Kingston 40gb boot drives available finally

plympton · Post by **plympton** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:41 am

I've been waiting to get one of these for my HTPC, since it's the right size, and reasonable cost (~$100). My boot drive is doing a ticky-ticky thing, which could be because of Win 7 writing files all the time, or...

Anyway, they're available now...

-Dan

RogueTrader · Post by **RogueTrader** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:01 pm

I have a trading computer that only has windows xp, office and firefox installed on it. So I don't need a big hard drive. I just want it to be quiet (and fast), so I can concentrate on trading.

Is it possible to use this as the only drive in my system? So no normal spinning hard drives, but just an ssd?

Wibla · Post by **Wibla** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:46 pm

Yea, they should be fine for that I guess.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:00 pm

RogueTrader wrote:I have a trading computer that only has windows xp, office and firefox installed on it. So I don't need a big hard drive. I just want it to be quiet (and fast), so I can concentrate on trading.

Is it possible to use this as the only drive in my system? So no normal spinning hard drives, but just an ssd?

Take a look at your existing drive and see if you have used more than 25GB of the space on it. If you have used less than 25GB you should feel safe moving to a 40GB drive. If you have used more than 25GB you should instead look at getting the 64GB Crucial M225 or the 80GB Intel X-25M. Format each as if they were smaller than they advertise and they will perform better / last longer see http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... i=3531&p=9 for a partial reason why.

The Kingston is the cheap way to go for sure if you aren't pushing it to squeeze into the last few GBs.

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 3:36 pm

The Kingston has fantastic performance if you are doing mainly reads, but not writes. It does great in read performance. For most general usage, that's what you spend your time doing - reading from the drive to boot up, load applications, and so on. If you were doing a lot of file conversions, database ops, and various things that need to write, going with a 60gb or larger drive would give a lot better performance because of the better write performance, but for general use on a minimal system, the Kingston should be fine.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:55 pm

AZBrandon wrote:The Kingston has fantastic performance if you are doing mainly reads, but not writes.

Stop focusing so much on sequential write speed and look at the random write speed. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... i=3667&p=6

Having the better controller makes up for the lower sequential writes most of the time.

embeddedbob · Post by **embeddedbob** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 6:49 am

Cant wait for price to come down.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 9:00 am

just received two SNV125-S2/40GB for work. Have them in my hand at just over $100 a piece.

I don't see a serial number on them so I guess I'll have to print a screen shot of HDtune or some such to get serial numbers recorded for the inventory. I'm not sure how you would make a warranty return if the drive totally bricked.

3 year warranty is nice but no visible serial number is odd.

plympton · Post by **plympton** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:58 am

Well, Windows 7 was for sure rattling my boot drive - now that the SSD is in, I only here the puttering of my data drive when the Media Center photo screen saver kicks in on idle. None of the tick-tick-tick that was going on before.

Super simple to install - just format in Win7, pop it in my USB dock, and restore using Acronis TIW Echo - boom, 20 minutes later, pop it in HTPC, and boot away. Couldn't be easier.

It's faster for sure on boot, since it no longer thrashes about to get everything loaded (Squeezecenter, Media Center, etc..)

Nice, for $100 or so, it was worth it, as that was the "hit" price I set some time ago, and since you can't get a decent performing 2.5" drive for under $80 these days anyway (granted they're 320 or 500 GB, but who needs that for a boot drive?)

Anyone want tests? Any requests?

-Dan

KadazanPL · Post by **KadazanPL** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:20 am

Anyone want tests? Any requests?

Yes please

A simple HDTune benchmark would be helpful.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 9:07 am

KadazanPL wrote:
Anyone want tests? Any requests?
Yes please A simple HDTune benchmark would be helpful.

I've done one it's real simple 200+ MBs read. Boom. I'll link to a review with screenshots of the HDtune and a million other tests

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1111/6/

oh and here is single versus dual (RAID 0)

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1139/4/