Kingston SSDNow V-Series Notebook Upgrade Kit Review

by Jerry Jackson

When solid state drives (SSDs) started to appear several years ago, every laptop owner who saw one immediately wanted one. Unlike hard disk drives (HDDs) with moving parts that are prone to failure due to vibration or impact, SSDs have no moving parts (similar to a USB flash drive or thumb drive) and are significantly faster than the hard drive in your laptop. Until recently, SSDs were too expensive for average consumers to own, but Kingston hopes to change all that with the SSDNow V-Series with Notebook Bundled Accessory Kit. This Kingston SSD upgrade kit includes not only an affordable 128GB SSD, but it includes everything a typical laptop owner needs to turn an average laptop into a high-performance machine.

Kingston SSDNow V-Series with Notebook Bundled Accessory Kit Specifications:

• Architecture: MLC NAND Flash Memory
• Form Factor: 2.5"
• Capacity: 128GB
• Interface Type: SATA II
• Notebook accessory kit included (USB external SATA enclosure and software)
• Max Vibration Resistance: 2.17 G (800Hz)
• Sequential Access - Read: 100MB/sec
• Sequential Access - Write: 80MB/sec
• Features Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) to notify users before the drive fails, for enhanced data security
• Life expectancy: 1 million hours mean time before failure
• Retail Price: $249.99

The Kingston SSDNow upgrade kit in all its glory!

Packaging, Features and Installation
Most commercially available SSDs on the market include the SSD and nothing else. The manufacturer just assumes you know what to do with it. Kingston recognized that many laptop owners might want to upgrade to a SDD, but the typical consumer needs a bit more help. That's why Kingston includes an external enclosure and a copy of Acronis True Image software so that you can transfer your entire hard drive (including Windows) to your new SSD. The added benefit of the external enclosure is that you can put your old laptop hard drive inside the enclosure and use it as extra storage. The images of the SSD show the SSD inside the mounting bracket for a HP Pavilion dv4t notebook. The mounting bracket isn't included ... I just neglected to remove it prior to taking photos.

I usually just install a clean copy of Windows whenever I install a new hard drive or solid state drive in a notebook, but I've also used various types of software to clone hard drives so that I don't have to re-install Windows. Typically, cloning software doesn't work as well as you might think. You usually end up wishing you had just installed a clean copy of Windows instead of trying to copy your old hard drive. This was NOT the case with the Kingston SSDNow kit.

I can honestly say that this is the easiest upgrade kit and easiest cloning software I've ever used. Just remove your old hard drive from your notebook, install the new SSD, install the old hard drive into the provided external enclosure and connect it to a USB port on your notebook, then insert the install CD into the drive and follow the on-screen instructions. The entire process couldn't be any easier ... well, almost.

There are only two minor annoyances I encountered when using the Kingston SSDNow kit. First, there is no printed copy of the installation instructions. You have to print out the instructions from the PDF document included on the CD. It would make life much easier if Kingston included a printed copy of the instructions in the box. Second, if your current hard drive is larger than 128GB (and you're using all or most of that space) then you need to remove software and files from your old hard drive before you try to clone your old hard drive over to the new SSD.

Still, I can't get over how easy this kit makes upgrading a laptop hard drive to a super-fast SSD.

Performance
Kingston claims the V-Series SSDs have a sustained read speed of 100MB/s and a write speed of 80MB/s, which is faster than the fastest 7200rpm hard drives but not as fast as some of the SSDs on the market that are based on SLC NAND flash. Since most of our readers aren't interested in the specific techincal details of MLC NAND flash versus SLC NAND flash, let's just say that MLC is cheaper, but SLC has better endurance, better read/write speeds, and lower power consumption.

Regardless, Kingston doesn't intend for the V-Series SSDs to be the fastest SSDs on the market. In fact, Kingston is targeting current notebook users who want to upgrade their current laptops with an easy-to-use SSD at an affordable price. To that end, the V-Series 128GB SSD offers a solid (pun intended) upgrade for laptop owners who are using older hard drives.

The Windows Experience Index score isn't the best indicator of performance, but it does an alright job comparing two types of hardware before and after you've upgraded a PC. The images below show the Windows Experience Index score for my HP Pavilion dv4t notebook using a 320GB 7200rpm hard drive and a 128GB Kingston V-Series SSD. The overall score doesn't change because of the weak Intel integrated graphics, but the important thing to notice in these images is that the score for the hard disk after the SSD upgrade is 5.9 ... the highest score available from the Windows Experience Index.

