Kingston, a leading supplier of flash-based products, on Monday released its new solid-state drive (SSD) designed specifically to speed up Windows 7 boot-up time and operation. The new SSDNow V-series does not offer substantial capacity or extreme performance, but they still do the job and just for about $115.

Kingston’s SSDNow V-series solid-state drive offers 40GB capacity, which is enough for installation of Microsoft Windows 7 and certain additional applications, features sequential read speed of up to 170MB/s and sequential write speed of up to 40MB/s. The SSD is designed for Serial ATA-300 interconnection. Obviously, the device is based on multi-level cell (MLC) flash and does not support any advanced performance-boosting technologies, e.g. DRAM cache.

“The SSDNow  V-series 40GB Boot Drive offers instant performance enhancement coupled with reliability and lower power consumption at a fraction of the cost of a new system. The 40GB Boot Drive is the latest offering in our V Series SSD line. It provides a low-cost upgrade solution that complements the installed hard-disk drive to extend the life cycle of existing desktop computers and workstations in homes and offices,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager at Kingston.

Using the industry-standard PCMark Vantage Advanced HDD Suite, Kingston SSDNow V-series 40GB solid-state received a score of 13 883, whereas a 7200RPM hard-disk drive attained a score of 3708, according to Kingston’s internal testing.

Unfortunately, Kingston’s SSDNow V-series 40GB SSD only has 1 million hours mean time before failure (MTBF), which is lower compared to Intel Corp.’s MLC-based SSD’s 1.5 million hours or OCZ Technology Agility’s 1.2 million hours.

The Kingston SSDNow V-series 40GB Boot Drive has manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) of $115, a special bundle that includes cloning software, 2.5" to 3.5" brackets and SATA data and power cable extenders has MSRP or $130 and will begin shipping on November 9, 2009. SSDNow V-series is backed by a three-year warranty. For limited time only, Kingston will sell SSDNow V-series 40GB SSD for $85 at Newegg.com.

Tags: Kingston, SSD, Flash