Kingston 120GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD SA400S37/120G - HDD Replacement for Increase Performance , Black

I installed this Kingston SSD in an old laptop I had almost given up on... and it brought it back to life! Boot times are drastically reduced and apps load in seconds. Installation was simple and the performance is consistent. One of the best ways to extend the life of a device without replacing it. Excellent value for money.

PRODUCT: Kingston A400 120GB SSDSUMMARY:This drive is a great deal for improved performance if you don't need a whole lot of space. It’s top-notch for an entry-level SSD, but because of how bare-bones it is, you might need to be prepared for a very slightly more difficult process to set this up than with some other popular SSD choices.MY SITUATION:I’m not precisely an IT professional, but I do deal with all the tech for the small business I work for, and I’d rank my IT skills as medium-high. I'm working on updating the computers in an office with 16 employees, and with most of the computers needing a boost in speed, it's great to be able to buy several of these for a good price. The vast majority of our work documents are stored in shared locations, so none of our computers need a whole lot of space—our staff are generally only using 50-70GB on their drives for the OS and a pretty standard array of programs, so 120GB is the perfect size for us.Because most of our computers are at least three years old, the hardware only supports SATA II, so we're not seeing the huge improvement in speed that we might if we were going from HDDs to upper-limit SATA III speeds, but regardless, speeds have more than doubled in the four computers I've swapped these into so far, and users are seeing improvements, particularly in startup speeds for the computer (from more than 3 minutes down to 30 seconds) and for individual programs. See images for CrystalDisk comparison before and after on one of the machines. I'll post an update once I put together the brand new build I'm about to do with one of these.ISSUES IN THE PROCESS:I did run into a couple of issues that threw me off while installing these. The first was that the drive would not show up after hooking it up in the case and rebooting. It didn’t show in This PC or in Computer Management. The solution was to run Windows Memory Diagnostic, which is easily found through the start menu and took maybe 5-10 minutes to run on the two computers that had this issue. After that, I was able to see the disk in Computer Management, and I GPT partitioned each of the drives from there. See pieced together image for visuals on the process for getting this settled.The other slight hiccup I had was the computer refusing to boot from the drive once I removed the old HDD; this was easily resolved by changing the boot mode in the BIOS from Legacy to UEFI, which was necessary because I had partitioned them all as GPT.OTHER NOTES:I planned on mounting all of these with some heavy-duty Velcro we have lying around the office, which I’ve heard several places is fine because SSDs don’t have moving parts, so they don’t need to be held super-steady, and skipping a mounting bracket saved about $6 per drive (which is nice when buying several). The Velcro is doing just fine for three of the drives, and the fourth computer, conveniently, had a hot-swap bay with a 3.5 slot on one side (where the old HDD was), and a 2.5 spot on the other side that worked perfectly with some spare screws from the last case I bought.

TL;DR - Seq Read - 484.909 MB/s Seq Write 273.819 MB/s. Great boot drive, consider the 240 gig.Low cost boot drive, been running fine now for several months. Boots windows 10 in a well aged HP 8200 Ultraslim (SATA 3) before I can even remote into it. Super lightweight and runs cooler, perfect for portable devices. Currently running at 26c in a cramped case while running updates. By far the easiest and best bang for your buck upgrade that can be done to any PC.I did have a small issue when first using this drive. I had random lockups that would only be resolved by a power cycle. I cloned my drive the lazy way and fixed my partition in Windows so I can only assume this issue was caused by my error. Keep in mind you will only have approx. 111GB available to use. With Windows and a few programs installed I have about 80GB free. If you're considering using this small of an SSD as your only drive, I would spend a bit more and get a 240/250GB. For my use it's perfect. It's fast enough for it's intended purpose, but my 850 EVO does come out on top in every way in CDM. Below are my speeds, apologies for a block of text:Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 484.909 MB/sSequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 273.819 MB/sRandom Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 175.194 MB/s [ 42772.0 IOPS]Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 140.007 MB/s [ 34181.4 IOPS]Sequential Read (T= 1) : 419.030 MB/sSequential Write (T= 1) : 113.445 MB/sRandom Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 25.434 MB/s [ 6209.5 IOPS]Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 57.463 MB/s [ 14029.1 IOPS]

This is a great choice if you need a speedy budget SSD! It functions how it says, and it's worked reliably so far. It is currently connected to my Xbox to run games faster, and it has a significant impact! Games load much faster and it makes it run smoother. It is also a great choice if you want to breathe new life into an old HHD-based computer. This is an excellent budget SATA SSD option, especially to improve the performance of older tech. I highly recommend it!