There are two markets utilizing SSDs; regular and enterprise consumers. Desktop users expect SSDs to last at least the same, if not longer, than platter based drives. On the other hand, when it comes to wear leveling, reliability, and performance, enterprise pros expect more including a certain level of security. For these reasons, enterprise solid state drives tend to cost a lot more than consumer ones because of the enhanced reliability. However, given that this market segment can be a cut throat business, and not every business can afford to spend top dollar, more affordable proven enterprise SSDs are highly coveted.

While Kingston's E100 (Enterprise) SSDs have the high end consumers covered, their more affordable E50 series helps bring costs down considerably. The E50, which we'll be checking out today, offers many enterprise level features including integrated AES 256 bit encryption. In a collaborative effort with my good colleagues at Puget Systems, we tested some Kingston E50 240GB SSDs on a capable LSI SAS controller to see how they perform.