Patriot Spreads Wildfire with Fast SATA 6Gbps SSD

It wasn't long ago that Solid State Drives were new to the market and only within reach of wealthy early-adopters. Capacities were small and prices were high, with many of the earliest drives fetching prices as high as $3000. As is the norm in the computer industry things have changed. SSD's are now becoming ubiquitous and capacities have increased as prices have fallen.

Performance has also increased and SSD's are now offered in every flavor imaginable from budget-conscious models with average performance to fully fledged pocket rockets that can achieve some pretty impressive data transfer rates.

Today we will be looking at Patriot's newest drive line Wildfire and more specifically the 120GB model. Wildfire ushers in a new era of performance and really amps up Patriots already impressive array of SSDs with a host of new features. Perhaps the new features that have the largest impact on the line's improved performance are the SandForce SF-2200 processor and full support for SATA-III and its full 6.0Gb/s connection interface. Now not only do you have the processor necessary power through data tasks with blistering speed, but also the nice fat data pipeline to carry all that information traffic.

At launch Patriot will be offering up three sizes to handle your storage needs, 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities. All the standard features you would expect to find on a drive of this class are included.

Feature List

• SandForce SF-2200 series SSD processor paired with qualified MLC NAND flash for best performance, value and reliabilitySATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s
• TRIM support (O/S dependent)
• DuraClass technology
• DuraWrite technology extends the endurance of SSDs
• Intelligent Block Management and Wear Leveling
• Intelligent Read Disturb Management
• Intelligent "Recycling" for advance free space management (Garbage Collection)
• RAISE. (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements)
• Intelligent Data Retention optimization
• Best-in-class ECC protection for longest data retention and drive life.
• Power/Performance Balancing
• Thermal Threshold Management
• Native Command Queuing (NCQ) - Up to 32 commands
• ECC Recovery: Up to 55 bits correctable per 512-byte sector (BCH)
• Sequential Read & Write Transfer: 555MB/s read | 520MB/s Write
• Max Random Write IOPS: Up to 85,000 (4K aligned)
• O/S Support: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / Mac OS / Linux

Unboxing
The Patriot 120GB Wildfire arrived in a classy looking retail box. Finished in a soft matte black, the packaging features a front flap that opens to reveal a small window that displays the drive itself. Inside the box we find the drive as well as a aluminum mounting bracket that allows the 2.5"drive to be mounted in a standard 3.5" drive bay, definitely a handy addition as most desktop cases to not yet have dedicated 2.5" drive bays.
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