If you go shopping this month for a Solid State Drive, then you will be presented with a bewildering array of choices. If we are being honest, most people tend to buy an SSD based around the price and the Pyro may appeal, as it is a cheaper version of the excellent Patriot Wildfire, which we reviewed a few weeks ago.
The Patriot Pyro 120GB retails for around £60-£70 less than the Wildfire (£168.84 inc vat from Amazon), but it still uses the class leading Sandforce SF-2281 controller. It is a SATA 6Gbps drive priced for the widest possible audience.
Specifications overview:
- SandForce SF-2200 series SSD processor paired with qualified MLC NAND flash for best performance, value and reliability.
- SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s.
- TRIM support (O/S dependent).
- DuraClass technology.
- DuraWrite 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: 240GB & 120GB models; 550MB/s read | 515MB/s Write 60GB model; 520MB/s read | 490MB/s Write.
- Max Random Write IOPS: Up to 85,000 (4K aligned)/240GB & 120GB models; up to 80,000 (4K aligned)/60GB model.
- O/S Support: Windows® XP / Vista / 7 / Mac® OS / Linux.