Kingston 40GB V Series Boot Drive SSD Review

HD Tune v3.50

HD Tune Pro 3.50 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.

Benchmark Results: The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive does great again in HD Tune Pro 3.50 in the read test, but is slow in the write test. The spikes in the write benchmark look strange, but the average is 40.7MB/s, which is what the drive is rated at. After all is said and done, the average read speed was found to be 207.6MB/s. Both tests had an access time of 0.1ms and a CPU usage of ~2%. The burst speed was very low on both tests, which is a bit of a mystery as to why this is the case when in HDTach the burst rate was over 255MB/s.

Comparison Chart: When comparing the Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive to other popular 2.5-inch hard drives like the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB and the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB, you can see that it clearly beats them in the read tests, but falls short to a traditional hard drive in the write tests. The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive was right in the middle of the pack with the other SSDs in this benchmark for the read test.

64MB File Test

Benchmark Results: Running the built-in file benchmark test in HD Tune showed once again just how the drive performs with various file sizes. This test shows the Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB SSD Boot Drive topping out at nearly 185MB/sec in the read tests and 40MB/sec in the write test.