Side by Side Comparison of: Crucial vs Kingston

I will start off saying I know very little about technology. That being said, I purchased this thing because two of my co workers told me to. My MacBook Pro is constantly getting destroyed (all information disappears) every time it does one of Apples system updates. I stopped accepting the updates after the first blackout (last summer). The second time I don't know what happened, but took it to the Apple store where they (once again) wiped my hard drive clean and I had to start all over again (BACK UP YOUR MACS ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE ALWAYS! Seriously. Like once a week). The third time the MacBook automatically updated itself (I didn't even know I had this allowance). At this point I was ready to just throw this thing out the window, but my co workers told me the same thing happened to their MacBook's and they just bought a new drive and replaced it themselves. Apple would have done the same thing but for 2x the amount of money. I purchased this drive, my co workers installed it and now my computer runs faster and smoother than it did before. I'm still backing it up though because I no longer trust Apple products, but that's a whole other story.

So I cloned my old hard drive over to this tiny little solid state drive. They say it should make your operating system boot up and perform file functions at least 10X faster than an IDE drive... and they are right. Love it.This drive comes with a free program to clone (copy) a drive over onto this one. If you are thinking about upgrading your system with one of these then stop thinking about it and buy one.+ Don't forget to back up all your data beforehand. Nobody wants to do it, but just do it.+ If you are adding to an existing system, do what you have to do so that you are directly cloning one drive to the other (meaning back up your data and start deleting files and programs until you can perform a 1:1 clone) or just do a clean install . Don't get suckered into buying a program that might be able to clone part of the drive like I did- you're welcome. Lol.

The Crucial BX100 series (as well as the MX100 series preceding it) have always been my go to budget SSD of choice. They are almost as fast as the professional drives, include regular MLC NAND unlike the EVO, and are effortless to get working. No frills, just plug it in, install the OS, and all the normal TRIM and garbage collection functions run automatically. There is tuning software available for a variant of "Rapid mode", but most people will be happy to just let it run without any frills. Performance is great, prices are cheap, no issues with reliability, and no maintenance is required other than the suggested practice of keeping at least 20% of the space free for TRIM. There are faster professional drives like the fantastic Samsung 850 Pro, but if you don't already know why you need a professional drive, you don't and should get a higher capacity BX100 with your money instead.

I installed this in a standard case and partitioned it for Boot and recover operating. I have 6 of these and a Kingston. They boot quickly operating with Windows 8.1I have bought others and I trust their reliability far more than mechanical drives. I have replaced many of those and none of the solid state drives. zi have added separate drives for picture backup and prefer to backup my files on an internal drive exclusive of this SSD. I never use over a 1 TB anyway since it takes forever to load and can be gone in an instant. Two fit in a bracket inside the 3.5 inch floppy drive. It re-purposes the space nicely.

I installed this in my brand new Asus Transformer TP300LA-UB52T (was able to install it without removing the warranty security sticker :D ). You couldn't pay me to use a regular platter drive for an OS drive.This is hands down the best SSD for a laptop if you care about power usage. It uses half the power compared to most SSDs. Oh, and its crazy fast!!

Upgraded my Late 2011 MacBook Pro from a 500GB spinning hard drive to this. Instead of taking a solid minute or so to boot up, it takes ten seconds and it's more responsive than my old HDD. My computer is faster than it ever was before and feels brand new. The battery is also better too.This was my first time upgrading a Hard Drive, and it was incredibly easy. I used a StarTech.com USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable & the TEKTON 2830 Everybit Tool Kit (both sold on Amazon) to help me with this. Here's how I did it:1. Plug SSD into USB to SATA cable.2. Use Disk Utility to format the SSD. > http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/How-to-initialize-your-SSD-Mac/ta-p/111 490 - Erase Disk: - Name: Macintosh SSD - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - Partition Disk - 1 Partition - Name: Macintosh SSD - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - Options: GUID Partition Table3. Downloaded Yosemite onto the Mac directly. Clicked on 'Yosemite Install' application and installed it on the SSD. Go through installation process until it reboots, then the configuration process. Once complete, turn off the Macbook.4. Remove old HD and install new SSD. > http://guides.crucial.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Early+2011+SSD+Insta llation/4195. Install iLife apps, Chrome & Skype6. Update Yosemite using App Store.7. Disabled: - Sudden Motion Sensor > http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201666 - 'Put Hard Disc to sleep when possible' > Since TRIM isn't supported this will help the Active Garbage Collection built into the SSD8. Reset SMC & PRAM/VRAM > http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063 & http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT2012959. Move items manually from External HD to SSD.If you're looking to upgrade your Mac and don't want to break the bank too hard - this is the way to do it.

What can I say but "WOW!" As a technology director, I purchase many devices and system accessories/upgrades to keep my faculty and students working at optimal capacity. These SSDs are VERY affordable and bring new life to any old PC. We refreshed a computer lab with PCs working with Core2 Duo CPUs and it saved us from having to upgrade all of our units. These SDDs are fast and bring a snappiness to the systems. I've purchased more than 50 of these and have yet to receive a faulty SSD. that's saying a lot when you talk about electronic devices. The quality of these units are fantastic and I cannot recommend them enough. your device supports SATA, some newer laptops (Especially ultrabooks) are moving toward the M2 connection. Just be sure before you buy that it will work for you.

Much faster boot time, much faster application load time, and no noise or heat. For those of you that are reading through all of the reviews and noticing people complaining about how Kingston changed this line of SSD's to a lower-performance type, stop yourself right there. These were NEVER meant to be "high-performance gaming FTW-edition ultra speed Fatal1ty" solid-state drives. These are budget SSDs meant for budget builds. As for the performance vs a 7200RPM old-school hard drive, it will easily perform more than 2x as good as an HDD. If you want the highest possible performance, go spend a lot more on a Samsung (I also have a Samsung 840 Pro in my gaming rig). If you want to have faster boot, load, and install time, but don't want to spend a whole lot, get this one. I've purchased a pile of these for low-budget client builds and upgrades, and none of them have complained about them being "slow".

