When recently asked what SSD would be ideal for regular users, that doesn’t cost too much, but contains quality components, I found myself going back over my notes. I found myself considering what kind of controller is used inside an SSD rather than basing it off the name brand. The controller is a major component that can make or break performance. And, it doesn’t hurt if an SSD has a little extra cache to maintain transfer rates.

But, just like clock work, one fundamental detail rears its ugly head. That would be price. We would all love to own the fastest $400 to $600 SSDs available, but the reality of it all is that the large majority of users will reach for these more affordable SSD that still offer respectable performance using quality internal components. One SSD that fits in this category is OCZ’s Agility Series 60GB SSD.

Features and Specifications

Besides the obvious technological features like no moving parts, shock resistance, as well as resistance to heat and cold, the OCZ Agility Series is aimed at the mainstream market where users are looking for a good balance of price and performance.

The 60GB Agility SSD contains some features definitely worth mentioning. For starters, the Agility  is in fact using an Indilinx controller which has proven to be formidable. They can be easily tuned for all kinds performance levels and are often TRIM friendly. It’s also supported by 64MBs of Elpida cache which helps improve small block performance.

We can’t tell you what memory is inside the 60GB Agility for sure. Some Agility SSDs use memory marked with an “i” and some have Samsung clearly stamped on them. The internal memory in question here contains the same little “i” which has also been used in SSDs that utilize Intel controllers. So, it can’t be bad stuff.

The Agility Series

Then there’s the 120GB SSD leading the pack. It offers the same Read and Write performance. OCZ’s web page notes a 250GB max capacity, but we have yet to confirm one exists. Until then, it appears the Agility Series tops out at 120GB unless you spend more for their higher end Vertex series.

Some Very Beneficial Applications

While the desktop market is still adjusting to the size, cost, and performance of Solid State Drives, there is one area that SSDs absolutely excel. That would be the laptop and netbook markets.

Whether it’s a typical desktop or laptop hard drive, either are heavier than SSDs by far. SSDs weigh in about the same as your empty wallet. To be more precise, it weighs a few hundred grams less than a typical laptop hard drive and many hundreds of grams less than the typical desktop hard drive.

That may not seem like much, but try carrying around your laptop for day. Then, swap out the hard drive for the lighter SSD, or two, and you’ll definitely notice the difference. It really is nice to shed one or two pounds from your laptop. Plus, your laptop won’t blue screen if you accidentally give it an abrupt jolt like when you move it and it decides to wake up on its own.

Now that motherboards with the Intel P55A Chipset are flooding the channels, it means USB 3.0 and SATA3 devices are going to become more popular. But, we’re just now starting to see these peripherals leaking in to the market albeit very slowly and in limited quantities. The first SATA3 hard drive to make it to the shelves was the Seagate Barracuda XT.

Seagate’s Barracuda line has been extremely popular among users on a budget looking for the biggest size money can buy. Hopefully this new line of drives gets some upgrades that we can see benefits from in the real world. Luckily, one of these little monsters have just landed on my desk so I’ll be able to tell you what those benefits are.

Features and Specifications

The Barracuda XT SATA3 (ST32000641AS) Hard Drive can only be purchased in a massive 2TB capacity. Since people are looking for more storage, whether they need it or not, this isn’t such a bad thing. One of the key features that augment the drives overall SATA3 performance is its 64MB Cache. Adding cache has been shown to improve troughput, or transfer rates, even in regular SATA2 drives.

The XT’s platters still spin at a nominal 7200 RPM. This keeps noise levels at a moderate level, but nowhere near the clatter that comes from a WD Velociraptor for example that spins at 10000 RPM. Past experience with the newest Barracuda drives revealed that they are just as quiet when inside a quality computer enclosure.

Power consumption average rates are listed as 6.39 watts at idle. Full load power consumption is not specified. However, we’re predicting it to be very similar to Western Digital’s 2TB Black Caviar drive which averaged 22 watts at load. That said, we’ll be measuring for our own numbers to see if it proves to be good news for database admins looking to add this in a new storage array in the server room.

