The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2009 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Kingston Delivers the First Good Sub-$100 SSD (after Rebate)
I’m not sure what sort of sweetheart deal Intel inked with Kingston, but it’s paying off. Other than Hitachi, Kingston is the only company allowed to use Intel’s controllers in their SSDs. And today, it gets even more interesting. The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is a 34nm X25-M G2 with only 40GB of MLC NAND Flash on it.
You read that right, Kingston gets to make a 40GB X25-M G2 under its own brand.
Kingston wants this to be specifically used for your OS and applications, where the speedy launch performance of an SSD is most useful. You’d keep your games, data and other large files on a separate hard drive. Why 40GB? To keep costs down of course. The Kingston drive goes on sale starting November 9th. The MSRP of the drive will be $115 ($130 with a 2.5” to 3.5” drive adapter), Kingston is offering a rebate through Newegg that will apparently drop the price to $84.99.
Kingston’s goal was to hit the sub-$100 price point and they did it, sort of. I’m not a big fan of mail-in rebates, and it remains to be seen if Newegg can keep the drive in stock at those prices, but the intention is good.
Only 5 devices means the Intel controller works in 5-channel mode, instead of 10-channel like the X25-M G2
While the drive uses an Intel 34nm X25-M controller and 34nm flash, it doesn’t have the latest firmware from Intel, which means it doesn’t support TRIM. Since it’s technically not an Intel drive you can’t update it using the firmware I linked to earlier. The drive will most likely eventually get TRIM support, just not now. Unfortunately it doesn't even work with Intel's SSD Toolbox, again, because it's technically a Kingston drive.
With only half the NAND flash of an 80GB X25-M (only five NAND devices on board), its sequential write speeds are cut in half - Kingston rates the drive at 40MB/s. Random performance suffers a bit, but sequential write performance sees the biggest hit.
If you've already got a large hard drive for games/data and don't have that many apps installed, the Kingston 40GB SSD is a perfect way to move to an SSD affordably.
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Pandamonium - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
The 2nd gen X18-M isn't available as far as I can tell. It kind of shafts us tablet and ultraportable users out of the SSD market for another round =/Cavicchi - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"You no longer have to boot to DOS and secure erase your SSD before installing Windows, just quick format the partition before installing Windows 7."I always thought the "quick format" doesn't wipe the entire drive as clean as a full/long format. Does the above mean we only need to do a quick format to wipe a drive clean to install Windows 7?
Also, I noticed Superfetch, Prefetch, and Ready Boost are enabled in Windows 7 x64 with my X25-M G2 160GB drive installed.
Voo - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Logically when a TRIM command is sent to the drive you lose all the data that was saved there.So, there's no difference between full/quick format or anything else as long as it triggers the TRIM command..
Beno - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"SSDs are made up of millions of NAND flash cells. They can be written to in groups called pages (generally 4KB in size) but can only be erased in larger groups called blocks (generally 128 pages or 512KB). These stipulations are partially the source of many SSD performance issues."but isnt it possible to erase data in 4KB, the same way they are written?
krumme - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Where does speed matter most?Getting some sense into the g2 hype
Now you can have a job with a Dell and a hd with samsung controller without quitting the job
Thanx Anand for always improving your site and letting us learn
Thats whats move this boys-toy business forward
flynace - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
If you set up a software RAID-0 array within Windows 7 will it support TRIM?Or is TRIM not possible on any form of RAID (OS, BIOS, HW, etc.)?
And does aliging the partitions make any difference on these drives?
Voo - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Iirc Anand stated in some of his articles that there's no TRIM support for raid, because the controller had to forward the commands.But imho it sounds not like a unconquerable problem, so it's probably only a question of time.
flynace - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
Thanks. I assume Intel will update their drivers to support RAID TRIM eventually, but if you don't have an 'R' tybe Intel ICH, does Win7 support TRIM if you set up a software RAID array in the OS still using the MS AHCI drivers?Willardjuice - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Did Intel update their Windows 7 sata/raid drivers to also include TRIM support? Or do we have to use the drivers provided by Microsoft?DoveOfTheSouth - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Another great SSD article from Anand (thank you so much)!But I'm really disappointed that you have to use the Microsoft Win 7 disk driver to get TRIM. It has a huge problem.
Based on my experience, I would normally strongly recommend that the first thing you do when installing Win 7 is replace the Microsoft driver with the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager.
The following link describes the problem (long periods of system non-responsiveness) you can get with the Microsoft driver and at least some PCs, and how to fix it:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=3&...">http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=3&...
I had exactly the same crippling problem on a Dell Dimension 9100 which baffled me until I replaced the Microsoft driver with IMSM - problem disappeared instantly.
Okay it was bit of an old PC but of the 3 I have been testing with Win 7 for the last couple of months, it was the only one that used the Microsoft driver instead of IMSM (it was an XP upgrade ie OS reinstall, the others upgrades from Vista). So I don't know how widespread the problem with the Microsoft driver is, it hit my only PC that was a candidate, but I'd be pretty wary.
Otherwise Win 7 has been great.
So it looks like you have a choice: IMSM with no TRIM or a buggy Microsoft driver with TRIM.