Note: This drive came around end of 2010. I have been caught up in other stuff, personal and professional, hence the delay in posting my results of this drive. I also thank Kingston Technology for supporting me.

SSDs are making inroads even in smaller and price competitive market like India. Here’s what Kingston says about this new entry:

The new range features enhanced garbage collection that is not OS dependent, making it a solid upgrade path to extend the life cycle of older client systems. The V+100’s drive performance has also been increased by 25 percent, enabling more efficient data transfer over the previous generation. In addition, a new 96 GB capacity has been added to the family offering a broader range of choices to enterprise customers.

Kingston’s new SSDNow V+100 Series also enables a great ‘straddling’ of operating systems; its compatibility (including the garbage collection feature) with both XP and Windows 7, means that users can enjoy the immediate benefits of cost-effective performance improvements for their XP systems and/or as they move to Windows 7

As the Kingston PR suggests, enhanced garbage collection is the key here. I read an article about same product on Anandtech.com, explains how the garbage collection works and can be beneficial in longer run.

Pictures:

Specification:

Kingston SSDNow V+100 Features and Specifications:

• Sequential Speed¹: 230MB/sec. read; 180MB/sec. write
• Capacity²: 64GB, 96GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
• PCMark Vantage³:
  64 GB – 35,046
  96 GB – 34,971
  128 GB – 35,073
  256 GB – 34,795
  512 GB – 34,697

• Performance: PCs boot 3 times faster than a standard HDD; applications opened 2.5 times quicker; enhanced productivity makes users more efficient
• Silent: Runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
• Ease of Upgrade: Upgrade times can be reduced by up to 4 hours
• Support: Simplicity, speed and endurance of SSDs decreases calls to IT departments, freeing up staff to focus on core responsibilities
• Shock Resistant: No moving parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions than a hard drive
• Supports TRIM: TRIM notifies the SSD which data blocks are available to be written to
• Supports S.M.A.R.T.: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
• Guaranteed: Backed by a three-year Kingston warranty, free tech support
• Power Specs: .8W (TYP) Active / 0.05W (TYP) Idle
• Storage Temperatures: -40° C to 85° C
• Operating Temperatures: 0°C to 70° C
• Dimensions: 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm
• Operating Shock: Operating 2.7G
• Vibration: Non operating 20G
• Weight: 64GB, 96GB, 128GB, 256GB=128g; 512 GB=150g
• Life Expectancy: 1 million hours MTBF

¹ Based on internal testing. Performance may vary based on system settings.

² Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual available capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston’s Flash Guide at kingston.com/flash_memory_guide.

³ Test System: Intel^® DG45ID Desktop Motherboard; Intel^® Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU at 2.83GHz; 4GB system memory; on-board SATA 3Gbps with AHCI-enabled; Windows^® 7 Professional x64

Test setup:

Intel 980x
GIGABYTE x58A-UD3R
Kingston Hyperx 12GB
Kingston SSDNow V+100 64GB
MSI GTX275 Lightning
Antec 1200W

Results:

AS SSD Benchmark and Crystal Diskmark

HDTune Pro:

Read

Write

Random Access Read

Random Access Write

Observations:
I did not test this drive against any other drive, even though I have a GSkill 64GB and an Intel 80GB SSDs. In its 64GB capacity it is slower compared to products from OCZ as well as Corsair but then while it may be slower there is a major advantage of using this drive which is not dependent on the operating system one decides to use. I highly recommend this drive for out of box usability without worrying for the OS supporting features.

Once again Thank You, Kingston Technology.