Just as Big, But Heavier

Case sizes of regular platter drives haven’t changed for over 10 years. They started off a little slimmer in the beginning, but then started to increase in thickness and weight as more platters are crammed inside the housing. Simply put, there just doesn’t seem like there’s anymore room.

The number two killer has been heat. In the past, drives required more power and when coupled with less advanced fluid mechanics, you simply get heat. And, lots of it! Some of the older drives on my test bench were almost too hot to touch at their maximum operating peak. As with any drive pushed to its limit, once the warranties have passed, they just end up in the trash.

These few things are on the minds of every administrator when their storage array maintenance schedule comes around. They should also be on the minds of regular consumers who store all their precious photos, videos and files on.

It’s only taken a couple years for the SSD (Solid State Drive) talk to die down. Or, has it? A lot of folks weren’t sure about the technology when it first launched. But as more Controllers and different flavors of NAND are thrown in to the mix, performance and pricing are starting to convince us. It would appear that MLC isn’t as useless or as bad as originally thought.

A good example of MLC working would be the next revision of Kingston’s previous SSDNow V+ series which gets a new configuration that engineers felt was just better. With a few changes, they were able to get a bit more performance as well as bring the series a little more up to date with other products on the market. Let’s see if the change is for the better.

Features and Specifications

One of the benefits of SSDs is the fact that they can operate at temperatures out the range of a regular platter based hard drive. Another benefit is the fact that they are very small and they give great performance to systems like laptops that often get stuck with slower versions of these platter based drives. There are always folks who need very mobile computers for whatever purpose and that movement leads to vibrations which are never good for the spinning platters of a conventional drive.

Though the new Revision 2.0 of this drive shares the same name as its predecessor, you’ll know that you have the new revision by its model number. The original 128GB version was known as SNVP225-S2/128GB. The new revision is labeled SNVP325-S2/128GB. So if you’re in the store wondering which one you have in your hands, this is how you tell.

Version 2 comes in the same 64, 128, 256, and 512GB capacities as the original line. The improvement comes in the form of a new Toshiba controller as well as the addition of Toshiba NAND Flash memory. This configuration should improve both sequential read and write throughput by 10MB/s to 230MB/s and the read should settle at 180MB/s respectively. Version 1 contained a Samsung controller and was rated to 220MB/s Read and 170MB/s. That wasn’t too bad in terms of a mainstream SSD. But, if a slight improvement means faster for the same or lesser price, we’re all for it.

Straight to Installation

If you’ve seen the last SSD up close, then you’ve seen this one too: there are no physical changes to the drive. Since we’re checking out the OEM version of this model, it doesn’t come with mounting adapters, cables, or specific software which you’ll find in the retail package. If you already have these items from your previous SSD purchaes, then that’ll save you a few bucks. Otherwise, if you need those items to make it work, buy the retail version.

As usual, we’ve assembled a test system and have laid it out here so that if you choose, you can easily reproduce our results for your benefit. Here are the test system specs:

• Intel Core i7 975XE “Bloomfield” Processor
• GIGABYTE GA-X58-Extreme Motherboard
• Kingston HyperX 12GB 1600MHz DDR3
• SSD1: Kingston SSDNow 128GB V+ Rev 1.0
• SSD2: Kingston SSDNow 128GB V+ Rev 2.0
• SSD3: Patriot Memory TorqX 128GB SSD
• Zotac Geforce GTX295 Video Card
• Antec Quattro 1000 Watt Power Supply

We’re going to keep testing as simple as possible so you can apply it to your own system. Benchmarks were taken using SANDRA’s Physical Drive Test, QuickBench, Crystal Disk Benchmark, and ATTO just for the elite database admins that rely on small file performance. Most of these tests are free or have free trial offers if you want to compare your current system’s storage abilities to the figures we’ve been able to achieve.

