were some deals i was overlooking. the SSD pricing isnt what you would expect after 160gb. I think two 125gb is much cheaper than one 250gb. then the 500gb ssd is unbelievably high. Was kinda hoping that there was some cheaper ones i didnt know about, but they will eventually come down, that i am sure.
This is the right blog for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You realize so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want…HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!