Kingston's high-performance KC100 SSD is S.M.A.R.Ter than yours

Good news for secure data fans who aren't fond of moving parts: Kingston's shipping a new line of security-focused solid state drives for all your info-hiding needs. Despite being touted as an enterprise product, the new line will happily sit in any SATA-capable machine you wish, smoothly chugging along thanks to its beloved SandForce DuraClass technology. It's not often you find a veritable plethora of features tucked between slabs of NAND, but these guys do have some smarts. Literally. S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology -- don'tcha know) is firmly onboard, as well as self-encrypting tech to keep any schadenfreude at bay. Beyond that, you can look forward to 6Gb/s throughput, backwards-compatibility with current SATA 2 systems, plus a pretty darn generous five years of warranty. For your cut of the action you'll be shelling out $337 (120GB), $650 (240GB) or $1,270 (480GB), depending on how much data you just can't walk away from. A not-at-all pushy infomercial is embedded after the break -- for laughs, or learning.

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Kingston Digital Launches First SandForce-based Business-Equipped SSD

* Extended Five-year Warranty
* Data Integrity Protection Featuring DuraClass Technology
* Only Client-based SSD to Offer Enterprise S.M.A.R.T Attributes

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it is shipping the SSDNow KC100, the company's first SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) business-equipped SSD. KC100 utilizes the latest award-winning SandForce® controller. This powerhouse SSD delivers exceptional performance and instantly boosts the productivity of any client system.

"Kingston® is thrilled to offer the new business-equipped KC100 SSD to enterprises"
KC100 is backed by a five-year warranty to match the industry average for product refresh cycles in the enterprise. Utilizing SandForce's DuraClass™ technology, KC100 delivers world-class data integrity protection. Corporations can rest assured their data is safe as the drive offers advanced wear leveling and garbage collection to maintain optimal endurance and performance. Data integrity protection runs transparently in the background so it never disrupts daily business.

KC100 is the only business-equipped SSD to offer enterprise-level S.M.A.R.T attributes. The SSD's usage statistics, health and life stage can be monitored with industry standard and publicly available S.M.A.R.T monitoring tools. This provides peace of mind for IT departments knowing their employees are taken care of as the KC100 client-side SSDs are reliable and running optimally.

"Kingston® is thrilled to offer the new business-equipped KC100 SSD to enterprises," said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. "Data integrity is important to every company and the KC100 is sure to deliver the highest standards of data protection on the client systems in which it is installed. Users can rest assured that with the combination of its endurance, reliability and performance, KC100 will become a very important asset in the workplace."

The new KC100 self-encrypts to provide full and immediate client-level data encryption. With two embedded encryption engines, running in both AES-128 and AES-256, encryption is performed at the drive level without draining host system resources and slowing down data transfer rates. KC100 is also backwards-compatible with current SATA 2 systems so investments are future-proofed for the next client system upgrade.

A video with more information on the KC100 business-equipped SSD is available here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/_6PTLFG43UA.

SSDNow KC100 ships in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities, as a standalone or as an upgrade bundle kit. It is backed by a five-year warranty, 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston reliability. For more information visit www.kingston.com.

Kingston SSDNow KC100 Features and Specifications:

Sequential Reads 6Gb/s1:
SATA Rev. 3.0 – 120GB & 240GB: 555MB/s; 480GB: 540MB/s
SATA Rev. 2.0 – 120GB, 240GB & 480GB: 280MB/s
Sequential Writes 6Gb/s
SATA Rev. 3.0 – 120GB & 240GB: 510MB/s; 480GB: 450MB/s
SATA Rev. 2.0 – 120GB, 240GB & 480GB: 260MB/s
Sustained Random 4K Read/Write2:
120GB: 20,000/60,000 IOPS
240GB: 40,000/60,000 IOPS
480GB: 60,000/45,000 IOPS
Max Random 4K Read/Write:
120GB: 90,000 / 70,000 IOPS
240GB: 95,000 / 60,000 IOPS
480GB: 77,000 / 45,000 IOPS
Form factor: 2.5"
Interface: SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s) and SATA Rev 1.0 (1.5Gb/s)
Guaranteed: five-year Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
Enterprise S.M.A.R.T Tools: Reliability Tracking, Usage Statistics, Life Remaining, Power Loss, Wear Leveling, Temperature, Drive Life Protection
Capacity3: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB
Storage temperatures: -40°C - 85°C
Operating temperatures: 0°C - 70°C
Dimensions: 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm
Vibration operating: 2.17G
Vibration non-operating: 20G
Operating shock: 1500G
Power specs: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.6 W (TYP) Read / 2.05 W (TYP) Write

Kingston SSDNow KC100 Business Equipped Solid-State Drive
Part number Capacity and features
MSRP (U.S. only)
SKC100S3/120G 120GB KC100 Stand-alone SSD
$337.00
SKC100S3/240G 240GB KC100 Stand-alone SSD
$650.00
SKC100S3/480G 480GB KC100 Stand-alone SSD
$1,270.00
SKC100S3B/120G 120GB KC100 Upgrade Bundle Kit
$353.00
SKC100S3B/240G 240GB KC100 Upgrade Bundle Kit
$665.00
SKC100S3B/480G 480GB KC100 Upgrade Bundle Kit
$1,285.00

1 Based on "out-of-box performance" with ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.41. Speed may vary due to host hardware software and usage
2 Based on "out-of-box performance" with IOMeter08
3 Please note: Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston's memory Guide at kingston.com/flash_memory_guide.