Shootouts

Gone in a Flash - 5 Solid State Drives Compared

By Vincent Chang & Vijay Anand - 23 Jul 2009

Kingston SSDNow E-series

E for Enterprise

Besides the mainstream variants, Intel has a more expensive enterprise class SSD in its lineup. Not only that, it also 'outsources' its technology to certain vendors so that they can package and sell them with their own brands. Kingston is one of those few vendors that has Intel's blessings when it comes to its SSD products.

Kingston is one of the few vendors that offers 'rebranded' Intel SSD drives, though the Intel logo is still prominently displayed. This is the E series, E for Enterprise and it uses SLC NAND flash.

The Kingston SSDNow E-series based on the Intel X25-E model, is aimed at the enterprise market and unsurprisingly is based on SLC flash memory. It's also extremely fast on paper, with read speeds that match the X25-M. The write speeds at 170MB/s is however much higher than the X25-M's 70MB/s. You can expect the internal controller to be similar to that of the X25-M however, since it's the SLC NAND flash that allows for its faster write speeds (and some firmware optimization). There's a price for that though, US$799 in fact, which is needless to say, more than twice that of the X25-M. This however, is the norm for drives based on the SLC flash memory.

Kingston's E-series showed why they are so highly valued with a consistently fast read speed.

No surprise here that the Kingston SSD shares similar characteristics as the Intel X25-M.

 

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