Kingston HyperX Max USB 3.0 128GB external drive
SSD on the go
Review Kingston Technology's HyperX Max is the company's latest SSD offering that will be hitting the shelves next month. Packaged as an external drive, it's available in capacities from 64GB to 256GB.
SuperSpeed storekeeper: Kingston Technology's HyperX Max
Entirely bus-powered and measuring in at 74 x 119 x 12mm, the slim aluminium enclosure of the HyperX Max is similar but slightly smaller than those used to house conventional external 2.5in hard drives.
On test is the 128GB version of this USB 3.0 device. With no moving parts and fast data handling, it offers an excellent combination of capacity, performance, portability and durability. The DataTraveler Ultimate USB 3.0 thumb drive reviewed recently was impressive, but the HyperX Max moves things up a notch.
Kingston claims the HyperX Max should be capable of write speeds up to 160MB/s and read speeds of up to 195MB/s. These figures are entirely within the realms of the USB 3.0 specification and the performance figures I have seen with Kingston’s SSDNow V+ drives.
Next page: Performance tests
COMMENTS
The sooner the better
The best thing about these things is that your average punter ALREADY thinks their external 2.5" HDD is solid-state, and treats them accordingly. I've lost count of the times I've seen them unplugged while spinning, dropped, chucked into bags, turned upside down while writing and otherwise abused, and the owners always expresses suprise when I point out that they wouldn't treat their laptops that way and expect them to survive...
Where's the eSATA?
No eSATA interface. Sure and USB 3.0 is nice and all, but there are a hell of a lot more eSATA ports out there and having one on this device would make it far more versatile/useful. Especially in light of the bridge board issue.
Just discovered the answer to my own question.
Anandtech have just published a short review that includes read/write speed tests highly relevant to this drives use as an _external_ storage drive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4032/quick-look-kingston-hyperx-max-30-a-usb-30-v100-ssd
My thanks to El Reg for a very timely heads up on this piece of kit - think I know what I will be asking Santa for now!
Interesting
I agree that the reading speed is significantly slower than a typical internal drive but the sequential writing speed is in fact somewhat faster than my Intel 80 Gb X25 (by most of 30 Mb/sec). As an external storage drive the read/write performance balance is pretty reasonable - as long as the price is of course!
I have a question though, might be a bit dimwitted but here we go. TRIM-support, does it have it and how does the mob support it? Anyone know?
eSATA
I second the eSATA comment. If it had this, I could pick it up and use it right now. As it is, it will probably not be useful to me until I (a) go through my next motherboard upgrade cycle, which will probably be a few years from now and (b) go through my next laptop upgrade cycle, which might be a very long time from now as increasingly a number of things that I had to have a laptop for (mobile working), I am starting to be able to do some of on my phone.
Of course I could use it with USB 2.0 (I presume), but that defeats a lot of the purpose of this thing for me. Sorry Kingston - nice try, though.