If you're like me and got sick and tired of waiting ages for your computer to load, then you've come to the right place. I made the switch from hard drive to solid state drive a year and a half ago and it's probably one of the best decisions of my life. Even if you don't use a computer on a daily basis, it's still worth it to get an SSD. Not only does it reduce the time it takes to start your computer, it also reduces the loading time for most of your computer programs. So if you're an avid gamer like I am, not having long and tedious loading times is a must. Price/performance wise, a year ago this was probably one of the best SSD on the market. I purchased the 120GB version for $76, and now that the price is $48, I think the deal is even better.Let us compare this SSD to another one that I own, the Samsung 840 EVO. Compared to the 840 EVO, Kingston has a slower read and write speed. But to be completely honest, I don't think you can really tell the difference in speed. I know a 70-90 mb/s difference might seem like a lot on paper, but I'm telling you now that in real world performance, you will not be able to notice the difference unless you test it with a stop watch. Something else that the Kingston lacks is a control center, not that it needs one. The 840 EVO comes with software programs that help you with data transfer and boost the performance of your computer. It would have been a nice edition for Kingston, but definitely not a necessity.Tip: If you're a patient shopper, I would recommend waiting for special sales or even Black Friday to pick up a SSD. They go on sale all the time and I would personally suggest waiting to find the best deal.

I was skeptical about SSDs until I finally got this one installed and , man, now am I believer. If you have the skills to install one of these, you should order one right now! Here's why: I have a old Lenovo Windows 7, i3 desktop that took forever to get going from a restart or cold boot. The hard drive would grind away for 20 to 30 minutes on every mandatory "update" restart. All resources consumed. The keyboard would barely work. I just had to walk away and come back a half hour later. It was maddening, especially with the endless updates Microsoft sends out (You MUST reboot....) Sound familiar? . So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I booted for the first time to this SSD and Windows logon screen appeared in just 10 seconds! 10 SECONDS!!!! I could barely believe it. I log on and my desktop is up and running in another 5 seconds. Un-fricking-believable! Of course all apps also launch almost instantly now too (well, except for browsers, which are faster but still pokey thanks to all the calls on nearly every web page). If you want to breathe new life into your PC, this, without question, provides the best bang for the buck. Mine is now much MUCH faster than it was when new. Almost anyone with even moderate skills can install a SSD in a desktop PC but here a few tips that will smooth the process.1. First, make sure your equipment is up to the task. That means SATA II or III system, with open sockets to plug this thing into (Look where your current hard drive is plugged into the motherboard or controller. There should be empty adjacent sockets). And an extra power lead from the power supply. Most desktops of the last 3 or 4 years are probably OK but open up the case and check before you order. Also make sure you understand how to get into the BIOS settings, since you will have fiddle with the boot order during the install. (In my case, press F1 during boot)2. Save yourself a lot of time and just buy an SSD with enough capacity to cover whatever content is on your drive. I cannot stress this enough. That makes it super simple to clone the existing hard drive to the SSD with the included Arconis software and you will be up and running in a few minutes. I tried to go cheap and get a smaller drive and spent hours moving music, movies, pictures, etc onto an external hard drive. And uninstalling programs. And even then I struggled to get content down to the level needed to clone. Be aware that although the capacity of this drive is 240G, you will need to get your hard drive content down to about 220 or less to clone it. And don't forget to include all the extra partitions, etc. That became a major pain for me. Save yourself the trouble. Just buy the bigger capacity SSD. The time and aggravation it saves you is more than worth it.3. If you insist on going cheap and downsizing, begin by downloading a program called WinDirStat, which is free at downdload.com and other sites. It will show you how much content is in each directory. That makes it easier to determine where huge amounts or content are hiding. Then you can easily reduce the content to the level you need. I had about given up on reducing content to the necessary levels until WinDirStat discovered a special directory the manufacturer used to store a complete backup of the original Windows 7 install and all included software and drivers. 45 gigs! Once I removed that, I was good to go.4. Once you install the SSD and get it up and running, go to system settings and force it run a new Windows Experience Index. This apparently makes a few technical changes (Trim) that makes the SSD much faster. The cloning software also has this option but you can do in Windows and also immediately see the improvement in the speed of your hard drive. I went from the low 5s before to 7.6 after SSD installed (7.9 is the max score possible)5. The mounting bracket that comes with this SSD kit can only be securely mounted if your drive cage allows drives to be mounted to the SIDE rails. Screws must come in from each side. My case had some odd BOTTOM mount setup (but thankfully had an open bay for second drive) and no holes lined up on the mounting bracked. Be prepared to improvise if the hard drive cage does not have correct configuration. Not a big deal. This thing is very light and could probably just hang loose inside the case. But if you want a proper install, this is something to be aware of.

I have only had the drive installed for 1 day however it is great, everyone should upgrade to an ssd. Sadly, the included Acronis cloning software did not work, complete failure. I have W8.1 and struggled for 2 hours trying to get it to work, swapping the drives back and forth 4-5 times before giving up. The Acronis software just would not boot. After researching on the internet I came across an article on blog.laptopmag.com describing how they did it with the free program EaseUS Todo Backup Free. A big difference is the Acronis cloning tool has you remove your current drive and install it in the included enclosure, then install the ssd in you computer. The EaseUS software performs the cloning operation, THEN has you swap the hdd for the ssd in your notebook which I feel is a better solution. I am not to judge on this since the Acronis never worked in the first place, just stating what worked for me. Once I had completed the cloning operation and swapped the drives the moment of truth came when I pressed the power button and to my relief my computer booted with everything intact. Strange not hearing the whirring sound of the hdd spinning. My photo editing software seems more responsive, maybe it is just me but everything seems to work, well, better. I give 5 stars because the ssd is awesome and I don't want to stear anyone away from possibly purchasing this item, just be aware that the software may or may not work. If it doesn't I wholeheartedly recommend the EaseUS tool, which is a free download and works extremely well.

