The SSD drive has become popular as drives have faster random access times, faster start-up times, consistent read performance and little performance degradation from file fragmentation as a HDD would. SSD drives have no platters, no spindle and data is stored in Flash memory so seek times are far less than on a HDD.

Memory manufacturers manufacture the most critical components of a SSD drive, the NAND Flash memory, and therefore many of them have entered the SSD market as it is a natural fit. Kingston is a memory manufacturer that also manufactures USB Flash drives and cards, so it’s natural for them to also make SSD drives.

One issue with SSD drives is the GB per dollar metric. While a 2TB HDD from WD might cost $100, or $250 on the Enterprise drives, the same amount of money would get you a mere 64GB SSD drive or 40GB SSD drive. RAID 0 is also a big selling point as two SSD drives would be screaming fast in RAID 0. The solution of selling two smaller SSD drives for that purpose is a logical one and today I’m reviewing the Kingston Twin Pack 2x30GB kit.

Features

• 30GB of non-volatile NAND Flash memory 60GB in RAID 0

• 2.5” FORM FACTOR

• Silent

• Reliable

• Shock Resistant

• TRIM

• SMART

• 3-year guarantee

• 64MB cache

The Kingston TwinPack is a package of two 30GB SSDNow V series SSD drives. These drives have 30GB of non-volatile NAND Flash memory. While there are larger capacity SSD drives out there the key is the performance of two of these drives in RAID 0 mode. The drives are on the 2.5” form factor that most SSD drives use.

One advantage of SSD drives over the standard HDDs is the lack of moving parts, meaning that it is silent in operation. HDDs have actuator arms, spindles and platters that spin. This means that a SSD drive will have higher shock resistance than standard HDDs with up to 20G on the Kingston drives in non-operation mode and 2.17G in operating mode.

The SSDNow V drives have a 500000 hours mean time before failure which is ½ that of the bigger capacity drives but is approximately 57 years by which time we will have drives with capacities far exceeding today’s terabyte drives. In any event Kingston offers a 3 year warranty on their SSDNow V series drives and it comes with 64MB of cache which is a large amount.

One of the issues with SSD drives is that if you encrypt data it must be written to a different location than the original location. Drive manufacturers alleviate this issue with a technology called wear leveling. The SSDNow V drives support the ATA TRIM command, which allows for secure file deletion and writing data over the same location on the drive.

There are three different capacities under the SSDNow V drives including 30GB, 64GB, 128GB and Twin packs like this one with 2 30GB drives in the same bundle. Kingston offers the 2 30GB drives at a price of $164 on Newegg which is comparable to the price of a 64GB SSD drive. The cost per GIGABYTE of a SSD drive from Kingston is nearly $3 a GB, making a HDD much more affordable for storage but performance is the forte of an SSD drive. Here’s a list of available SSDNow V Series models:

SNV125-S2/30GB 2.5” 30GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $85.99

SNV125-S2BD/30GB 2.5” Desktop bundle 30GB SATA II Internal SSD 93.00

SNV125-S2BD/30GB-2P 2.5” 60GB (2x30GB) SATA II Internal SSD $166

SNV425-S2/64GB 2.5” 64GB SATA II Internal SSD $114.99

SNV425-S2BD/128GB 2.5” Desktop bundle 128GB SATA II SSD 224.99

SNV425-S2BN/128GB 2.5” Notebook Bundle 128GB SATA II Internal SSD 189.99

SNV425-S2/128GB 2.5” 128GB SATA II Internal SSD $189.99

You will note that while the 64GB drive is less expensive it doesn’t have the RAID performance that two 30GB drives will have. Second there are 128GB bundles with Mail In Rebates that bring the price down. Again, without the read performance of two SSD drives in RAID 0, that makes the two 30GB drives an attractive option for those wanting the ultimate in performance.

Bundle

• 2X 30GB Kingston SSDNow V Series SSD drives

• 8 screws

• 8 slightly larger screws

• 2X SATA Power cables

• Two SATA Data cables

• 4X adapters for 3.5” drive bays

The two drives come inside a black box typical of Kingston SSD packaging. The left front of the box has a picture of the Kingston mascot with the upper right corner bearing the Kingston logo. Below the logo is the name of the drive series: SSDNow V series along with the SSD Drive and capacity. Below that is two Kingston 30GB drives showing that it is a Twin Pack with a 5x 5400RPM HDD performance indication.

The back of the box has the main features of the drive in various languages. Opening the box we find that Kingston has packaged the drives inside the standard drive plastic blister pack with the accessories on one side and the drives in the inside of the packaging. The drives come with two SATA Data cables, two SATA Power cables, four adapters for 3.5” drive bays and 8 screws of one type and 8 of another for different drive bays.

The Drives

The drives themselves are standard 2.5” drives in size and shape. The top of the drive has four screw holes to allow it to be installed on a drive rack with holes on them. A sticker with the Kingston character on it, the Kingston logo, the capacity part number and other information is also located in this position.

The back of the drive has the SATA Data and Power ports. To get this drive to work you need both cables connected to your system motherboard. This drive operates on the 3 Gb/second interface meaning that most modern computers will have at least two ports. I suggest running the two drives in RAID 0 mode as that improves performance and is the reason for the Twin Pack.

Setup and Performance

I have moved all testing on HDDs or SSD drives to the video card test platform as it supports drives with SATA 6Gb/second support and sports two Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB drives which should have great performance. The 30GB drive performs OK as you can see by the numbers single drive performance is OK, but RAID 0 performances completely blows away the competition except in one test.

Test System

• Intel Core i7-980X running at 3.2GHz
• 24GB Kingston DDR3-1866 Kingston memory
• ASUS P6X58D Premium motherboard running latest drivers and BIOS
• 2 Kingston 128GB SNP325-S2/128GB SSD drives in RAID 0 Mode for OS and programs
• SNV125-S2BD/30GB Drive
• Two SNV125-S2BD/30GB-2P drives in RAID 0 Mode
• ATI RADEON HD 4870 1GB video card running Catalyst 10.9
• Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate

Tests

• AS SSD benchmark
• AS SSD Copy benchmark
• ATTO
• CrystalDiskMark
• HD Tach
• HD Tune
• Sisoft Sandra 2010 Disk benchmark
• PCMark Vantage HDD Suite

Conclusion

From a pure storage point of view one or even two Kingston 30GB SSDNow V drives is not adequate for the standalone user with no other drives in their system. From the enthusiast point of view, however, two of these drives in RAID 0 Mode are fast, very fast. Kingston offers this kit as a Twin Pack for $164 on Newegg. This is a viable alternative for those wanting a fast load of certain games or Windows without paying the higher prices a larger SSD drive would entail. If you need reliability along with fast access times, the new Kingston TwinPack 30GB RAID kit just may be you’re “A” ticket.