Kingston 128GB V Series Notebook Upgrade Kit Review :: Features

• Performance — Enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
• Innovative — 2.5" form factor; uses NAND flash memory components.
• Silent— Runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
• Reliable — Less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
• Shock Resistant — No moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions.
• Supports TRIM — Enhances device wear leveling by eliminating merge operation for all deleted data blocks.
• Supports S.M.A.R.T.
• Guaranteed — 3-year legendary Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support

Specifications:

• Capacity — 128GB
• Storage Temperatures — -40 C to 85 C
• Operating temperatures — 0 C to 70 C
• Vibration Operating — 2.17G (7—800Hz)
• Vibration Non-Operation — 20G (20—2000Hz)
• Sequential Speed** —128GB — 200MB/sec. read; 160MB/sec. write

Power Specs —

• 128GB Active: 5.2W (TYP) Sleep: 0.7W (TYP)
• Life expectancy —1 million hours mean time before failure; 64GB/128GB

The Kingston V 128GB SSD drive comes in two varieties: 64GB and 128GB with three packages for each variety. The drive is available as a stand-alone product, a desktop bundle for replacing the HDD on a computer system and a Notebook replacement bundle. The drive I'm reviewing today is a Notebook replacement SSD drive bundle.

One advantage that a SSD drive has over the standard HDD is the lack of moving parts. On a HDD there are spinning disks called platters with an actuator reading the data from the disks. On a SSD drive there are no platters, or moving parts, meaning that the SSD drive is silent in operation and has higher sustained performance for read/write than standard hard disk drives.

The SSD drive has several advantages over the traditional HDD including: Faster start-up, faster random access time, silent operation, high mechanical reliability, and ability to endure extreme shock with a lower failure rate than standard HDDs. The SSD drive does not have a spin up of the disks so the start-up time is faster. There is no read/write head on the drive, meaning that faster random access time is faster.

The disadvantages of a SSD drive include the higher cost compared to the standard hard disk, lower storage capacities, asymmetric read versus write performance, lower storage density, meaning hard disks can store more data per unit volume, degradation of performance with use, SATA SSDs exhibit slower write speeds. The advantages of SSD drives outweigh the disadvantages assuming that cost is not an issue.

The read speeds of the drive are almost 200MB/second and 160MB/second for the write speeds. As we will see with the performance section of the review the use of a SSD drive dramatically improves sustained performance compared to even the fastest regular drive on the market, the Western Digital Velociraptor. Kingston as a memory company would like to sell more memory so the NAND Flash used in the drive benefits them and is why they make SSD drives. Kingston offers a 3 year warranty on their drive and it has a power draw of 5.0W when in operation and a MTBF of 1 million hours. The drive has a shock rating of 20G which is much higher than a human can tolerate.