This is the second time I've used Kingston SSDs for a personal build. The first time I was building a workstation from scratch, but this time I was replacing an old HDD with an SSD so I needed to use the cloning feature. I was able to successfully clone a 500GB drive, with only 170GB used, onto this 240GB SSD. The included cloning software worked perfectly and was very easy to use. The partitions re-sized automatically. After the cloning was complete I went into the BIOS and selected the new SSD as the primary boot drive, and it booted successfully on the first try. The experience of adding the second drive, cloning the old drive then discarding it, and using the new SSD could not have gone more smoothly. I have more than 50 Kingston SSDs at work, which is why I did not hesitate to buy Kingston for my personal use. Performance? Yes they are fast, you will like them especially if you are replacing a conventional HDD.

My old 2.5" laptop HDD finally died a couple of weeks ago after giving me frequent warnings for a few months in the form of bad sectors and other errors. Unfortunately I usually treat my laptop roughly and have been known to destroy hard drives often. So I am finally switching to SSD because they are not affected by physical shock and now are almost as cheap as HDDs. I purchased this SSD for replacement, because of its good reviews and good price. It took only minutes to install it, very straight forward. However, I wish I had got it before my HDD completely died, so I could just clone that to this SSD instead of redoing the whole OS installation and drivers, etc. So if you are getting errors from your HDD, my recommendation: don't wait until it completely dies. Buy a replacement early and clone your dying HDD while it still has some breath left.I have not noticed a significant boost in the speed of booting or other heavily HDD-dependent processes, as some claim, maybe a slight bit. But I don't pay too much attention to those things, so maybe it was there but I just didn't notice. Also, so far I had one error from Windows when trying to come out of hibernation, when it couldn't read the memory image stored on the SSD. I am hoping that it was just one random unfortunate incident or caused by something else, since this SSD is so new and I cannot imagine having any failures yet. So I give it 4 stars for that. Overall content so far. It is significantly lighter than the HDD I pulled out.

SYSTEM: Macbook Pro, 15" late 2011 (stock).REASON FOR UPGRADING: Spinning Beach Balls!!! General sluggishness. Annoyingly long loading times. Lastly -- but most importantly -- I didn't want to upgrade to a new MBP because they no longer come with internal superdrives.In addition to the Crucial BX100 500gb SSD, I also installed 16GBs of Crucial brand Ram (see link below); a combined cost of under $200.Installing the hardware took about fifteen minutes -- this includes the two minutes it took me to find a tiny screw that I dropped on the floor when I was startled by someone at my office. It took about 3 hours to restore my files using a time machine backup on an external HD.I'm not going to pretend to be a techie -- though I know more about computers than most people in my age group (30-35). I won't attempt to provide you with a bunch of numbers comparing the way the computer ran before and after the upgrade; most readers (like myself) won't understand much of that anyways.Besides, what you really want to know is: Will installing $200 worth of hardware really allow you to put off buying a new machine for a year or two? The answer is a resounding yes! You will feel as though you traded in a Prius for a shinny new Corvette -- or at least, that's how my computer feels.I'm not giving this product a fifth star simply because the BX100 series is intended as a value product. Its a fun zippy little drive, but its not the faster beast on the market.**** It should be noted that I do not work for Crucial and they haven't given me any freebies. That being said, will gladly take a Grid-It organizer or a hard drive enclosure in exchange for an honest review.Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L-1600 MHz (PC3-12800) CL11 204-Pin SODIMM Memory for Mac CT2K8G3S160BM / CT2C8G3S160BM

I installed this sucker in my ASUS 16" Laptop before moving stuff off of my original drive. May I suggest that you move your partitions to this drive first outside the box before installing. Not a serious error but I was able to circumvent it. This thing is FAST! I really load up my Windows and, with the original technology HD it took forever to boot. After swapping out the drive and installing the partitions into the new, it boots in less than 10-20 seconds where as before it was something like 2-5 minutes. I am impressed! Of course, my concern now is how long this SSD will last. Advice. Make a full backup of your partitions on a standard technology backup drive after installing your OS and data. I am using a dual-boot with Windows and Linux. Works well. Linux boots in about 2-4 seconds. FAST! I like this puppy. Again, just concerned with how long it will last. That's an unknown variable for me. This is my first SSD.

I purchased this drive to replace the original HD on my MacBook Pro 2009. I went with the 120GB model as the laptop is now a secondary computer used primarily for web-browsing.Other items I purchased to complete the install:1. Sabrent USB 3.0 to SSD / 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Adapter [Optimized For SSD, Support UASP SATA III] (EC-SSHD)2. Kaisi 16-Piece Precision Screwdriver Set Repair Tool Kit for iPad, iPhone & Other Devices (Kaisi 16 Piece) ... I purchased this because it had the two screwdrivers I needed, as well as the pry tool, at a good price. Check the upgrade instructions for your specific model to make sure you get the right tools.I also took advantage that I was opening up my laptop case, to upgrade the RAM with the - Crucial 4GB Kit (2GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L 1066 MT/s (PC3-8500) SODIMM 204-Pin Mac Memory CT2K2G3S1067M / CT2C2G3S1067MI followed installation suggestions by previous reviewers (Thanks SteveO) and it went smoothly. But before starting, I backed up all my personal data to an external HD. While I expect the original drive to be usable (still haven't tested it yet), I didn't want to risk losing my data somehow during the install process.1. Using the HD to USB adapter, I connected the drive to my Mac, and formatted it according to a support post at Crucial.http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/How-to-initialize-your-SSD-Mac/ta-p/1114902. I selected to upgrade OS X from the AppStore on my laptop. When the installer started, I simply chose to install OS X to the SSD. The install took approximately 25 minutes.3. Using the upgrade instructions provided by Crucial, I swapped the drives.http://guides.crucial.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+SSD+Installation/353At this point I also upgraded my RAM using the instructions from Crucial.http://guides.crucial.com/Guide/MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-Unibody-Mid-2009-RAM-Installation/350/14. I reset the NVRAM, and the System Management Controller (SMC), according to Apple Support Documentshttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT2012955. I disabled the Sudden Motion Sensor, according to Apple Support Documentshttp://support.apple.com/en-us/HT2016666. I disabled "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" In Utilities > Energy Saver.All in I spent about $117 to revive my MacBook. Everything is noticeably faster. Boot time to login went from 45 seconds to 15 seconds. Applications load noticeably faster. In-app performance is also notably faster. It is still a 6 year-old laptop, so I'm not expecting it to push huge amounts of data. But it kept us from having to buy a new laptop for a while longer. I'm very satisfied.

