INTRODUCTION

   You may not have thought it possible (we did but we didn't expect it to happen for quite some time) but solid state drives (SSDs) are actually gaining ground on regular mechanical hard disk drives so most manufacturers now offer 960GB models at rather affordable prices. The good news however is that there are even 1.6/2/3.2/4TB models currently available (there's even been talk for 6/8TB models) and although their prices are set very high since these are not aimed at regular consumers but rather large enterprises (some 4TB models cost around $30k) this means that eventually such capacities will reach all of us. Today in yet another worldwide first we will be taking a very thorough look at the latest SSDNow KC310 SSD which offers 960GB of space and is the only model in that particular line (at least currently).

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   The SSDNow KC310 features Phison’s PS3110-S10 8-channel NAND flash controller (supports AES 256Bit encryption and TCG) along with 19nm Toshiba MLC NAND flash memory modules and 1024MB DRAM cache by Nanya. It also fully supports power loss protection (firmware based), S.M.A.R.T. drive performance and health monitoring, TRIM function, Advanced Smart ECC and Flash error code correction (the drive can rebuilt data in the event of an unexpected error). According to Kingston the KC310 is primarily aimed for server use and thus aside the MTBF of 1 million hours it can deliver sequential read/write speeds up to 550MB/s-520MB/s, 4K read/write speeds of 99,000IOPS-89,000 IOPS and Random 4K read/write speeds of up to 96,000IOPS-88,000IOPS. Phison may not be at the top of the "food chain" in terms of performance but more and more models make use of it so let's see what it offers this time over inside the brand new SSDNow KC310 960GB SSD.