Kingston preps 40GB SSD for system booting
updated 11:55 am EDT, Mon October 26, 2009
Kingston SSD Now V 40GB meant for OS
Kingston today catered to a specific segment of the storage crowd with the SSDNow V 40GB Boot Drive. The 2.5-inch SATA drive isn't intended as primary storage but rather as a system drive that speeds up the operating system as well as key apps. It's billed as inexpensive enough that it can be mated with a second, much larger rotating hard drive that would handle less critical apps and storage.
While not fast compared to some SSDs with a peak 170MB per second read speed and 40MB per second for writes, the raw speed is enough to be almost four times faster in synthetic tests than a conventional drive.
The new SSDNow V update ships November 9th and will be available both in a $115 barebones version, for notebooks or those with the necessary adapters, as well as in a $130 kit that provides a 3.5-inch mounting bracket and extenders to attach a mainboard's power and SATA cables.
Well
10/26, 12:39pm reply
Not very useful to the Mac community, unless you decide to unhook your optical drive. But it could help alot in laptops with preserving battery life, as the OS side of things wouldn't be wasting spins on your main HD.
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
re: Well
10/26, 01:03pm reply
I do not know what you are talking about, testudo. I think this will speed up my PowerMac. 170 MB/s is much faster than my current boot drive.
Salsa
Junior Member
Joined: Oct 2003
Just sayin'
10/26, 02:02pm reply
As someone who *HAS* unhooked their optical drive (and replaced it with a second internal HD0 this could be very helpful for people saving power. Even my 5400RPM secondary media drive sucks a wee-bit more power than before.
In terms of cost, this is much cheaper than having to buy the specialized sled for an optibay HDD (patent pending?), which jacks up the price 150%+ over the cost of just a drive. If it doesn't move, it doesn't need a special sled.
danviento
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2005
Re: well
10/26, 04:27pm reply
It's great for the few with a PowerMac or MacPro. Though it would speed up my PMac, I'm sure, I couldn't handle the loss of a second disk drive, since my PowerMac, despite being bigger than basically any other computer or workstation on the planet, can only support two drives. Although, I could add an SATA card to one of my open PCI slots and tape this drive into place somewhere off to the side but hooked to the internal connector.
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
Mac?
10/26, 07:51pm reply
Could this be used as a replacement drive for a MacBook Air? My 80GB is only half-used, so the size isn't a problem.
Frogmella
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Joined: Sep 2001