WEI scores with 7200rpm hard drive.

WEI scores with Kingston V-Series 128GB SSD.

Our tests with HDTune showed impressive results after we loaded the drive with Windows Vista and enough files to occupy 72GB of space on the 128GB SSD. The average data transfer rate of the Kingston SSD was more than 80MB/sec compared to only around 60MB/sec with a fast 7200rpm hard drive and less than 50MB/sec with a 5400rpm hard drive.

We also tested the SSD with Atto which is one of the standard synthetic benchmarks we use to test the performance of a storage drive. Below you can see the average read and write speeds for the WD Scorpio Black drive compared to a Toshiba 5400rpm notebook hard drive the Kingston V-Series solid state drive.

320GB Toshiba MK3252GSX 5400rpm HDD	320GB WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm HDD	Kingston V-Seires 128GB SSD
320GB Toshiba MK3252GSX 5400rpm HDD	320GB WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm HDD	Kingston V-Series 128GB SSD

Clearly, the 128GB V-Series SSD provides a nice performance boost over a 7200rpm hard drive and a pretty respectable improvement over a standard 5400rpm hard drive. However, if we compare the performance of the V-Series SSD to some of the more expensive SSDs on the market it's clear that the Kingston SSD isn't quite as fast as some of the other SSDs on the market:

Intel X25-M SSD

OCZ Vertex 30 SSD

Granted, the Kingston SSDNow V-Series SSD costs only a fraction of the price of the Intel and OCZ SSDs with similar capacities ... but it's fair to point out that the value-priced Kingston SSD won't provide the same extreme performance seen in more expensive SSDs.

Heat and Noise
The drive consumes fairly low amounts of power, but since it isn't the most power-efficient SSD on the market it does warm up over time. The exterior reached roughly 90 degrees Fahrenheit when running in open air outside a laptop and when mounted inside a notebook the temperatures varied between 103 and 112 degrees depending on the notebook. Though, to be fair, the notebooks we used during testing (such as the HP Pavilion dv4t) are notorious for having hot drive bay areas so those triple-digit temperatures may have a lot to do with heat from other components. Noise levels are not a problem with any SSD, since they have no moving parts. The drive is completely silent.

Power Consumption
Measured power usage was higher in both idle and load than more expensive SSDs like the OCZ Vertex SSD, but idle and active power consumption remains at or below what we see from standard 5400rpm and 7200rpm hard drives. Compared to the Western Digital Scorpio Black hard drive that I was using in my dv4t, the power savings from the Kingston V-Series SSD are quite impressive. Another key thing to remember is that the SSD spends less time under load. SSDs work faster, processing requests quicker and then go back to idle sooner than a hard drive.

Hard Drive	Power Idle/Active
OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD	0.41/0.76W
Mtron Mobi 3000 1.8" PATA 32GB SSD	0.90/2.00W
Kingston V-Series 128GB SSD	0.45/2.31W
Hitachi 5k500.B 500GB	0.66/2.31W
Seagate 5400.5 250GB	0.85/2.31W
WD Scorpio Blue 500GB	1.00/2.68W
Hitachi 7k320 160GB	0.85/2.71W
Seagate 7200.3 320GB	0.95/3.03W
Seagate 7200.2 120GB	1.00/3.51W
WD Scorpio Black 320GB	1.00/3.51W

Conclusion
We live in very interesting times right now when it comes to laptops. Most industry professionals believe SSDs will replace hard disk drives in most laptops within the next few years. Thanks to low-cost MLC-based SSDs like the Kingston SSDNow V-Series we will start to see even more notebooks with SSDs showing up as early as this holiday season. The Kingston V-Series SSD provides trouble-free shock protection for all your data (no more crashing hard drives) and it will make your laptop feel faster as well. Heck, you might even gain a few extra minutes of battery life thanks to lower power consumption.

The all-in-one upgrade kit offers fantastic value at $250 or less, and when you consider the benefits of SSDs over traditional hard drives the Kingston SSDNow V-Series with Notebook Bundled Accessory Kit seems like a perfect solution for people who want to upgrade their current laptop.

