Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD Review

Rating: 8.5.

In recent months we have seen a flood of Solid State Drives released, powered by the new class leading 2281 Sandforce controller. Today we are analysing the latest drive from Patriot – the Wildfire 120GB. This specific drive is using 32nm Toshiba MLC NAND, the same memory used in the class leading MAX IOPS Vertex 3, which we reviewed earlier this year.

As with the OCZ MAX IOPS Vertex 3 drive, there is a slight premium to pay for the use of 32nm MLC modules – this is caused by lower yields. This drive currently retails at around the £230 inc vat price point.

Specifications:

• 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 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 (120GB/240GB): 555MB/s read | 520MB/s Write
• Sequential Read & Write Transfer (480: 540MB/s read | 450MB/s Write
• Max Random Write IOPS (120GB/240GB): Up to 85,000 (4K aligned)
• Max Random Write IOPS (480GB): Up to 40,000 (4K aligned)
• O/S Support: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / