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  • Chloiber - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    The drive looks great - allthough I think it's still cheaper, better (and really easy) to just go with a custom setup if you really need the speed.
    Probably the same performance, but it's cheaper (alltough I'm not that sure because external USB 3.0 cases like the Lian Li EX-10QB are still pretty expensive) and you can also exchange the SSD later.

    It looks very slim though, nothing to complain about there. I also agree with your conclusion: sequential performance and performance resiliency are way more important than random performance on an external drive.
  • vailr - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    Unless I'm mistaken, it's still not possible to create a Windows bootable external USB 3.0 (or: USB 2.0) drive, without first creating your own custom Windows install disc. But OSX is easier for such a purpose.
  • bji - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    Also Linux has no problem booting from an external drive.
  • SandmanWN - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    Thats why we have eSATA people.
  • bigboxes - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    Be honest. eSATA is dying. USB 3.0 will ensure that. There there... death will come quickly.
  • SandmanWN - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    Yeah, everyone loves having cpu overhead being devoted to transfer protocol decoding, the added costs of additional chips on their motherboards, having to support yet another set of incompatible ports on the back of their crowded interface panel. I mean really, who would ever want a system that directly speaks to the same bus that every other hard drive uses. Then again this is the new era of computing where choosing a catchy name is always better than choosing the better platform. That's just the way we do it these days.
  • Chloiber - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    I'm not sure if I didn't understand your comment correctly, but it's possible to boot from an external USB drive with Windows.
  • name99 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    I've no idea what the situation is with Windows, but any modern Mac (intel and I think even some of the late PPC models) can boot off USB.

    I run my (2007 Penryn) iMac off an external USB SSD, using the internal drive for movies and music, and it works really well --- the improvement in responsiveness, even with a USB2 connection, is very obvious.

    [And why don't I run it off an FW800 SSD you ask? Because of the problem indicated in my next comment. Current SSDs draw a lot of power. This power is within the spec of FW800, but the crappy FW800 enclosure I got from crappy AcomData doesn't fully support the spec and can't deliver this power.
    I am sick of dealing with AcomData and am not willing to waste my money on another enclosure that, for all I know, is as bad as or worse than AcomData's.]
  • marraco - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    You mean the crappy computer you got from the fruity company.

    All that rant about Windows is false.
  • Sufo - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    Can you not just swap the internal drive with the SSD? I know imacs aren't exactly easy to dismantle, but running your OS off an external drive seems like utter lunacy to me. The concept of having a machine that can't boot without a peripheral connected seems downright insane. At least it wasn't a notebook...

    also "Current SSDs draw a lot of power." do they?
  • vailr - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    What was meant was: booting AND running Windows directly from an external USB hard drive (or SSD device). Not possible, due to Microsoft specifically disabling such a scenario.
  • jordanclock - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    You are very mistaken. Microsoft even offers a tool to put any Windows disc image onto a USB and make it bootable. My last three Windows installs were done from a USB drive, as a matter of fact. It's simply a matter of finding a motherboard with USB-boot, but that is really not even an issue.
  • jordanclock - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    Ignore my comment. I was the one that was mistaken.

    Running Windows from an external drive is possible, but not easily done and very hackish.
  • SandmanWN - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    hackish??? its a MS utility........
  • jordanclock - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    To make an installation USB, yes. It's a Microsoft utility. To make a bootable installation of Windows is hackish. We're talking about running Windows (Not just the installer) from a USB drive. Currently there is no support this feature and as far as I know, XP was the last Windows that made this even remotely easy.
  • SandmanWN - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link

    Actually the utility for 7 is out now. Still don't get how following a set of directions from the manufacturer of the product is hacking. Just don't understand the fantasy land some people live in.
  • name99 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    What's the power usage? In particular, does it run (especially when doing a lot of writes) off a single USB2 connection?

    Kingston's previous drives have been over the edge of what can be supported off a single USB connector, and then you have the hassle of having to use a double-headed cable, maybe you don't have two slots free. Given that USB provides higher power than USB2, I could well believe that this thing does not run acceptably off a single USB2 connection (or a marginal connection, like in a hub).

    Power of this sort is something Ars really should be tracking for every one of these devices. It is a sodding irritating fact of life right now that many many (IMHO crappy and unscrupulous) device manufacturers are shipping products that simply are not robust in their power requirements --- they require two USB connectors, or are so close to the edge off a single connector that 50% of the time they don't work --- with no indication on the box of this. Users like us rely on reviewers like Ars to let us know of these issues.
  • Chloiber - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    It does/should. 2.5" external HDDs need way more power to start spinning. This does work on most PCs.

    I myself got a (custom made) external SuperTalent UltraDrive GX on USB 2.0 (please, don't ask why I got this ;) and it works with just the USB connection on all my PCs. Even on the one which had it's problems with external 2.5" HDDs.
  • ProDigit - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    I thought USB 3 was supposed to be backwards compatible with USB2.0?

    If you ask me a USB2.0 to mini-usb cable should plug in the device (the only issue 'might' be the power requirements.
  • jordanclock - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    USB3 has a different form factor. There are additional pins and additional power sent over the cable.
  • name99 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    "It does/should. 2.5" external HDDs need way more power to start spinning. This does work on most PCs."

    Ahh, the naivete of those who are convinced they carry an accurate mental model of the world in their heads.

    Go LOOK at the power utilization figures of a range of SSDs as against a range of 2.5" disks some time. You might be more than a little surprised at what you see.
  • Chloiber - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    Well, why don't you share your knowledge with me and post a link.
  • name99 - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    I would like to think that AnandTech users can use Google. Apparently not.

    Here's a table of SSD power consumption for a spread of devices. Note that at the peak end, we have utilizations of 3.7 to 4.1 W (for comparison a USB2 connector can deliver 2.5W, and FW 7W).
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries...

    A reasonable modern 2.5" magnetic drive, in contrast, draws 2.5W (basically engineered, I think, to run at USB2 power). Certainly our common experience is that Seagate and WD sell 2.5" drives that run just fine off a single USB connection.
    http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/...
  • blandead - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    can someone make an 8gb micro SDHC card this fast? That would be amazing, they work through USB as well once plugged in right? Or same sort of thing at least?

    anyways kudos to Kingston I hope prices go down faster I'm really itching to buy an SSD for my new build soon as BD comes out hahaha might be waiting a while.
  • Noobz At Work - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    I already have the stock 7,200 RPM Hitachi HDD I pulled from my laptop which was replaced with odly enough, a drive that was reviewed here which would be the Seagate Momentus XT 320Gb. On the note of having the stock drive lying around, I am eventually going to get an enclosure that has an e-sata port so I can utilize the one I have on this laptop.

    Anyway, you still can't beat the write speeds of a good old fashioned mechincal drive, and not to mention another posters statment about how SSDs consume more power than a straight mechincal disk. That is why I never leave my battery in my computer, because I am sure the solid-state portion of the drive in my computer will eat away the battery more than usual.

    But, since I am partial to Kingston products(love my 16GB hardware-based 256AES locker+ data travler) Maybe next payday, I will order one just to have it for future use.
  • LordOfTheBoired - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link

    Ummm.... no. The whole reason SSDs can be made to work without overhauling the host system architecture is that they DON'T draw power when off.
    They use flash RAM, just like thumb drives and SD cards and portable MP3 players and so on.
    As-is, drives usually have power physically removed when the system is turned off, so it's simply not POSSIBLE for them to draw power.

    As cool as it would BE if they used SRAM.... it's simply not going to happen. You'd have to redesign the power supply to provide constant power to the drives, and you'd lose your data every time the drive lost power.
    ...
    Unless it was battery-backed, but I suspect a hundred gigs of SRAM would require a significant battery.
  • Chloiber - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    "you still can't beat the write speeds of a good old fashioned mechincal drive"

    Err...yes you can.
  • dqniel - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    Uhh. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or are just clueless. SSDs don't draw more power than mechanical drives even while under load, much less idle, they don't draw any power while the computer is powered off (they aren't using volatile memory), and the write speeds, read speeds, and most importantly access times are superior to mechanical drives.
  • bahamakyle - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link

    "That is why I never leave my battery in my computer, because I am sure the solid-state portion of the drive in my computer will eat away the battery more than usual."

    Nah man you're fine. Just save yourself the hassle and leave your battery in. Your SSD doesn't use any power when it's off. Unless of course you're joking haha.
  • mpx - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link

    Can you benchmark how well do these drives work for ReadyBoost? USB 2.0 flash drives and SSDs are quite slow (30MB/s is only 7,6k IOPS with 4kB pages), so ReadyBoost can't show it's potential. With this kind of drive, that has USB 3 interface it becomes much more interesting.

    How about other flash caching systems, like eBoostr or NVELO Dataplex?

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