This is a solid SSD. I bought it for my mid-2011 Mac Mini, which had a traditional 2.5" 500 GB drive. It took little bit of time for the computer to boot with the mechanical drive and that was annoying me as I'm used to instantaneous booting from my MacBook Air or Retina iMac with the Fusion drive. Upgrading the Mac Mini made a big difference. It's not as fast as my MacBook Air or iMac but most definitely is much quicker than before. I'm not sure that the CPU is the bottle neck here or not but it's an i5 from 2011 so maybe. I upgraded the memory to 16 GB total, so that's not the bottle neck either. I would have thought this would boot a lot faster. Here are some numbers for comparison:Pre-SSD Upgrade: Cold boot from ding to desktop - about 1 minute 15 secondsPost-SSD Upgrade: Cold boot from ding to desktop - about 51 secondsMacBook Air: Cold boot from ding to desktop - about 14 secondsI didn't time the iMac but it was about the same as the MacBook. I was expecting a huge improvement and while 24 seconds is nothing to sneeze at, a cold boot in 51 seconds still seemed quite long.Overall, I'd give this SSD a 4/5. Maybe one of these days I'll swap it my Samsung EVO currently in my Windows system and see how it runs there as I know how quickly that operates and can make an update.

Bought this SSD to upgrade the CEO's mechanical laptop HDD. Boot times don't seem much faster but the system definitely comes to life as soon as you're logged in. She is much happier with the load up times of programs especially Outlook and how much more responsive the system is as a whole. Definitely worth the purchase.No more "my computer is slow" comments!

**Update 12/21**: I have since reformatted the drive and moved to Windows 10. While the drive is still not performing to the standards that were advertised, the speeds are acceptable. Additionally, I must point out the response from the manufacturer in the comments section on my review merits an increased review rating for this drive. Unfortunately it is not feasible for me to return the drive at this point, but I appreciate the effort made by Kingston to stand behind their product and provide great customer support.**OLD**What can I say about this SSD other than its pretty much throw away garbage... the write speeds have been shown to be significantly slower after 6 months of use. Receiving half of my initial write speed but reading and mixed speed is still doing ok. 4k transfer rate is a joke so don't even think about it with this drive.Peak of 150 mb/s transfer rate but getting multiple errors on the drive. No bad sectors but the drive is malfunctioning when I use Crystal Disk or any other software that attempts to benchmark the drive.Glad I only spent 40 bucks on this pile, my old WD Black from 2012 is still chugging along and the drives are competing with each other as far as speed is concerned. NOT OKAY.Will purchase a newer, better drive soon. Would advise against purchasing this product unless you are absolutely sure you wont use it for more than a year, do not plan on getting a large size drive, and aren't worried about storing sensitive data that might be lost (pretty sure mine is on its way out).

I have a Macbook pro 2012 which was very slow and driving me crazy. So I bought this drive along with a 16GB RAM and took the courage to open my device and replaced them both. Doing this took me 15 minutes, including watching the Yourtube video to learn how to do it. It was very easy. However my device didnt work afterwards.From the reviews and feedback I found out that the disk was probably not formatted for MAC. I didn't have another Mac to do this formatting myself (you'd also need a USB to USB cable I believe) so I went to the Apple store and they did it for free, they also installed the new OS-X in 2 minutes (which usually takes 5-6 hours with wireless they told me). So everything is working perfectly at the moment.This SSD along with the 16gb RAM made my Macbook faster than my brand Dell laptop. It turns on super quick and multitasking is super fast. I recommend!

This does exactly what it says it does. It's a 120 gig SSD, and if installed in your system and used as the boot drive, it will improve your boot times and overall system responsiveness by a huge margin over the same system configured with just an ordinary HDD. These aren't the fastest SSD's you can buy; more expensive models can sometimes offer double the transfer rate. With that said, beyond a certain point, you're unlikely to notice the difference. I own one of these, and it replaced a failed Corsair SSD that benchmarked much higher. In real-world use, I've never noticed a difference. They're both fast enough to eliminate any I/O bottleneck caused by a HDD, and that's all you really need an SSD to do.Unless you're in a geek benchmark showdown (and no disrespect intended by that; I've done a few before myself), if you want the benefits offered by an SSD, this one will do all you need at a very good price.

I replaced the HDD in my Gateway NV55C (5400 rpm 500GB) with the Kingston 120 SSDNow V300 drive. OS is Win7 Home Prem. 64bit. Cold boot to login screen went from about a minute+ to less than 20 sec and login screen to desktop was also dramatically increased (31 to 8 sec).Going from 500GB to 120GB required me to remove a lot of "junk" that accumulated on the laptop over time. Much of it could be housed elsewhere or just removed. If you are going to clone your drive, you will want to consider the recovery partition as well as your OS partition. What I mean is that you will need to be using less than the capacity of your new SSD drive on your source drive before cloning (if you want to include the recovery partition on your new SSD). I made this oversight the first time around and was informed by the Acronis software that I needed about 13 GB more space freed up on my original HDD. Aside from that the process was painless. The most time consuming part was cleaning up the old drive. I must point out that although I ordered the Notebook kit I was sent the Desktop kit. The drive is the same but the accessories are different. I luckily already had a suitable external enclosure so that did not prompt me to return the product. I was able to install the new SSD without the spacer but it would be an additional security step to have it in place. This laptop has a sturdy drive mounting bracket and this machine does not see much travel so it probably will not be a big deal. Only taking one star off since the incorrect product was shipped.

