Question 1

I want to use this in a desktop 3.5 inch bay. Does this ssd come with an adapter to install it into a 3.5 inch bay?

Accepted Answer

It does not come with an adapter or screws. I had left over screws from my case, so I only purchased this to go with it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994159

Question 2

can I install this in my laptop?

Accepted Answer

It depends on your Laptop.  It is a SATA3 drive and nothing is special about its height.  It is a standard 2.5-inch drive, so as long as you have the appropriate tray it should work.

There are other factors that you need to be aware of such as does the BIOS support trim or an SSD, or is it something you need to run separately.  Generally, you do not have to trim these drives if you do not write to them a lot, but if you do then you will need to trim the drive occasionally.  I only use the drive for installing software and the operating system.  All temp, swap, email, etc. is stored on another drive, so I can improve the longevity of the drive.

The 300 works well, and I caught it on sale, so it was worth the slight loss in performance over some of the better drives, such as the Samsung and Toshiba drives which are much better, but the drive has been dependable, and backed by a good manufacturer.

Enjoy, they are much faster than a standard disk drive, so you cannot really go wrong.

Question 3

Does this come with a SATA cable?

Accepted Answer

Hello Nathaniel,

It does not come with cable and not even a mounting kit. Though it is very fast. 120 GB is too little for me, I did not realize until I installed it. next time I will go for 500 GB. waiting for price to come down.

Question 4

Is this big enough for the operating system(win7) and most programs? If I use this for the operating system what about the system drive I have? Can I still use it also? Or would I have to use it as an external? I have about 300 gig on my system drive right now and it's mostly programs. I keep music, pics, and movies on external drives along with back-ups.

Accepted Answer

Yes, it's big enough for Windows 7. I run win 7 and AutoCAD 2014 standard design suite, Full Microsoft Office package, PDF,  7-zip etc, for a total of about 30 GB install. But then I do not use it for anything else, only work. ( I have many machines, and a server.)

If you plan on using other drives for storage, this size would be great. Made my machine VERY fast to boot, and quiet etc.

I don't think you can use 2 system drives. You need to see how much software you actually have/need installed, and go from there. I would not buy a drive that's less than 50% free when all you need is installed, but preferably more like 75% free.

If you really need 300 Gigs of software installed, then you answered your own question, as this drive is 120 gigs.

Question 5

What type of cable will I need to connect this to a desktop motherboard (SATA 2)?

Accepted Answer

You will need a Serial ATA ( SATA ) 2 connector. Here is a link to what you would need. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812117647

Question 6

Does this come with data migration software that can clone my old operating system/data?

Accepted Answer

Does not come with any software.  I originally used a copy of Acronis Disk director to clone.  While that worked but I caused a problem by having 2 bootable drives in the system at the same time (Windows REALLY does not like that) which rendered both original and clone drives unusable (not broke just unusable).  In the end I did a C: drive restore using Acronis True Image which is my back-up program) which worked like a charm.

Question 7

The description says this drive has 120GB of storage space, but usually there is a little less than advertised. How much free space is really on this SSD?

Accepted Answer

It highly depends on which operating system you use. Windows reads it one way while OSx and Linux may read it another way.

When a company advertises a hard drive they are advertising at Gigabyte (GB) which define 1 GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes while Windows uses Gibibyte (GiB) which defines 1 GiB as 1,073,741,824 bytes. So in order to figure out what size your computer would report on Windows:

* 1000 * 1000  * 1000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 =

In this case, for a 120GB drive Windows would report roughly 111.75 GB as usable formattable space.

If you use OSx or Linux, You may see the advertised amount.

Question 8

Do you need to also buy an adapter plate to mount in a standard 3.5" bay?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you need to purchase an adapter plate to mount the Kingston SSDNow V300 in a 3.5 inch drive bay.  This SSD has tapped holes on both the bottom and the sides, so it should fit in any adapter plate made to fit a 2.5 inch drive.  I am using the BYTECC BRACKET-125 HDD/SSD Metal Mounting Kit.  There are other adapter trays that will allow you to mount two 2.5 inch drives in a single 3.5 inch bay.

FYI, I was not able to get the Kingston SSDNow V300 to work with a SATA I Controller Card.  It does work with a SATA II controller that I purchased from Newegg.

Question 9

Will this work inside a laptop?  Or only a desktop?

Accepted Answer

It will work on more modern laptops with sata connections. Some older laptops use smaller IDE plugs. That was back in 2000 though.

Question 10

Does it have the adapter or there is a need to purchase adapter to fit in the case?

Accepted Answer

This is a laptop size drive (2.5") so I needed an adapter to mount it to a 3.5" drive bay slot in my desktop.  I also needed a cable adapter to interface the DC power.  It's been a while so I am going from my memory.  If you are using this in a laptop I don't think you'll need any adapter but if this is for a desktop I think the adapters would be needed/useful.

Questions & Answers