Network attached storage can offer all sorts of advantages over regular external hard drives. For starters, you have the ability to easily access its stored data on any computer that is connected to your home network. Thanks to configurations that allow for multiple hard drives, you can also added capacity, as well as data redundancy in case something should go awry.

If you are having a hard time deciding whether you want a NAS with smaller 2.5-inch drives or you would prefer one that takes full-size 3.5-inch hard drives, you’re in luck. The Thecus N0503 ComboNAS swings both ways… so to speak.

Features at a Glance

Easily one of the biggest selling features of the Thecus N0503 is that it can be configured to accept up to five 2.5″ drives or up to three 3.5″ drives. This is quite a bit of added versatility.

Running through the spec sheet, we also learn that it is powered by an Intel Atom processor (just like your favorite netbooks) and can support RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and JBOD for added data security. Other highlights include an AJAX web-based interface, uPnP AV streaming, a built-in photo album, and a download manager that can handle HTTP, FTP, BT, or eMule.

What’s in the Box?

Opening up the retail box of the Thecus N0503 ComboNAS, you obviously won’t find any included hard drives. You’ll have to supply those on your own.

What you will find is the NAS itself, a pre-installed cage for the 2.5-inch drives, a series of sliders for 3.5-inch drives, an Ethernet cable, power supply, installation CD, and supporting documentation.

Built-In Cage for Five 2.5″ Drives

As mentioned, there is a cage that comes pre-installed in the Thecus N0503 and this is designed to accommodate up to five 2.5-inch hard drives. In this cage, you get five separate trays, each of which can lock into place after you’ve screwed in the hard drive.

The build quality appears to be more than reasonable, giving you a lightweight aluminum structure on which to mount your spinning platters of wonderful data. The body of the NAS itself also appears to be made from aluminum, making for a look that borders somewhere between retro and industrial.

Giving you an almost server-like experience, the hard drive area is aptly protected by a swinging door on the front. Below this, you’ll see the small LCD panel, as well as a series of indicator lights and basic buttons for navigating through the rudimentary menu.

A few months back, Futurelooks took a close look at one of the first 2TB drives to hit the market, the Western Digital’s Caviar Green 2.0TB SATA2 Hard Drive. A couple of the features that the drive boasted was its massive 2.0 TeraByte capacity while still enjoying respectable low level power consumption. Better still, its performance was still excellent despite being a low power drive with super dense platters.

As with most of WD’s hard drive product line, they have drives tuned for both high performance like the Velociraptor or for size and lower power consumption like the aforementioned Green drives. Then somewhere in between there are the hard drives tuned for a little bit of both because hell raising administrators demand it. That series is called the Black Edition and today we take a look at the largest in the line called Western Digital Caviar Black 2.0TB (WD2001FASS).

Features and Specifications

While it may not seem like much is going into SATA technology, Futurelooks Summer tour of WD’s new facilities in California revealed that there was much going on. Some of the new features revealed to us at the time include Stable Trac, Dual Actuator Technology, Dual Processors, and what they’re calling Colossal 64MB Cache. All of these are in the drive that we’re going to look at today.

Stable Trac simply reduces vibrations being that the head is secured at both ends. Early hard drives didn’t offer this which resulted in some pretty erratic vibrations especially in server storage arrays. We can all appreciate this feature. However, things get even better.

The Dual Actuator technology is a nice little advancement given to the head which helps it position itself by slightly tilting to the left and right requiring less revolutions as it’s able to fine tune itself to find what it needs on the disk. Less revolutions can help prolong the drive’s life span. This is likely why Western Digital as decided to stand behind it with a beefy 5 year warranty.

In short, the Caviar Black is a 2 Terabyte monster performance hard drive offering the latest drive advancements along with its massive 64MB Cache. This is the most cache offered to date on their desktop storage drives. It also boasts a 7200 RPM spindle speed and comes in sizes from 500GBs to 2TBs (as tested) though the 2TB is special among its siblings.

Test System Configuration

In order to give this drive a good thrashing, we assembled the following components into a test bench to test this monster of a drive.

