Kingston Technology 64GB SSDNow V+ SATA Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts

So with all the benchmarks out of the way, the question is, where does this SSD Place on the Food Chain?

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The Kingston 64GB SSDNow V+ is obviously much faster than the original Value series in every respect. The V+ cost roughly $30 more than its Value sibling which makes it easily the better choice and, as far as I’m concerned, worth the extra cash. The same applies as you move up to the 128GB versions which, again, would be a bit faster. The V+ gives the Indilinx controlled SSDs no fear of losing their edge as they are consistently faster with some supporting advanced functions like TRIM.

The V+ is somewhat of an enigma when it comes to design. Currently, Samsung controllers don’t support TRIM nor do they provide any software to allow us to make any firmware updates. In their current state, the V+ Series rely on their own internal firmware to actively keep the drive clean which only works on the NTFS files system. This means that unless Samsung gets moving on providing a flashable solution (this drive cannot be flashed) they could miss out on potential Linux and Mac OSX business. In other words, if you don’t run a Windows PC, then stay away.

Kingston uses HDD Erase 3.3 to “clean” the SSDs which you can readily get off the web. It’s a DOS operated utility that has worked on their particular SSDs. There are mixed reports of the latest 4.0 being quite as successful. Unfortunately, there’s still no easy way yet to wipe it clean. I suspect something is coming for all Samsung controlled SSD owners just about the time Windows 7 piles on to the shelves.

If it weren’t for the lack of both TRIM and upgradeable software support, we could give this drive a far better mark than it is getting. It simply misses the boat on anything but Windows and NTFS. Otherwise, the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series Solid State Drive is the perfect value upgrade for Windows (NTFS) users.

Pros