Kingston SSDNOW V+ Series 180 1.8" SSD Hard Drive Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,045 words · ~5 min read
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this is a drive from Kingston's SSD now Series this is a v+ drive and it is the
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180 so you might ask you know what's up
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with an arbitrary number like 180 well I would postulate that it stands for 1.8
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in so you can see that this SSD is actually substantially smaller than
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other ssds in the SSD now v+ series and
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the reason for that is that not every device out there uses 2 and 1/2 in
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drives what a concept some
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subnotebooks and uh even other devices will actually require you to have a 1.8
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in drive if you want to upgrade and Kingston is not going to leave behind
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any part of the market that they can meet and given that SSD technology is
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very easily shrunk down to smaller sizes
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well hey why not produce a one 1.8 in drive so let's get this guy opened up I
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mean I'm not a big fan of the whole plastic clamshell packaging but it's not
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too hard to get apart so let see what Kingston has to say for themselves in the documentation here it's kind of
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clever the way they do their manuals you just kind of take apart the packaging
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and then boom there's your getting started guide so 1.8 in Drive something
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to be aware of is if you're upgrading a notebook for example that comes with a
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1.8 in drive you might be in for a bit of a treat getting things apart um they
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don't actually say much in here about that they're just talking about the physical installation make sure you got
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a SATA interface and a SATA cable uh make sure you configure your BIOS to
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boot from the SS all of that good stuff this guy is about
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uh staying up to date on Kingston technology news and products okay and
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let's have a look at this SSD now here's something to be aware of as well so yeah
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you might be in for a bit of a challenge first of all interface okay this is not
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a standard SATA desktop interface so I want you to look at a standard desktop
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drive so we're going to orient these guys the same way these are clearly not
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the same it actually is a proprietary well not proprietary it is a standard
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connector but it's different standard connector on a 1.8 in drive versus a 2
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and 1/2 in drive because you can clearly see that this drive just isn't wide
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enough to fit all that stuff on with the necessary reinforcements and structural
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bits that need to go along with it so that's the reason for the different
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interface now the other thing to be aware of is that taking apart a drive or
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a computer or an appliance or whatever else you have that is designed to accept
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this kind of a drive might be a bit of a challenge because they're usually highly
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embedded highly proprietary and you're going to require probably a set of
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Torque screwdrivers as well as some other special stuff as well now just in
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terms of sheer size I want to show you a
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3 and 1/2 in desktop hard drive so you hold that up to a computer looks pretty
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small looks pretty normal this is what a hard drive looks like okay 2 and2 in
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drives these are basically going to replace 3 and 1/2 in drives in the next
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couple years as far as I can tell they're about one qu the size of a 3 and
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1/2 in drive so you take that you put it on top you can see that we could easily
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fit two side by side you take that and put it on the side and you can see that
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we could easily stack too so you actually have some adapters uh for
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example 3 and 1/2 in to 2 and 1/2 in adapters that you can mount in a case
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that will just take two ssds and mount them in the sandwich form right directly
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on top of each other so you can fit double the density and then I've even
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seen 5 and a/4 in Bay adapters that allow you to hot swap four 2 and 1/2 in
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drives in the space of one of those so everything's getting more miniature all
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the time but this just really Takes the Cake this thing is just tiny compared to
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a 2 and 1/2 in drive you got about half the thickness so here I'm going to give
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you that angle so you can see it pretty well uh even less than actually oh no
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that's probably about half the thickness of the 2 and 1/2 in Drive although it's
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not quite the same proportion so it's not a 1:4 ratio like the 2 and 1/2 to 3
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and A2 so you can see the interface makes it just a little bit too long to
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actually fit four of these in the same space but there you have it Kingston
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produces a full range of SSD products including 2 and 1/2 in as well as 1 1.8
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in drives and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Kingston SSD now v+
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180 that is a 64 gig very very very
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small oh hey here's a good comparison oh hold on pause so just for size
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comparison this is a crazy Russian credit card which he thoughtfully loaned
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to me so that I could show you guys how big this 1.8 in drive is compared to a
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credit card so you can see it is actually smaller than a credit card so
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hey if you got an encrypted one of these you could actually like carry it around
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in your wallet remember this is the encrypted drive this one's not encrypted
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it's just really small so there you have it that is the 1.8 in Drive