Some of our technical readers are no doubt interested in how MLC-based SSDs will perform over time. Indeed, several websites mention that although MLC SSDs are fast and cheap, they may lose performance over time and become less reliable ... even fail. The editors at NotebookReview.com and our sister site DesktopReview.com will bring you more details in the coming months as we begin our long-term tests on SSD performance and reliability. Stay tuned.

With a three-year warranty and 24/7 technical support, the Kingston SSDNow V-Series should prove to be a compelling and trustworthy solution for notebook owners who want a simple upgrade for their aging laptops.

Pros:

• Includes an external USB enclosure
• Easiest cloning software I've ever seen
• Nice performance boost at a fair price

Cons:

• No printed copy of the installation instructions
• If you have a larger hard drive you need to delete files
• MLC flash is cheap, but not as fast as SLC

Related Articles:

• Mtron Mobi 3000 SSD Review
• Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B Review
• Solidata SSD Review
• WD Scorpio Black and Scorpio Blue Hard Drive Review
• Intel X25-M SSD Review

 

Just curious, did it help you boot time by much?

 

Nothing helps Vista.

Seriously, I did see a increased boot speed of about two to three seconds, but that's not a night and day difference.

The most obvious performance difference is in searching the hard drive for something, loading applications, or loading levels during some games. I'm really looking forward to upgrading my notebook to Windows 7 because that "should" be considerably faster to boot ... plus our Windows 7 expert over at DesktopReview.com mentioned that Windows 7 should be more friendly to SSDs.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my laptop wakes up faster from sleep mode using the SSD ... which makes it nice for laptop users since you can close the lid to save battery life and then resume working without too much delay when you open the screen lid.

 

Nice review, but you guys really need to comment on aspects of SSDs that are critical. Specifically, what controller does it use? Does it stutter? What are the random small file writes? IOPs testing?

Sustained read/write speeds are not always the most important info about a drive. Also, there are many MLC drives that have higher read/write speeds than this drive, and there are MLC drives that are faster than SLC drives. It just seemed like you gave the impression that SLC is always faster than MLC.

 

Well, I suspect the true market for this upgrade kit consists of average consumers who will just say "HUH?" when I start talking about controllers and what Kingston is doing to prevent stutter, but here goes:

The controller and flash memory chips in the V-Series SSDs are Toshiba-branded parts. That said, the controller is really a JMicron variant.

True, the JMicron controller has been criticized for stuttering issues (slow hangs/freezes) in other SSD drives, but Kingston engineers have been working with JMicron and Toshiba to correct that stuttering problem. Kingston claims to use an exclusive/proprietary firmware in the V-Series SSDs that solves the lag/stuttering problem completely.

The firmware is what really brings the sequential bandwidth down to 100MB/s read in order to attain better random IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) which is key to resolving what causes the stuttering in the JMicron controller. The Toshiba-rebadged JMicron controller also contains a larger cache (64KB compared to 16KB in a typical JMicron controller) which should also help eliminate the saturation problems that contribute to the lag/stutter problems.

In short, the V-Series "should" see significantly less stutter than previous JMF602B-based SSDs.

I'll also note that I never experienced any lag/stutter/freezes during my testing of the Kingston V-Series SSD.

Mullenbooger, I hope that answered any questions you had about the technical specifics. If you want additional details, let me know and I'll do my best to provide them. I could include some IOMeter results, but my personal take is that many of the synthetic benchmarks for hard drives and SSDs focus on something incredibly specific (like the maximum write response time with 4K file sizes) that might not be representative of real-world performance.

Anyway, I digress. Let me know if you want more technical specifics and I'll post them here in the forums, I just want to make sure the folks visiting the home page can still understand what I'm talking about.

 

Thanks Jerry! I might consider this for my netbook if the price is right

Edit: doesn't look like its worth it. For a little bit more you can get a blazing fast vertex which definitely won't stutter

 

I'm no SSD guru, but the inclusion of a larger write cache on this SSD should definitely help. I've been using flashpoint betas (ramdisk write cache for SSD) with few problems to deal with my SSD issues, though it increases shut down times by a whole lot.

 

actually, yes, it should help vista. vista boot times can be very fast, but often, some drivers will block it. and those drivers will block the win7 boot speed just as well (while the boot process is different).

 

I saw this the other day, price is atractive but when you really break it down into price vs performance I wonder, does it really add up to being a good deal?

Its not a whole lot faster than a normal hdd but cost way more and also reduces your capacity of storage space.