Test components include:

• Intel Core i7 870 Lynnfield Processor
• GIGABYTE X58-Extreme Motherboard
• Kingston 3×2GB HyperX 2000MHz DDR3 Memory
• Zotac Geforce GTX295 Graphics Card
• Western Digital 2TB (WD2001FASS) Caviar Black Hard Drive (As Reviewed)
• Antec 850 Watt Quattro Power Supply
• Seasonic Power Angel and Zalman MFC2 – recording power consumption

Windows Vista 64-bit was the OS of choice used in our testing while software such as HD Tune Pro and Crystal Mark were also recruited.

HD Tune Pro starts off our chosen benchmarks so that the results could be compared to the Caviar Green 2TB Hard Drive which was reviewed earlier in the year. Crystal Disk Benchmark was also chosen because it adds a nice little blend of Sequential and Random block testing, especially small block testing. It should reveal any performance improvements gained from the Caviar series’ features.

Power Consumption

To recap, power consumption of the WD Caviar Green 2TB drive in testing revealed it consumed an impressively low 16 Watts versus its Seagate nemesis, the 7200.11 1TB which consumed 25 Watts. To further apply some perspective, my aging lower capacity 500GB Seagate drives require 21.5 Watts at load.

Giving the Caviar Black 2TB a spin, the four 500GB internal platters needed only 18 Watts to move a 10GB media file. The test was performed three times and this was the most power consumed in all three tests. One thing to note is that it didn’t consume this at all times. Sometimes, it was a couple watts less. Now, this may not be much of concern to desktop users who may only need three or four, but storage racks housing a couple dozen hard drives or more all add up to some serious wattage. Power costs money and when you can save a few hundred watts over several arrays, you do save money on a the lower power bill.

In the noise level department, we found the drive surprisingly quiet compared to its rated 29 to 33 dBA. Where were these things tested, in a hollow can? I didn’t record any noise levels above 19 dBA even right up close. Overall, pretty good for a 7200 RPM drive.

It’s right there in the name. Patriot Memory is a company that has largely focused on memory products in the past, loading up your computers with RAM, solid state drives, and positively massive USB flash drives. Well, it seems that Patriot has developed an interest in consumer electronics too.

Whether you’re loading up with home movies or you’re looking for a better way to enjoy the digital content that you download from the Internet, it is certainly more appealing to bring that multimedia goodness into your living room. This is where we find ourselves with the Patriot Box Office PCMPBO25 Media Player. This relatively simple device looks like a set top box for your television, but it does so much more.

Introducing the Home Box Office

Not to be confused with the premium cable television network that brought us The Sopranos and Entourage, the Patriot Box Office is a media player that connects to your HDTV, freeing “your digital media library from the constraints of a PC.” Your living room is so much more comfortable, after all.

The Patriot Box Office improves on solutions like the Xbox 360 Media Player by offering extensive file format support. This includes popular AVI and WMV formats, as well as FLV, RMVB, MKV, MOV, and more. It’ll do FLAC audio too.

In addition to regular USB expansion, you’ll notice an internal 2.5″ SATA drive slot. Other highlights include network streaming, on-board file transfer, PC-free download management, movie previews, and full 1080p HD video support.

What’s in this Box (Office)?

As with almost every other media player in this market, especially at this price range, the Patriot Box Office doesn’t come with any included storage of its own. It will be up to you to provide either your own USB external storage or a 2.5″ drive (HDD or SSD) to plunk into the internal slot.

Cracking open the cube-shaped box, we discover the metal-bodied Box Office itself, as well as a set of composite cables, USB cable, HDMI cable, wall adapter, remote control, AAA batteries, quick installation guide, software CD, and a set of hard drive screws.

Assuming that you don’t “invest” in some expensive Monster Cable product, it doesn’t take a lot of money to buy a generic HDMI cable. Even so, no other media player (to my knowledge) comes with a “free” HDMI cable. For that alone, Patriot has a better grasp on what consumers need. We don’t want to watch through composite cables, thank you very much.

