Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB SATA2 2.5 inch Drive Only

Rare that a product has so many winning benefits. My 2008 mid-range notebook is now getting up to 200MBs on sequential reads and 60MBs on sequential writes. That's a jump of 5x in read speed over the original HDD. The write speed is somewhat faster. Notebook now boots 3x faster. No more disk defragging for me, no more disk crashes, runs cooler and quieter. The only downside is living within the limits of this drive's capacity. You can always buy a larger SSD too.

The usual recommendation for an SSD is to buy one which supports the TRIM feature and use it with Windows 7. TRIM keeps a drive running at optimum speed. Yes, this drive supports TRIM. Very good. However, PCPerspective published an authoritative review on this drive questioning the commonly held notion that TRIM is a sine qua non feature when buying SSDs. Apparently, the drive's controller, a JMicron JMF618, has the smarts to keep the drive running at optimum speed without TRIM. If this is correct, it means that this drive can be coupled with non-TRIM operating systems such as Windows XP, Vista and RAID systems. A very radical claim indeed.

I strongly feel that SSDs are so fast and so much more reliable than a notebook's HDD that you really must buy one ASAP. You won't be disappointed. This is a very compelling SSD to buy because it has both TRIM and a superior drive controller. You can't go wrong.

installed with AHCI mode enabled, fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (goodbye Vista 64 you whore!). Installed latest video drivers (nvidia) and all recommended Microsoft updates. Turned off disk caching. Must be more tweaks to do but that's it for now. Supposedly win7 aligns itself for an ssd automatically...

Despite the small drive space and the problems that poses, and the slow write speeds reported by benchmarks, this SSD is a noticeable speed boost.

Overall system responsiveness is much smoother, snappy, and eerily quiet. No waiting for a crunchy hard drive! Everything works faster than before, even external hard drives! Windows snap open. Thumbnails of pictures load immediately. No file access lag opening photos, videos, etc. Again, this applies to the external USB and Firewire drives too. Weird. I don't know why this is, but I'll take it. Maybe it's because of the fresh Win7-64 install?

The Internets is fast on tap now.... using Chrome browser Web pages open immediately. Everything, Youtube, etc. Fast. (Comcast Cable connection). Youtube videos load and play super smooth, like an appliance!

I was using Vista 64 before, and in IDE mode (Western Digital 1TB Black), so maybe some of the differences are that Windows 7/AHCI is much faster. ?

My only complaint is that since this is still relatively new technology and there's still some sketchy details as to how to get the most performance (and longevity) from the drive (use IDE or AHCI mode, OS version, OS tweaks, etc) you have to research it and make the best semi-informed decisions how to set up the drive. Google is your friend. The installation Manuel that comes with the drive is not your friend. The manufacturer dodges the issues by making no mention whatsoever.

After I got this up and running I read something online that Intel said that when used with ICH10R chipset (the motherboard Southbridge) their ssd's should be installed with the bios in RAID mode but the drives configured as non-raid. They call this "Raid Ready". I might reinstall with those settings....

system:
Intel Q9550@3.775ghz
8gb G.Skill ddr2-1066
Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
GTX480

EDIT:
I might go with an Intel X-25M 80gb instead. It's reported to be a much better ssd. Plus, it comes with the desktop AND laptop install kits, and 15gb more space... so the $[...] premium is kinda reasonable over this $[...] drive which has no mounting kits. Still, this is the best economy ssd on the market, a good taste of the perceived benefits these type of drives offer.

Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3 GB/s 2.5- Inch Solid State Drive SNV425-S2/128GB

This is my first Solid State Drive purchase and a replacement for the Hitachi 500GB Travelstar SATA 7200 RPM in my MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009) - Model A1342 Polycarbonate Unibody. I based my purchase mostly on the Kingston Brand name and The low price ( I don't think I've sacrificed anything on that part ) I am very happy with the results of the upgrade and incredibly fast application load times that I'm now experiencing. Photoshop CS5, Aperture 3, iTunes 9 and Word 2008 just for a few examples are loading in just three seconds. Safari 5 page loading times have also increased ( All running under Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 and 4GB DDR3 CL7 PC3-8500 1066MHz of memory ).

I would highly recommend to anyone who wants a serious increase in hard drive and application performance to buy the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3 GB/s 2.5- Inch Solid State Drive SNV425-S2/128GB.