I have completed the install and used this for a couple of days so far.Pros: Some things run significantly faster. My computer no longer bogs down on Facebook and other bloated websites. Restart is much faster, so I'm no longer afraid to shut down my PC. Initial start-up of certain programs (e.g., Google Chrome, Itunes) is still slow, so apparently this is not a hard disk issue.Cons: 1) No printed instructions. This is very inconvenient since my computer is partially disassembled and shutdown for parts of the installation. 2) The included bracket was not what is shown in the picture and does not fit any of the empty bays in my (Dell) computer, so the SSD drive is kind of just hanging in there now.I should also note that Amazon Prime instant video no longer worked but the problem is fixable. [ doesn't seem to be the fault of the Kingston drive, but the change in hardware somehow changed the DRM settings for video ] Amazon's help file was not quite correct, but I eventually found and deleted a file called mspr.hds in the "PlayReady" folder under Application Data/Microsoft in my user profile and this corrected the problem.

Initially I installed this in a new XP Pro machine but nothing below Windows 7 has the trim feature so garbage collection is no good and eventually an SSD (any SSD) will bog down in speed using these older operating systems.So, I put this in a Win 7 Home 64 bit machine and ran some tests. I checked and my drive was made in Taiwan with the 505 firmware. I have a fast machine, a 4 Ghz 6 core AMD but the particular motherboard of my machine is only SATA II so that may affect the following benchmarks a bit (this Kingston SSD is SATA III capable).----------------------------------------------------------------------------CrystalDiskInfo 2.7.5 (C) 2008-2009 hiyohiyo---------------------------------------------------------------------------- OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64) Date : 2013/12/29 12:05:20 + ATA Channel 1 (1) - KINGSTON SV300S37A120G ATA Device---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) KINGSTON SV300S37A120G---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Model : KINGSTON SV300S37A120G Firmware : 505ABBF1 ****Authors Note 505 Firmware*** Serial Number : 50026B773A004C03 Total Disk Size : 120.0 GB (8.4/120.0/120.0) Buffer Size : Unknown NV Cache Size : ----Number of Sectors : 234441648 Rotation Rate : ---- (SSD) Interface : Serial ATA Major Version : ATA8-ACS Minor Version : ---- [0110h] Transfer Mode : SATA/600 Power On Hours : 14 hours Power On Count : 10 count Temparature : 33 C (91 F) Health Status : Good Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, 48bit LBA, NCQ, TRIM *****Authors note, Trim is enabled on Windows 7*** APM Level : 00FEh [ON] AAM Level : ----CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo-----------------------------------------------------------------------* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s] Sequential Read : 218.818 MB/s Sequential Write : 81.671 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 193.118 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 82.470 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 20.736 MB/s [ 5062.4 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 12.603 MB/s [ 3076.9 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 19.736 MB/s [ 4818.5 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 13.767 MB/s [ 3361.0 IOPS] Test : 1000 MB [E: 0.1% (0.1/111.8 GB)] (x1) Date : 2013/12/29 12:03:25 OS : Windows 7 Home Premium [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)So, it's about average speed for a low cost SSD. Still, These benchmarks are almost twice as fast as my platter drive Velociraptor 10,000 RPM disk. For the price I can recommend this drive to others. I find 120 Gig (shows up as 111 GB) more than enough for a boot drive to load the OS and various programs. I keep my data on much larger 7200 RPM drives. This works out well for general purpose computing.

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The drive would not work with my Asus Q551, even though Crucial's website said it would. The drive could be seen in the bios, but couldn't be seen in Device Manager or Disk Management. I don't think there was a problem with the drive, just for whatever reason my computer didn't like it.

This drive is NOT compatible with certain HP Model laptops. I had the toughest time figuring out why I couldn't get the drive to install an OS. It turns out there is an incompatibility with HP 11-N010dx and Crucial drive. Might not be crucial's fault, but it didn't work with the laptop, period.

Recommended by my computer technician... He installed it on my MacBook Pro, what s wonderful upgrade..so much faster, refreshing time instant! Definitely recommend it. Well worth the investment.

Pros:SSD speedShipped fast and safelyIs working as it should for right now (will update if it ever crashes)Cons:This drive is not recognized by Windows out of the box (and cloning software) and requires formatting, there was not a guide included to show someone how to do it so if you are not tech savvy it is a bit more of a challenge than a samsung SSD for example. But all you have to do is go to disc management and find the drive and format it.Other Thoughts:Decent SSD replacement drive.

Bit of a debacle with the drive, and I'm giving Crucial the benefit of the doubt here with 3 stars. Customer wanted to upgrade an older HP laptop, purchased this drive and no matter what I did (updated drive firmware and updated to latest BIOS) the drive would not be recognized as a boot device. Once in Windows (old boot device connected via eSATA) the Crucial SSD was recognized by the OS.Ultimately I had to swap the Crucial SSD with a similar Kingston device (which worked flawlessly) from another machine and also swap the data between them. Also had to explain to the customer why this was taking longer than originally estimated. While I'm certain that the issue was caused by HP's BIOS, there really is no excuse for connecting a SATA drive of any kind - it is a universal standard - and having an issue like that. (Notably and especially when a competitor's product works.) I'll grant that there is something of a crapshoot pairing new and old hardware, and the blame may not lie on Crucial in particular, but in the end I'd recommend anyone looking to upgrade an older system give this one a pass.The speed and price/performance of the drive are good to excellent, and it performs well on a more recent Dell laptop. Were it not for the issue I had it would have been 5 stars without question. Were compatibility to be enhanced by a firmware update I would be more than willing to amend this review.

Hardware is easy to install and comes with the necessary cables. It also comes with a CD containing manuals, installation videos, and (they claim) hard drive cloning software. Unfortunately, the videos are a bit outdated and there is NO SOFTWARE on the CD. The video for Desktop mounting shows brackets that are no longer used - the bracket in the kit is a completely different shape. I built my computer 4 years ago, though, so the case has 4 2.5" slots and the bracket wasn't needed.As for the software, even though it's not on the CD it seemed to be on the hard drive itself. This is why I say "Not for beginners." After installing the hardware, turn your computer on, interrupt the boot routine and enter the BIOS. I then took manual control of the boot loader and directed it to the new hard drive. It then booted using the software shown in the video and I was able to clone my drive. I figure this out through dumb luck - Kingston should really get their act together and update the installation instructions. Why tell people to clone from the CD when they put the software on the drive?

