Intel looks to make solid state drives more affordable with today’s introduction of the new X25-V Value SATA SSD. The 40GB SSD is priced at $125 dollars making it a viable storage upgrade for low-cost netbooks or dual-drive/boot-drive desktop setups.
Features of the X25-V include:
- 2.5 inch form factor
- 40GB of 34nm NAND flash memory
- Sustained sequential read speeds of up to 170MB/s
- Sustained sequential write speeds of up to 35MB/s
- Features Intel SSD Toolbox, Intel SSD Optimizer, Intel Matrix Storage Manager
- SATA Revision 2.6 compliant and compatible with SATA 1.5Gb/s and 3Gb/s interface
- The X25-V also supports the Microsoft Windows 7 Trim function via the Intel SSD Optimizer
BTW, for those of you not familiar with the boot-drive option for SSDs, it’s the idea of placing the OS and your favorite applications on the SSD. Since SSDs are faster than standard hard disk drives, system boot times will speed up and application launch times will also start-up accordingly. Of course, a 40GB SSD will only get you so far so we’d probably just stick the OS and maybe one or two favorite apps on the SSD.