Control in Your Hands

The design for the remote control is anything but inspiring, but I suppose it’s perfectly functional. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that you are either looking at the remote that comes with a TV or some generic universal remote.

It’s unclear why Patriot decided to include the digits at the top, because I did not encounter a situation where they were used. I also prefer a “five-way navigator” layout for the play, pause, rewind, and fast forward keys, which this remote does not have.

From the outside looking in, most people would assume that the vast majority of notebook coolers are much the same. There are some that come with fans and some that do not, but that’s about it, right? Not exactly.

Just as we are moving toward convergence in the mobile phone world, the same can be said about notebook coolers. One of the most versatile offerings in this realm is the Choiix Air Through Stash Notebook Cooling Pad, a product also known by its less memorable C-HL04 model name. Its core feature may be its cooling, but it does so much more than keep the temperature down.

Features and Box Contents

Compatible with notebooks up to 15-inches in size, the Choiix Air Through Stash is said to be an “easy and ergonomic way to add extra storage to your notebook.” That’s because in addition to the single 80mm fan in the middle for cooling, this product also comes with an integrated 2.5″ hard drive (or SSD) dock.

The Air Through Stash utilizes a simple plastic and rubber design, and the functionality is further expanded with the inclusion of a three-port USB hub on the back. It’s available in your choice of black or white and it’ll work with SATA II hard drives as big as 500GB.

The box contents are remarkably simple, giving you a single instruction sheet, rubber grips, and a USB Y-cable, in addition to the cooling pad itself. Even though there is a DC power outlet in the back, no wall adapter is provided.

USB Hub and Active Cooling

One of the pitfalls that you’ll need to overcome with a laptop-only experience is the lack of USB ports. This is especially true if you want to make full use of the Choiix Air Through Stash, since it comes with a USB Y-Cable that will take up two of your notebook’s ports.

Thankfully, there is a three-port USB hub on the back of the Air Through Stash, giving you the space you need for added expansion. This is great for when you’re on the road, since you can use these ports for flash drives, webcams, and other peripherals.

Since the ports are located in the back, they’re not really as accessible as they could be. This isn’t a big problem if you’re using it for a Bluetooth adapter or a wireless receiver for an external mouse, but it can be an issue when attaching flash drives on the go.

The active cooling comes by way of a single 80mm fan. Because this is a slightly larger fan, it doesn’t spin quite as quickly and, as such, noise levels are kept to a minimum. Unlike the highly adjustable fans of the Vizo Ninja HS, however, the fan on the Air-Through Stash has a fixed position.

The single fan is placed right in the middle. The design may lead you to believe that you can shift the middle portion backward and forward, but this is not the case. I would have preferred some level of adjustability, since the “hot spot” on laptops can vary considerably.

On the plus side, there is a power button to turn off the fan when it’s not needed. On the down side, you cannot adjust the fan speed.

You probably could opt for a simple external hard drive, but you get a lot more functionality when you consider a network attached storage (NAS) solution. This way, everyone on your home (or work) network can access the files and functionality offered by the NAS.

While most NAS enclosures get a little bit on the bulky side of things, the Synology Disk Station DS409 Slim is about as compact as it gets, especially when you consider that it houses four hard drives in total. It also comes with a number of handy features that you may not find elsewhere.

Main Features and Highlights

The Synology Disk Station DS409slim is designed to work with four 2.5-inch hard drives. This may hurt the performance compared to 3.5-inch drives, but it also helps to lower the overall power consumption and noise.

While other NAS enclosures typically have to be opened up for you to access the drives, the DS409slim gives you direct access to the drives from the back. It’s not exactly a “hot swap” solution, but it’s about as close as it’s going to get.

For tech specs, you get a 1.2GHz processor, one 60mm fan, 128MB memory, and DLNA support. You can choose to set it up as basic, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 5+Spare, or RAID 6. While you could install some software on your computer, the vast majority of the interface can be done through a web browser instead. Connectivity is provided by a single gigabit ethernet port.