It does everything it says it does, but it is a cheaply made device -- nothing is actually "wrong," it simply is not as fast or as mechanically solid as the more expensive alternatives. No bad sectors and still much faster than an older mechanical drive. If you are looking for a low cost upgrade to a used or older computer than this is EXACTLY what you want. If you are building (or rebuilding) a new or nearly new computer, then I would recommend a more expensive alternative. It is big enough and fast enough even for Windows 10.

This is a great budget SSD. It's cheap and it's still much faster than a conventional hard disk drive. However, if you Google Kingston V300 you'll see the mediocre read/write speeds this drive offers. Kingston did a little bait and switch with this series of SSDs. Kingston has always been a reputable brand in my mind, so this burns me a little. However, I didn't do the research before I purchased, so that's on me. If you're looking for a great SSD for a new build, look elsewhere. But if you're looking just to upgrade an older computer, or you're building a cheap computer on a budget, then this will still give you better performance over a hard disk drive. But honestly, for only a few dollars more you can get a Samsung or SanDisk SSD and enjoy up to 400-500MBs read/write speed.

I used Macrium Reflect free version to clone existing hdd to the ssd, following a tutorial on Howtogeek.com. I tried several other free or trial version programs, but could not get a working clone. The boot times on my old windows 7 core 2 duo Toshiba (2009) are amazing now! Fully usable in 25 seconds from off and shutdowns are even more impressive taking only 6 seconds.Edit: I have since installed one of these in my other laptop it is a 2011 i5 toshiba satellite running windows 7. I did not see any improvement, in speed, that is, there was no improvement. I upgraded to windows 10 still thinking this thing should be doing better. Finally I took the drive out and measured the speed using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test with my i7 imac using both a Startech usb 3.0 adapter and my Akittio quad bay thunderbolt 2 enclosure only to find out that the stupid thing only writes at about 90MB/s and reads at about 140.Edit: Kingston was easy to deal with. The replacement arrived in a couple weeks. The new drive tested better than the original, but seemed lacking, so I called tech support and was asked to install it anyway. I was little non-trusting, but, it panned out. The Start up time from off, to signing on to the internet is just under 16 seconds.

There is a reason why this kingston v300 SSD is going for cut-rate prices. They changed the way it was built using inferior NAND chips from mainland China to save a few bucks in production costs. Problem is, the new cheaper build isn't as good and the speeds are WAY down from what they claim on the package. Yet they tried to do it on the sly after all the tech reviewers had a chance to review the earlier better product.That's called bait & switch in my book.[...]But I knew this going in and when I saw the price drop below $60 for a 120Gb model I figured it was worth the risk. I've got a SATA-2 interface anyhow and can't use a drive faster than 300Mbs anyhow. I did some testing and the SSD I got in the "lottery" was not too bad, it's doing about 275Mb/s read & write -still a FAAAAR cry from the "up to 450" they print on the BS label of the drives they are shipping out. I think I did pretty good for $60 but I wouldn't pay any more than that for the luck of the draw. Some folks are reporting speeds much worse than this.So, in the end, I think that $60 is a good price for a crippled SSD that isn't nearly as fast as the earlier versions were. DO NOT PAY MORE THAN AROUND $60 for this drive. If you want a better SSD go elsewhere for a better name than Kingston (it's no longer a good name after this) If you want a cheap SSD then don't expect much for $60 -that's what you are getting here.Kingston pretty much torpedoed their good name with this stunt. I'll never buy any of their stuff again unless it is on a deep discount. It's cheap garbage now. Don't pay premium prices for cut-rate garbage. Know what you are buying, and don't pay a premium for non-premium product.And Jewel with Kingston Technical Support -don't bother replying with your cut/paste form-letter response that you do to every negative review here on Amazon. I'm sorry that you work for a fly by night company that just A-bombed their reputation. That's got to a rough job. But the truth is out...

I received the package in good order, connected it to my computer (SATA port not USB) and ran CrystalDiskMark, the benchmark program used for testing HDD speeds by all the pros.The results were a lot slower than expected, twice the speed of my Seagate 7200.10 HDD!I have since found on multiple forums and review sites that Kinsgston changed the memory modules used inside the drive to a slower type, but kept all the same advertising, which is actually false advertising. Don't take my word for it though, google it!One thing worth mentioning is; although it is slower than advertised, it is still double the speed of a normal mechanical drive for a great price, but if i knew it was going to be this slow i would of gone for a different brand.

Lasted 16 months and then failed. For $5 you can get the far more reliable Samsung. You'd be crazy to buy this.

Order shipped on time, returned order through Amazon service - nice ! I bought this one for my Thinkpad T420 for which this SSD does not work. I should have read the reviews earlier before I bought this. Crucial being a good SSD should support all laptops, not sure if, to blame Lenovo for that.

Unfortunately, with only less than one year of moderate usage, this product has failed. Considering contact the manufacture for the warranty stuff.

My drive failed in eight months, yes the factory replaced it, only to find out the bundled Acronis software was only supported for 60 days.What a rip-off, now I have an external drive with all my files totally useless unless I buy new Acronis software.Typical bait and switch. New drive works OK, but first one died suddenly. I just gave it two stars for giving me crap Acronis software that left me high and dry when I tried to recover my files.You live and learn.Stay away like this thing has the plague.

When I open 2 or 3 things at the same time the computer freezes completely for a minute and then it continues working. It happens just once or twice a day, but still annoying.

I purchased this drive on 7th March and installed in in Lenovo Y50-70 laptop.I laptop was running fine for a month time then I suffered from frequent blue screen errors and sudden restarts.The laptop was checked by a dedicated repair center where they reported that the hard disk is faulty.I didn't expect this brand to have such problem and in a short time.

This drive will slow down to a crawl using Microsoft Bitlocker encryption. We experienced this on several identical Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB drives. Apparently, the issue is with the controller, which attempts to compress the unccompressable Bitlocker data, and fails.We had less than 80 GB of data on these drives when they slowed down to an unusable state - much slower than a platter drive. This was using Windows 7 Enterprise. We have used Crucial M500 SSDs in the past without issue.

