The Notebook “makeover” – Kingston SSD/RAM upgrade and clean OS install

Kingston’s 128GB SSDNow V100 series

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.

Here are the contents of the desktop kit; 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.  The notebook kit includes the external USB 2.0 enclosure for the notebook’s original HDD as storage.

If you get the V+100 (plus) series (we reviewed the Kingston 96GB SSDNow V+100 series here) or the SSDNow V100 (not “+”) notebook kit, you will get the USB 2.0 case (image below; upper right) for your 2.5″ Notebook HDD so that you can use it as a storage drive.  We do not need ours as 128GB is plenty of storage for our notebook’s needs.

The Clean Install of Vista 32

We set up Windows Vista 32-bit (Upgrade) on our 250GB notebook’s 5400 rpm hard drive along with two fairly new games, all of our favorite applications including Photoshop Elements, Microsoft Office and benching tools. We started with 50GB 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.

And now we see the cloned 128GB SSD:

The first thing that we noticed was that Windows startup time was now cut in half!  And this was just by doing a clean install of Windows on a 5400 rpm mechanical hard drive!!  This is probably the most cost-effective “upgrade” that anyone can do.  However, the OEM copies that are pre-installed on notebooks and desktops are usually not eligible for clean installs; we had a spare Upgrade copy of Windows Vista 32.

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 – which is what we did – will 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 might be a good idea.  However, we didn’t do this, preferring a simple reformat – we are giving you benching that is definitely real world and the SSD is given no advantage over the hard drive whatsoever.

If you decide to secure erase your SSD, this is perhaps the most detailed yet simplified step-by-step way to secure erase your SSD and something you must do (for security) 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 used state as it had already been used and benchmarked in our desktop PC. We also began with our cleanly formatted 250GB OEM notebook HDD which is the Toshiba 5400 rpm notebook series. We installed Windows Vista 32-bit operating system and about 40 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 Hard disk drive image to the Kingston SSD which now became a bootable drive.

Although we have evaluation copies of the SW we tested, we used the freeware or shareware version if there was a choice. There are some remarkable shareware and freeware tools available for testing hard disk and solid-state drive performance and all of the ones that we use 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.