Reviews - Kingston SSDNow V+100 96GB SSD review

[Sim0n]

If thats with an SSD, I think you'll be wanting to untick that box at the bottom.

[MSIC]

This very drive arrived for me yesterday, I plan on installing it in my desktop system over the weekend.
This article was of interest to me since it's my first SSD (in my desktop - already swapped one into a laptop previously), however I agree with Agent that a comparator with other SSD's would have added alot to the article and (as he said) been able to evidence some of the statements in the summary, which as it stands are unsubstantiated opinions. (I'm not saying that they are wrong, but that they are not objective conclusions based on the evidence given.)

One final thought reflecting what Sim0n alluded to above - when i changed my SSD in my laptop, I simply did a ghost image from my HDD to the SSD, and then had to go through quite a number of settings to make the installation more SSD-appropriate (including stopping defrags etc). I'm going to be curious to see now if Win7 automatically sets itself up suitably, or not, when it is installed natively (as a fresh install) onto a new SSD.
I'll be sure to post back here with results.

[kingpotnoodle]

I'm going to be curious to see now if Win7 automatically sets itself up suitably, or not, when it is installed natively (as a fresh install) onto a new SSD.
I'll be sure to post back here with results.

In my experience it does some things, I fresh installed my Media PC to a 32GB OCZ Onyx super cheapo SSD (£50), the defrag got disabled by default and TRIM seems to be working, I did have to disable hibernate manually (which I'd expect, it's a useful feature) to save space, and I manually set the page file to use the 2nd spinny disk I use for recorder storage rather than disabling it.

As for Indexing, I routinely disable that apart from server data volumes anyway. How often do I really need to search for something in my OS?!

That system bluescreens (7F code) quite a lot, might be related to the SSD, I need to diagnose it and run some RAM tests I suppose...

[jim]

Windows only indexes a very small number of files anyway.

[miniyazz]

[img]http://img.hexus.net/v2/SSD/Kingston/SSDNowV+100/ssdnow-capacity.jpg[/img

If thats with an SSD, I think you'll be wanting to untick that box at the bottom.

Why? Indexing will still improve performance. Sequential read speeds are still significantly faster than random reads on SSDs, the gap is just a lot less.

In my experience it does some things, I fresh installed my Media PC to a 32GB OCZ Onyx super cheapo SSD (£50), the defrag got disabled by default and TRIM seems to be working, I did have to disable hibernate manually (which I'd expect, it's a useful feature) to save space, and I manually set the page file to use the 2nd spinny disk I use for recorder storage rather than disabling it.

As for Indexing, I routinely disable that apart from server data volumes anyway. How often do I really need to search for something in my OS?!

That system bluescreens (7F code) quite a lot, might be related to the SSD, I need to diagnose it and run some RAM tests I suppose...

I for one search my OS every time I press the start button and start typing a program's name. BTW, I presume the reason you've moved the page file is for space reasons? As having the page file on the SSD is much faster for the page file (obviously) and does minimal harm to the SSD (reads are much commoner than writes, and writes tend to be larger so there is minimal write amplification). In other words, the page file should be on the SSD unless there's a compelling reason, such as space, for it not to be.

[Tattysnuc]

Excellent comprehensive review.

[kingpotnoodle]

I for one search my OS every time I press the start button and start typing a program's name. BTW, I presume the reason you've moved the page file is for space reasons? As having the page file on the SSD is much faster for the page file (obviously) and does minimal harm to the SSD (reads are much commoner than writes, and writes tend to be larger so there is minimal write amplification). In other words, the page file should be on the SSD unless there's a compelling reason, such as space, for it not to be.

Indexing names is different from names + contents though, indexing contents is a background job that's unnecessary on boot volumes in my experience, that tick box disables indexing of contents.

And yes, for space reasons... a low duty media PC with 4GB can manage with a slower page file.

[Agent]

Agent, thanks for the feedback, it's always appreciated and taken onboard.

The idea behind this review was to show that a relatively-affordable SSD can offer a huge performance boost to older hard-disk-based systems. Stating the obvious, perhaps, but it's useful information for an inexperienced PC user and we found the real-world numbers interesting - particularly battery life.

But as always, we do our best to give our readers what they want, so we've secure erased the Kingston drive, benched it in our Sandy Bridge test system and compared it with a good selection of other SSDs. The additional results are now available on pages six and seven of the review.

Thanks Parm
I'm glad you didn't mind me pointing it out, but a review of the drive was of no use without being able to place it against others.

I honestly think there could be a bigger article of simply going from a mechanical disk to a SSD for a range of different uses. I didn't have an issue with the article as such, but it just couldn't be called a review in it's past state.

It's just a real shame that the benchmarks look bad against some of the other drives without being able to capture the issues with Sandforce drives in them (This isn't a review flaw - The Sandforce benchmarks always look amazing, but their real world use is somewhat different in my experience)

I for one welcome a review comparing a real world scenario
i.e. moving from old hard drive to SSD

Many reviews concentrate on one SSD being 10% faster than another, glossing over the fact that all SSDs are 4-5x faster than the fastest conventional HDDs.

Compared with other SSDs the kingston V+ is pretty poor, but it is cheap, and doesn't need TRIM, and does blow any spinning HDD out of the water.

As above - Sandforce drives look amazing in reviews, but if you have a browse over the OCZ forums / anandtech comments and articles, there is much more than they show.

I thought this was a really clever idea for a review and really liked it! Surprised that some didn't like it

It wasn't that I didn't like it - it was missing critical information for a review
The reason I pointed it out (And Parm knows this), is because I want the articles and reviews at HEXUS to be the best they can be. If that means giving a little negative feedback sometimes, so be it. I know the guys will take it as intended as I'm firmly in the same boat as the staff here - the only way you can react to customers and better yourself is to listen to their concrit.

None of the Admins or Mods were offered positions for saying 'yes' and agreeing with others all the time, most were offered them because they have the ability to objectively put forward their views even when they disagree with others. I regularly argue it out with a few people behind closed doors about issues, but everyone is 100% professional about it.

Parm is one of those professional people

[miniyazz]

Indexing names is different from names + contents though, indexing contents is a background job that's unnecessary on boot volumes in my experience, that tick box disables indexing of contents.

And yes, for space reasons... a low duty media PC with 4GB can manage with a slower page file.

Ah good point. *Goes to deselect check box* > discovers some files refuse to have their attributes changed > gets annoyed > wastes half an hour trying to force them not to have their contents indexed > gives up and eats/sleeps.