The faster seek time is the only ray of light it has for really doing it any justice, but if your already $250 in the hole, what does another $100 mean to get something nearly 2x as good like the Falcon.

To that end I call this "average joe fair priced ssd upgrade" experiment a failure.

Id get an external enclosure, download the free trail of acronis for the cloning, and go get a 128gb Falcon/Vertex

 

I'd like to see I/O benchmarks too.

The second page of HD Tune Pro is good for that.

 

Mullenbooger is right, even if this disk is designed for replacing "noisy and non-shock" resistant HDD and be affordable, there should be random write/read (with 4KB data chunkcs) and of course IOPS. In other words without this we cannot compare this disk to other cheap disks (like OCZ Core V2). It is good to do all tests that Anandtech is doing.
Even with regard of this , bundle is nice, software added also, price too. In Poland price is 333$. Margin high as always here

 

My vista Boot time on my vertex was never above 15 secs

my Win 7 boot time after tweaks was 7 sec...

 

I will add some I/O benchmarks here since it looks like there's some interest. I'll knock that out later today.

While we're on the subject of IOPS numbers, all SSDs using the JMicron 602-based controller are going to exhibit slow random write performance especially when compared to more expensive SSDs like the Intel or the Kingston M-series SSDNow.

The firmware tweaks Kingston did to the V-Series (and the larger cache in the Toshiba-branded JMicron controller) eliminated the drive stutter but the slow random write performance is going to remain. That is really tied to the controller so the only way to resolve that is to use a different controller. That said, Kingston deserves some credit for helping the SSD enthusiasts around the web see that slow random write performance is not necessarily tied to drive stutter.

Despite the random write performance I still argue that the overall "real world" performance of this SSD is noticeably better than a 7200rpm notebook hard drive because of MUCH faster sequential read, sequential write, and random read performance ... and extremely fast access time. This makes a worthwhile upgrade if you're a road warrior or student who tosses your laptop around and want a shock-proof storage drive.

 

Oh, and in response to Davepermen and The Moo,

I was trying to make a joke when I said nothing helps Vista. (That's why I used the winking/sarcasm emoticon.)

As I stated, I did see a slightly faster boot, but it wasn't a night and day difference when you look at boot speed. However, my point was that Vista isn't exactly the fastest booting OS on the planet.

I'll still take Vista any day over XP ... but I have a feeling Windows 7 is going to feel MUCH faster, particularly in terms of startup/boot speed.

 

OH yea Win 7 is Optimized right out of the box in the Registry and stuff for SSD's

Boot times were night and day before and after Vista tweaks

Win 7 boot times vs Boot times on Vista with a 7200 RPM were worlds apart to ...

 

Does anyone know if this is compatible with MacBook Pro's (non-unibody version)? I run XP/Vista Virtual Machines using Fusion for my day job, and having an SSD would certainly boost performance considerably.

 

well i'd avoid that thing. the low results for the lower block sizes are what matters when it comes to boot time and app load times and what not. i'd put rather low interest in sequential and large block size speeds.

besides that, the MOST important thing is: does it support the ata TRIM command with win 7? if not, it's another piece of jmicron junk. i unfortunately know very good what i'm talking about. i've praised my jmicron based ssd for a few months, until it began to degrade drastically (it's actually dead now, but that should be covered by warranty - i hope). i don't know if this is true for all jmicron ssds, but my jm602b based ssd didn't support the secure erase command, thus it will never ever come back to top speeds (nor formatting or whatsoever will help then).

i like the reviews here, but in regards to jmicron ssds i'd be really thoughtful to praise any product based on that chip as they have unexpected mid-/ long- term issues.

 

Better get something else like Intel, OCZ Vertex or Summit.

Intel is rumored to come with cheap SSDs soon: http://redirectingat.com/?id=525X83...rdware.com/news/Intel-SSD-32nm-NAND,8158.html

 

They focus on that rightly because it's the main thing aybody needs to look at to determine real world performance. We all know an SSD will read/write sequentially at very least on par with a mechanical drive, that's given. 4K IOPS are what matters in determining quality real world performance of a SSD.

I realize the review is written for the average person, but many, many reviews also said old JMicron drives didn't stutter anymore but the 4K IOPS said otherwise, and sure enough, those drives stuttered too but reviews didn't test them in situations that simulated the queue depth of an operating system being used intensively.

