Kingston 480GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD SA400S37/480G - HDD Replacement for Increase Performance

I've had this drive for years now and it's still works like it did when I got it. It has some wear and tear based on the Kingston software tool that you can download for it, but for the low cost you can't go wrong. Last time I checked the number it was still in the mid 90% "good" range since the laptop doesn't get used everyday.Granted it isn't as durable as the Samsung SATA disk counterpart in my main computer and won't come close to the even faster PCI-e SSD's used for the boot and games drives. I didn't buy it for that though, it was used to upgrade my HP 8770W laptop computer's original HDD. I am very happy with the 250GB version, very affordable price as well for what little I use it.The read/write speeds for this disk top out at around 550MB/s on SSD to SSD transfers which is the max speed of the SATA interface and pretty much the same for all SATA type solid state drives. I tired that out directly using the 2nd drive bay in the laptop to connect my other Samsung 870 EVO alongside the Kingston. The Kingston was setup as the main disk of course, and the Samsung was removed after testing it out that way. You'll see a noticeable improvement in loading time for everything when updating from the now almost obsolete platter disk drives.I would buy this again, and may again some day whenever the one I have now fails. It should last for years really since the laptop this drive is in is seldom used these days. Recently one of my great nieces has began using it for random computer gaming so it will wear out at some point I suppose. It seems very durable so far though.It was very easy to install, only required a small + type screw driver and then installing a fresh copy of Windows 11 on the drive. It was a very fast Windows install, finishing the install process in less than 10 minutes. If you are just using it as a second disk and not installing an OS on it then you may have to initialize the disk before the operating system can see it for formatting.Some people may use other methods to preserve their original disk data like disk cloning or raid setups. There wasn't much of anything of value on the original disk so installing from nothing was not a problem. Of course I have all the drivers and such for the older laptop backed up on a flash drive, and an additional hard drive in case HP drops the model from their support pages.I guess that sums it then, hope the review helps other people choose the SSD that fits their needs.

I have several of these Kingston SSD units. I keep buying more as the price declines as new formats for SSD enter the market and applications. I use them with attachments as spare portable memory for backups and large file storage. Just get yourself a USB connector for this type of drive, and you are good to go. I have a slew of USB thumb drives (even some lovely Kingston flash drives from the Middle Ages), but you can't beat the savings in dollars per RAM for these drives. I am sure they work well as bootable SSD too, but I can't testify on that since I use them as storage spares. Yes, I have three of these and they are subdivided with virtual drives or folders for backup files from my systems. Each has been recognized by every system they plug into, and it's ridiculous compared to the old dinosaur 80 GB drives I paid big bucks for back when Circuit City and Fry's were still on the planet. A few bucks gets you a nice little USB adapter and you can hook this up as your portable drive. Or carry it to your friend's house and loot their hard drive when they are on a beer run. (Only kidding, don't do that - it would be wrong.) Of course, those incriminating e-mails at work might come in handy in court some day. At this price, you can store your data until you need it. Download and park it.

I purchased this brand before, and it never seems to fail my expectations. Purchased the 960 GB storage capacity. It is a truly good quality SSD. It's way fast and better performing compared to a hard drive since SSD's are nothing more than digital electronic storage devices, hard drives do last longer though so I always keep one anyway simply for that purpose along with buying a lot of storage. Depending on your use cases, if you are constantly using the device, such as overburdening the device with prolonged reads and writes it will get hot. But when I personally use it, the speed of the SSD will not get to levels of insane heat because I do not use it intensively. I had encountered a brand that thermal throttled at one point but not with Kingston.

My old faithful Dell Inspiron 5559 laptop (Intel Core i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz / 2.40 GHz) (circa 2017) was staring to show its age. Incredibly slow to boot and sluggish all around. Did not want to drop hundreds on a new machine so rolled up my sleeves and dug in. First upgraded the RAM from 8mb to 16mb. Helped overall performance but not boot time. Went all in and decided a new SSD to replace the original HDD was in order. Chose this Kingston 960gb A400 SATA drive based upon price and info from the Kingston web site that said it would be a drop in replacement. It was and after two weeks in operation I could not be happier.Got me a USB3.0 to 2.5 SATA SDD Cable (Amazon item B00HJZJI84) to clone my old drive to the new. For unknown reasons, I could not get the Acronis True Image cloning software that is available for free download at the Kingston web site to work. It kept telling me there was not enough space on the new SSD even though I was transferring less than 200gb to a 960gb drive. Eventually downloaded a free trial version of Maricum Reflect X and used that to clone my old HDD to the new Kingston SSD. The Maricum software worked on the first try.Once the clone was complete I removed the old HDD from the laptop and installed the new SSD. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube so I will leave that to you. Powered up the laptop and after a few self-induced power cycles it booted up. Only oddity I experienced is the Dell BIOS made me reset the system time. Since then the Kingston SSD has worked perfectly. The boot up time is spectacular compared to my old HDD and with the expanded RAM the laptop is humming along. The SDD, cable, and the RAM set me back less then a Hundo. A huge savings over purchasing a new machine.Of course time will tell but for now I highly recommend !