Introduction

SSDs are becoming more and more mainstream these days, with costs gradually coming down making them more accesible in more useful capacities, to more people. SATA III is a recent development that has seen these solid state discs almost doubling their read/write sequential performance, something that seems rediculous considering the relatively slow speed of our fastests HDDs just a few years ago.

Today I’m looking at one of these new SATA 6GBps drives from Kingston. It’s part of their HyperX range with a 240GB capacity. Let’s see how it performs.

Features

• SandForce controller technololgy
• High-speed SATA Rev 3.0 (6 Gb/s) transfer speeds
• Performance  – incredible speeds for advanced gaming, multitasking, and multimedia computing power
• Reliable – much less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
• Shock-Resistant  – dropping your notebook no longer means losing your data
• Cool & Quiet – runs silent and with no moving mechanical parts to generate heat
• Innovative – uses NAND Flash memory components
• Supports S.M.A.R.T. TRIM and Garbage Collection
• Guaranteed – three-year Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support

Specifications

• Form factor – 2.5″
• Controller – 2nd Generation SandForce Controller SF-2281
• Components – Intel 25nm Compute-Quality MLC NAND (5k P/E Cycles)
• Interface – SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)
• Capacity – 240 GB
• Sequential reads 6Gb/s 3 – 525MB/s for all capacities
• Sequential writes 6Gb/s – 480MB/s for all capacities
• Sustained Random 4k Read/Write – 240GB – 40,000/60,000 IOPS
• Max Random 4K R/W – 240GB – 95,000/60,000 IOPS
• Supports S.M.A.R.T. TRIM and Garbage Collection
• Warranty/support – Three-year warranty with free 24/7 support
• Power Consumption – 240GB: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.6 W (TYP) Read / 2.05 W (TYP) Write
• Dimensions – 69.85 x 100 x 9.5mm
• Weight – 81g
• Operating Temperatures – 0°C ~ 70°C
• Storage Temperatures -40°C ~ 85°C
• Shock Resistance – 1500G
• Vibration Operating – 2.17G
• Vibration Non-Operating – 20G
• MTBF – 1,000,000 Hrs