Included in the Box

While it would certainly be nice if something like this came with the storage included, that’s never really the case. The DS409slim has four bays to take on 2.5-inch hard drives, so you’ll need to invest in four drives of your own.

Aside from the actual Synology NAS enclosure itself, the box doesn’t come with that much in terms of accessories. You get the power supply brick and a power cable and an ethernet cable. There’s also the basic set of instructions and an installation CD, as well as a small stand.

Smaller Than a GameCube

You want small? The Synology Disk Station DS409slim is even smaller than the Nintendo GameCube, which was already pretty small in its own right. The DS409slim is almost cube-shaped, measuring 120 x 105 x 142mm. It’s also roughly the size of one of those really big coffee mugs that you see some people using. This is quite the tiny footprint for a fully featured NAS.

Despite the rapid price drops of decent sized solid state drives, pricing limits them from reaching the average consumer. The marketing has also convinced us that it takes the largest and flashiest hard drives to get the best performance which means we might not buy today. Granted, today’s platter drives are impressive versus those from 5 years ago not to mention the huge capacities but when it comes to starting up the system, it’s still the slowest component in today’s mainstream computers. There’s an easy fix for this and it’s called an SSD Boot Drive.

SSD boot drives are nothing more than a smaller, more affordable SSD that holds your system’s primary Operating System while your secondary platter drive(s) hold media, games, and other non-OS related files. This configuration converts your desktop or your laptop into very responsive systems. That’s why Kingston Technology has brought out their new SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive. Just because it’s small and cheap, doesn’t mean it isn’t high performance!

Features and Specifications

While the 40GB SSDNow comes from the same series as the 128GB V Series we reviewed a while back, it does not share the same limited JMicron controller. The drive is in fact an Intel SSD fully equipped with an Intel Memory Controller. That got your attention, didn’t it?

The 40GB “Boot Drive” is rated to 170MB/s Sequential Read and 40MB/s Sequential Write. That’s not a very beefy Sequential Write rating, but it should smoke a regular platter drive where Random Read/Writes rates are concerned. That’s what gives a system that snappy boot time and responsiveness.

And of course, the warranty is important. It carries Kingston’s standard 3 Year SSD warranty. Putting the smaller capacities to use keeps the price limited to $115 MSRP or lower depending on the retailers. Overall, that’s not too shabby a deal.

One thing we are concerned about is the lack of immediate TRIM or Intel Toolbox cleaning software. Even some internal firmware cleaning support would be worth the investment. The word right now is that something could be available soon. Otherwise, you’ll have to manually clean it with a 3rd party utility. Either way, it’s been proven that Intel SSDs maintain their performance as they fill up.

The Retail Package

Popping open the box reveals an SSD retail package that mirrors the 128GB SSDNow V except for the 40GB label. The drive doesn’t offer any bling or flare other than it’s own SSD existence. Basically, the 40GB Boot Drive looks just like any other SSDNow V Series. There’s no new wrapping or fancy case (I patented that already).

Inside the bundle, you’ll find two drive bay brackets to help adapt the SSD to any hard drive bay. The brackets can hold two SSDs in one conventional HDD slot. Simply use the included screws to mount it. You’ve got to love the more compact size of SSDs!

Yep. Intel Inside.

The objective of this series is to offer you a taste of high performance while improving Boot times and overall system response that you you can’t get with standard platter drives. We know that Intel controllers can give you a much better and balanced level of performance than any JMicron could ever dream of doing.

It’s pretty slick putting those smaller SSD bins to use in this respect. We heard that there weren’t a great many small volumes lying around but more SSDs would be available depending on supply numbers. The point here though is that the 40GB Boot Drive can serve another purpose. It could double as a portable storage solution and is a far faster option compared to many 32 and/or 64GB USB flash drives which are only as fast as USB 2.0 and limited to 28 to 33MB/s on a good day.