Run IOMeter 100% 4K Write 100% Random for 1 minute with outstanding IOs 3 and and sector size 200000. And CrystalDiskMark. That's a really easy way to determine if the JMicron controller is improved and if so by how much. (Screenshots too. )

 

I've been using a Patriot Warp 32GB (old JMicron) for over 6 months now, mostly on Windows 7 and I haven't run into any stuttering issues. The performance benefit has been fantastic (at least over the original 120GB 5400RPM drive in my laptop) so I have no qualms with upgrading to something like this drive, which I picked up recently for the space increase.

It could simply be my usage patterns, but regardless of the reason, the Patriot JMicron SSD has been a very nice price/performance upgrade for my system (~$60 for the 32GB).

 

maybe you then didn't yet hit the degradation barrier. i have reinstalled my system a few times and had my system ssd nearly completely filled up several times. it's just a question of time when the drive will degradte. but it unfortunately definifively will sooner or later. that's why i'd never buy a jmicron ssd again, but rather recommend a samsung 128gb ssd, which you can get for just ~ 50 bucks more - with alot more performance.

a sata/ata/usb adapter cable costs about 10 dollars at ebay.

seriously, it's a nice performance upgrade in short/mid term. but in the long run it's really a waste of money, and this has been covered by money reviews before (like anandtech did). i was so stupid to not believe it, and was fascinated by the performance upgrade at first. now i regret that i just wasted my money and didn't listen to those advises to advoid the drives.

 

I really like the looks of SSD drives and the direction they are going... I'm still probably going to wait a year though for prices to come down more and maybe capacity to go up a bit.

 

Yeah, performance may degrade eventually, but I've reformatted twice and have filled the drive up to ~90% each time, hence the reasoning behind the upgrade for size only. Haven't noticed any slowdown yet. Perhaps benchmarks would say otherwise though.

The 128GB Samsungs are about twice the price of the 128GB Kingston in Canada ($400 versus $210), which made the choice relatively easy.

 

Lets not kid ourselves here, until Intel lowers the price of the amazing X25 the masses will not start buying.

The read times are a joke, the Intel X25 is over 2.5 times faster in real world applications.

 

How many of the masses are doing research on SSD's right now? The masses buy $500 acer laptops and are satisfied *shrug*

The masses will start buying when SSD's are commonly sold with notebooks.

 

Sorry for the delay in getting these figures posted. My wife and daughter wanted my attention during the Friday before the 4th of July and IOMeter doesn't like partitioned storage drives.

In any case, since sequential read and write speeds, aren't good indicators of potential lag/stutter, I used IOMeter to examine the maximum random read and maximum random write speeds to reveal any potential lag/stuttering with small file sizes. For this test, I set IOMeter to 100% random commands of 4K size for read and write. These numbers should therefor represent the worst case scenario for any SSD or HDD with small file random reads and writes.

I didn't have a ton of drives available for comparison, and since IOMeter required me to remove any partitions from the drives I didn't want to destroy the data (or have to back it up) on multiple drives. I picked a 7200rpm notebook hard drive and a 10,000rpm desktop hard drive for performance comparisons.

The lower the score ... the better the performance.

	Maximum Random Read Response Time	Maximum Random Write Response Time
128GB Kingston SSDNow V-Series	3.76ms	244.24ms
320GB Western Digital Scorpio Black Notebook HDD	67.88ms	69.91ms
300GB Western Digital Velociraptor Desktop HDD	28.74ms	31.13ms

[/p]
Obviously, the Kingston V-Series SSD is extremely fast when it comes to random read performance, but the random write speed shows the Achilles Heel of the JMicron-based controller. We didn't have any other SSDs in our office with the JMicron controller, but after looking online at other sites it appears that other JMicron-based SSDs are even slower -- sometimes between two and three times slower than the Kingston V-Series in terms of random write performance -- and that's where the other SSDs start to show lag and stutter. Yes, 240+ milliseconds looks bad in print, but doesn't reflect lag/stutter in real life use ... at least not at this point in the life of this SSD.

Again, the team here at NBR will be bringing you more SSD coverage based on long-term testing ... our goal is to share "real life" performance results over time to show whether SSD performance and reliability drops after months of use rather than just using synthetic benchmarks to simulate the worst case scenario.

 

Do you have the screenshots from IOMeter? MB/s and IOPS are more important than maximum response time, although the maximum response time is useful.

Thanks again for the time!

