My Kingston SSDNow V+100 arrived today. I didn’t really get to play with it, but I have some early impressions.
It’s heavy. Many SSDs have plastic or stamped steel enclosures. The Kingston’s enclosure is die-cast. Maybe they did a market study that indicated a heavier drive seems more valuable. In a desktop PC, that’s no big deal, but for laptop use, I’m sure some people would appreciate a lighter enclosure, because this thing is no lighter than a standard laptop drive. Granted, it’s only a few ounces, but to some people, every ounce counts in a portable.
The packaging is minimal. It comes in one of the infamous plastic bubble containers that can only be opened with a sharp knife or sharp pair of scissors, and includes a cardboard insert. No instructions or anything else. That probably helps keep prices low, but if you need screws, a 3.5″ adapter, and a SATA cable, you’ll have to buy them separately. I had all of those things, so I didn’t care. If you get one, be sure to get one that lets you put two drives in it. That way, when you decide to add another SSD, you can easily keep both installed and use them both. A second, smaller SSD is still useful for holding apps or data, even after you get a bigger, faster drive to hold the operating system.
So why can’t I say anything else about it?
I couldn’t get Windows 7 to boot off USB, no matter what I did. My previous trick didn’t work. So I have Wintoflash running now, to see if it works better with this particular USB drive. This install will be a bit special, since I tried to slipstream SP1 and all the updates, including IE9, into it. Of course I suspected the slipstreamed directory was the problem, but I couldn’t get the USB drive to boot a vanilla Windows 7, copied straight off my family pack DVD, either.
If I can get a bootable, slipstreamed Windows 7 USB drive working, it’ll save me some time the next time I install it. I don’t know how many times that will be, necessarily, but it will be at least three.
It wouldn’t be as much fun if it all worked the first time every time, right?
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
Update: My new Asus motherboard just didn’t like booting off USB. Setting USB first in the boot order just gave me a blank screen with a flashing cursor, with nothing else. But if I hit F8 and selected USB, it booted.
Whether I need a BIOS update or whether I was doing it wrong is still open to question. This board has an AMI BIOS, which is a little different from the Award BIOSes I’m used to. For all I know, it could be that with AMI, the proper way to boot off USB is to hit F8, period.