This solid state drive is good... if you know nothing about computers but you just want yours to be faster and all you do is surf the web. The speeds are not even remotely closed to what is posted. I get about 80-140 reads and writes. This product is a scam and nobody should buy it unless you're one of the fore mentioned people. The reason why I say it is a scam is because they switched the type of memory this SSD uses to what I'm assuming is cheaper after they got good ratings. This causes the reads and writes to not even be close to the original version.Kingston if you're reading this I don't care about your fake sympathy you put on people with similar reviews. I just hope you at least do something about this SSD. Unless you do something about it I will never buy another Kingston product again.It wouldn't be a bad deal at $50 if they didn't lie about the speeds.Obviously if hundreds of people are complaining, Kingston, it's not their fault.Time for the fair review:Pros:Much faster than a hard driveCheapThe exterior is well builtCons:Completely unrealistic listed speeds

I got the vx.6 and it tested with the ATTO benchmark at 250Mbps max speed, with other benchmark utility I was getting a maximum of 120Mbps. I didn't notice much difference between this drive and a 7200 RPM hard drive, wouldn't buy this product again, false advertising, bait and switch unexpected move from Kingston.

I ordered this, and I got a bad one. It was labeled a having firmware 506ABBF0 (and confirmed in crystaldiskinfo,) and assembled in Taiwan. Tested in Crystaldiskmark, and like many others, my sequential values were 180 read / 140 write. I tested with the proper AHCI mode in the UEFI/BIOS and the AHCI driver installed under Windows 8.1 on a motherboard with a SATA-III (6.0Gb/s) connection. This model drive used to have a sequential read speed more than double that before the firmware or manufacturing issues they've been having.This drive has been on sale pretty cheap on amazon and one other popular online-only store, and I think it's pretty obvious why... they're just trying to clear out the B-stock. Eventually they'll get this problem fixed, but they may as well retire the V300 designation, as it's being tarnished by all of these lemons. The sad thing is, if this is someone's first SSD, they may not even be aware they've been the victim of this bait-and-switch. While the sequential values are only about as good as a modern 7200RPM HDD, the 4K random reads and writes are orders of magnitude better than any mechanical drive, and that will be enough to make their system feel much snappier. A customer in this situation may just be satisfied with that, and not realize that almost any other modern SSD drive has substantially faster sequential read, and many are much faster with additional benchmarks as well.If you feel like testing your own drive, you can search for crystaldiskmark download, but make sure to perform a custom install and un-check any optional components. It is ad-supported software that will install a toolbar on your web browser if you choose a default installation. Normally I wouldn't recommend an application that does this, but it is an a very popular and simple utility which makes it easy for regular people to compare their results with others in as much an apples-to-apples way as possible.Luckily, when I described the issue with this [defective/not working properly] product, my refund upon return included the original shipping and did not have any deductions for return shipping. If you bought this within the last week or two, I strongly encourage you to test your drive and return it if you got a lemon (which seems to be the grand majority of them.) Even if you're just happy that this drive is faster than your old mechanical drive, I think it's worth it to send a message to Kingston that it's not OK to dump bad stock on unsuspecting customers.EDIT: The following is my follow-up to Kingston's response (below)"We source the NAND flash components from various manufacturers to build a high quality SSD at a competitive price."Translation -- "for this price you should be glad you're getting an SSD drive at all. So, if you happen to get some lower-quality NAND from one of our less-reputable suppliers, I guess that's just the risk you take!"We understand that not all benchmarking utilities, including Crystal Disk Mark, provide consistent results with our V300 SSD."Don't like the result..? Change the benchmark! You can also get CrystalDiskMark to register much higher values by setting the test data to 0-fill or 1-fill (repeating,) as that is highly compressible data, but only random data can be considered a benchmark of real-world use on SandForce drives. When Kingston first introduced the V300 120GB, they could truthfully advertise that it achieved 450MB/s real-world reads and writes. It's only now that you've sourced this skunky NAND that you're forced to say you may need to use repeating/compressible (not real-world) data in order to achieve the advertised speeds.Here are some benchmarks of a good V300 120GB from January 2013, long before all this started. You can see both incompressible and compressible test data ATTO (compressible) and HD Tune (incompressible.)Since it won't let me post an external link here, just google [hardocp Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SSD Review synthetic benchmarks]As you can see, even with incompressible data, the benchmarks are much higher than those recently reported by customers.I feel bad for you, Jewel. Trying to spin this is an unenviable position.I will never "select Kingston as my upgrade partner" again.

Regarding the 506 firmware:Yes, the ATTO test speeds are over 400MB/s, but testing on CrystalDiskMark yields read speeds only around 180MB/s and write speeds hovering around 100MB/s. Those are highly unacceptable speeds for an SSD. Even an SSD 10$ more than this on will get more impressive speeds than this. Do yourself a favor and pay a few more dollars for something like a 840 EVO.This is some shady business Kingston. I will be avoiding your products in the future.

The drive I received was made in taiwan not china and shipped with the 5.21 firmware, but it still read the slow read/ write speeds, 170/130 mb/s

Mine arrived DOA, I'm sure it would've otherwise been a good SSD.

The SSD worked fine for 3 months and then stopped working, the pc would no longer detect it. and as per the return policy for the company that manufactures this hard drive, unless you keep that plastic spacer and the original box it came in. you can not get a replacement or a refund. and sadly i had thrown the useless plastic spacer away. so now i am out 130.00 and nothing to show for it.

I bought this because of my previous purchase was a very satisfied one. This one, however, is not as smooth as my earlier device. At very first, my system missed it completely several times. Now after several month, my BIOS still miss it (meaning, could not find the drive or report boot file is missing) from time to time. It will be fine after I shut down the machine and cold start after a while. Unfortunately neither Amazon nor Crucial is very helpful in this matter. I do not know if the company is loosing its grip on quality control or just my bad luck.Update: now it is little less than 11 month, it is completely dead.

How many times am I going to play Russian Roulette with any manufacturer of an SSD? Samsung, Crucial, all of them are garbage! 1 out of 3 drives I buy to install for my customers' machines end up being corrupt, or DOA, and are a complete waste of my time and MONEY. This is completely unacceptable as these drives have been in production for over 4 years. There's no excuse. Do some QC at the factory please BEFORE you ship them out. Oh wait, then China won't make any money... Does GM put out 1 good car out of 3 and stay in business? I'm SO tired of this same old story. EPIC FAIL CRUCIAL AND SAMSUNG!