 

Thanks. That's what matters to me. I own the 64GB version of this drive, and have done multiple things that I would think would induce stutter (downloading 5-6 torrents at 800kb/sec combined while watching xvid video, or unrarring 700mb files while surfing the web with 5-6 active tabs in firefox) and it just hasn't stuttered. If it does what I want it to, i don't care what a benchmark will tell me is wrong with the drive. It's not about ignorance, it's about the drive not disappointing. And I love how the laptop is now silent as opposed to having the 7200.3 drive inside.

 

HM ive been looking at a 64GB SSD myself, Possibly just to keep the OS on. But this has me intrigued i have 2 HDD slots an am only using one i dont think it would be too bad to add this drive.

 

Kingston 138.99, OCZ vertex is 199.99. I'd probably spend the little bit extra and get the vertex. You could also get a samsung drive for under 200.

 

meh.. i was thinking about getting it for $150 at Fry's yesterday x.x

 

When I bought mine, it was $127 for the Kingston (notebook bundle which comes with an enclosure + Acronis imaging software) vs $220 for the Vertex. We don't get the nice prices that are available in the US as frequent. That's not a "little bit extra" to me unfortunately.

 

Installed this SSD yesterday (comming from a hitachi 7k200 160GB) in my msi pr200 (santa rosa) running vista64 H P. Got the notebook kit, which includes clone software (peace of cake) and an (plastic) external enclosure. Package is 200 euro's, compared to 360 for the vertex. When the vertex (or succesor) is cheaper, this kingston will go in my girlfriends netbook.
Drive is running perfectly, no stuttering so far. It's a bit faster booting, but not spectacular. Programs start faster, but not spectaculair. I'm almost missing the rattling noises from the 'old' drive...
Battery seems to hold a bit longer, but not spectacular either.
I installed all tweaks from this post http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212
Happy so far!

 

heh.. i just got this yesterday, the 64gb version. i had problem with the software.. was forced to do a fresh installation instead cloning software disc either gives me error while cloning the disk.. or saying linux kernal not found -_- this drive did give a little bit more faster boot up time compared to the old 5.4k rpm seagate hdd, programs.. it seems to load a bit slow xD

 

ok, this is my benchmark scores on my SSD in my netbook..


ATTO Benchmark


CrystalDiskMark


HD Tune Benchmark

 

It got 1.7 mb/s on 4k write? Is that normal? That seems horrible, haha...... *cough*

 

i reran the test and it got similar results xD
it might be my computer? no clue.. let see some other peoples results..?

 

I'm not familiar with that program though. Your HDTune results seem pretty decent though.

 

meh..
i think my scores are pretty low compared to Jerry's? xD

 

That's true. You put it in an Aspire One though? I'm sure the chipset and CPU have a bearing on it though. Not the greatest, but still better than any standard hard drive I believe.

 

the write speed is actually slower than my standard hdd..
the 4k random cache or whatever it is.. only improved by 0.7 using a ssd compared to the hdd -_-

 

The US15W chipset in the Acer 751 is limited to about 58 MB/sec.

If you put the SSD in your AOA150 it will be faster.

 

heh.. i'm too lazy to put it in the AOA.. takes like half an hour to disassemble it -_- not worth my time xD and that netbook will be going to my mom pretty soon when i'm done fixing the softwares xD

 

Well the limit is not really affecting every day use so it doesn't matter.

 

true.. just that the SSD is not performing at it's best though =/
i might just take out the SSD from my netbook and plug it into my desktop and see what is the read/write speed

 

Is anybody running this disk in a MSI PR200 (santa rosa, intel gm965)? I have some major problems with this combo.
- Windows 7 won't install (hangs on extracting files, see http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=132213.0)
- After copying a windows 7 install from a regular hd to the SSD, win7 hangs on the splash-screen. Powering down and up again a few times get it started again.
I'm running the latest Vista bios.
Or some other santa rosa laptop?

 

Do you have the hard drive set to AHCI in BIOS?

 

They had this drive for a pretty good deal on Amazon the other day but i didnt scoop it up.

On a side not, did you fix your problem?

 

Should have contacted Judicator... AHCI seems to be the culprit. Looks like disabling AHCI has resolved the 'hang on startup' problem. Makes the disk somewhat slower, but at least it works
Kingston support pointed me in this direction also, compliments for them as well.

 

I can't really take credit, as it just seems that every other time someone has been having problems with an SSD it's either been turning AHCI on, or turning it off...