We don’t think it would be tacky or odd to carry around one of these stylish little SSDs in your shirt pocket, or bag. In fact, you might start a trend if you’re not careful. “Geek wars” where you throw down your biggest and baddest SSDs!

Kingston Technology is back with a new and improved version of their value series of SSDNow solid state drives called the V+ Series. While the original entry level SSDNow Value Series was a competent drive based on it’s price point, it did suffer against faster foes based on its use of the infamous JMicron controller. Having said that, Kingston did a great job tweaking the controller and made it a great value for those who just had to have an SSD at a more entry level price.

Regardless of whether an SSD uses MLC or SLC, the memory controller is essentially the one component that can make or break an SSD. Now that the slower JMicron controllers are rumored to be thinning out, vendors are left with better bargain choices like controllers manufacturered by Samsung. Performance is said to be noticeably faster than the JMicrons, but just short of the more expensive and highly sought after Indilinx controllers. Does the SSDNow V+ take it’s new Samsung controller and run with it? Let’s find out!

Features and Specifications

Before getting into the thick of things, let’s reiterate a few important points about this new addition to Kingston’s value arsenal of SSD drives. First off, this drive uses a Samsung series controller. If you recall, small block performance came up quite short in the JMicron controller based original Kingston 128GB SSDNow Value Series drive that we reviewed earlier in the year.  The Samsung controllers are better tuned which should equate to overall better small block performance and peak transfer rates.

The SSDNow V+ series drives are available in 64, 128, and 256 GB sizes. Kingston states that there is a slight Write performance difference between the models. In the case of our 64GB test model here, the Write throughput specs out at 140 MB/s, the 128GB enjoys a 170 MB/s while the 256GB produces 180MB/s. Read throughput is still 220MB/s across the series so there’s no lack of read speed in this respect.

As with any Kingston SSD drive, there’s a nice 3 Year warranty to back it up. Since “wear leveling” has been estimated to occur somewhere around the 12 year mark, this should offer some peace of mind that you can beat it down as much as you can in the 3 years. Chance is enormously in your favor that this, or any SSD, will far outlive your platter drives.

You Don’t Get A Lot In The Box

Our SSDNow V+ 64GB SSD arrived in an OEM box. OEM more than likely means yours won’t arrive with mounting adapters software or any of the other niceties that a retail package will offer. This is a handy little bit of info that can save you some hassle down the road. Just don’t forget to pick up the bits you need before your upgrade project.

The SSD design is pretty simple. You get a little Kingston wrapped SSD in a thin, light weight aluminum case. If it weren’t for the Kingston sticker, you wouldn’t know who made it. Thus far, no one has come up with any fancy housings to show off their insides or expose them in any way. Could this be a hint? If it is, I’m holding the patent!

Installation and Test Setup

The test system is configured exactly to match the test system we used in the original 128GB SSDNow Value series review. I even installed the V+ SSD in to the same mounting bracket that’s already holding the 128GB V Series. This way we can show you a more perfect apples to apples comparison. The only difference is the omission of any regular SATA hard drive benchmarks since we know there is no comparision in speeds.

Just in case you forgot what we had in the test system, here’s how it’s set up:

• Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition [D0 Stepping] Processor
• ASUS ROG Rampage II Gene X58 Micro ATX Motherboard
• Kingston HyperX 6GB 2000 MHz Triple Channel DDR3 Memory
• Zotac Geforce GTX 295 Graphics Card
• Kingwin Mach 1 1000Watt Power Supply

In order to make things interesting, the Indilinx equipped Patriot Memory TorqX 128GB SSD was thrown in there just to mix thing sup when it comes to controllers. In effect, this becomes a three way competition between Samsung, Indilinx and JMicron.

Following standard operating procedures (at least around here), the test system was confirmed up to date with the latest drivers and BIOS. Both SSDs were formatted so the performance results would be fresh. Tests were conducted with any Caching disabled. The test software suite includes SANDRA, ATTO, QuickBench, and CrystalDiskMark.