BEWARE! IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING GETTING THIS DRIVE JUST SKIP THIS BRAND AND GET ANOTHER FROM ANOTHER MANUFACTURERThe drive failed after four months of being used on a MacBook Pro. The symptoms were it disappearing randomly some times and some other times Mac OS X freezing. I tried reformatting it and reinstalling OS X and it kept on happening. I contacted crucial customer support and they instructed me to leave it powered on for 8 hours so that it'd trigger its active garbage collection; however it didn't fix the problem and Crucial offered to replace the SSD. Adding insult to injury, THEY SENT ME A REFURBISHED ONE THAT CAN'T EVEN BE FORMATTED.

Recognized by an Asus P7P55D-e mobo.UPDATE: It ended up crashing my system numerous times, now the card just completely failed yesterday! Too bad it didn't last, darn shame because now I have to re-download all my games. It is a really good thing this was not my primary hard drive! No wonder it was so cheap...

Almost exactly 1/2 advertised speed. It felt slow to me so I tested it. This SSD is still faster than a traditional hard drive but is about 1/2 the speed you can expect from a current well reviewed SSDs. Kingston uses their own benchmark to make their claims, but in real world terms this drive felt generally sluggish. I tried several various drive benchmark programs to show prove to myself it was slow. (google hard drive test and pick the top few). I do not think the modest savings is worth the huge performance hit.If you do buy this drive expect about 240 MB/s sequential read, 150MB/s sequential write. Otherwise the drive is fine, works ok - It's just not the speed one expects from an SSD.Compared to 550 MB/s claimed or minimum advertised 450 MB/s.actual data:Sequential Read : 242.726 MB/sSequential Write : 152.034 MB/sRandom Read 512KB : 229.235 MB/sRandom Write 512KB : 134.299 MB/sRandom Read 4KB (QD=1) : 17.977 MB/s [ 4389.0 IOPS]Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 44.686 MB/s [ 10909.7 IOPS]Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 118.744 MB/s [ 28990.2 IOPS]Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 133.951 MB/s [ 32703.0 IOPS]

I have purchased many of the V300 series SSD's from Kingston in the last 3 years, and I've been very happy with all of them. In the last few months, I have ordered at least 3 more. It seems true, like other reviewers stated, that they are now being made with cheap asynchronous ram modules that cheapen their build cost but also shatter the write speeds.I won't get into the details of why this is such an inefficient way to make the SSD's since many others have already laid this out for you, I'd just like to confirm that it is in fact true, and applies to two of my 120 gb's, and the 240 GB in my main. I have provided a screenshot of the testing results of my 240GB in my main computer (which is backed by a 4790k, Gtx 970, and 16 GB of ram).I feel this is a dirty tactic on Kingston's (or whomever makes their drives) part, and I won't be purchasing anymore. Further, I will be returning the SSD in my current rig and replacing with a Samsung evo 850, since they are faster, more reliable, and only a few dollars more currently. I'd proudly display the Samsung name in my computer than continue to support a company like this.Until this is resolved, I also will avoid using 'their' HyperX memory in my builds which I have been using for the past several without any issues. I just don't believe a company should be able to get away with something like this.Feel free to ask any questions, see my attached benchmark. I may update later to compare the similarly priced Evo 850, but there are already user benchmarks out there, and numbers don't lie.See this link for a comparison of the EVO 850 and the V300 in a side by side comparison in the exact same system. Test done 2/13/15.http://www.evernote.com/l/AO6Y_OhEhDZKiorYR1ab7IY2umZmDM8H4GQ/

Amazon great as always, but Kingston, frankly, I feel scammed. The attached results are on a 2009 Mac Book Pro 17, with fresh copy YS. I had better speeds on the original 5600 rpm. This is unacceptable.

There is no consistency with the drive. The only benchmark that comes close to the rated speed is Atto. I tested this SSD with AS SSD and Crystalmark they both get a read and write speed of around 120 MBps read/write plus or minus 15 MBps. Also I move a 2.83 GB movie file from one part of the d

The item came in a static proof bag with a loose manual in the package. After installing in a brand new build and installing windows 7 I noticed a lot of easy applications took a while longer to complete than would be expected. I have several occasions when booting up where an error occurred saying "S.M.A.R.T status bad. Backup and replace" other times I got a "reboot and select proper boot device" error and other times still I've seen the drive was disabled in BBS order. I tried a different SATA6.0gb cable and had the same problem. The device is a hit or miss every time I boot up. Save yourself the frustration and spend the extra cash on a samsung or another reputable brand.

*update 1/12/14* Firmware is not the issue, Kingston switched to asynchronous NANDSeems I found the real culprit after speaking with several SSD experts on various tech forums, get ready for a class action lawsuit Kingston. Here's the scam, Kingston switched to cheap asynchronous memory chips that don't run in parallel after the first few months of production.That means single channel bandwidth instead of multiple channels like earlier v300 SSD's. Instead of running at 200mhz, its running at 66mhz. This effects read and write speeds enormously.Kingston hid this fact by using solvent on the original labeling of the memory chips, then printed their own logo on top. Kingston does not manufacture any memory themselves. When SSD was shipped out for review it used quality Toshiba 19nm NAND but Kingston used solvent on chips labels and printed their own. This was odd, but the reason for it soon became obvious. After only a few months they switched to inferior quality chips with the same Kingston label.NO OTHER SSD MANUFACTURER ERASES ORIGINAL NAND LABEL AND PRINTS THEIR OWN ON TOP!This is FRAUD in my opinion and Kingston could very well be seeing a class action lawsuit coming there way for this stunt. Other SSD makers have tried this crap in the past and got busted. They were forced to RMA all the drives back to synchronous memory chips which cost much more.Kingston switched to cheaper quality NAND without saying a word. Firmware for Sandforce SSD's cannot cause you to lose 70 percent of read and write speeds. Lesson learned, never buy anything from Kingston again, they are criminals.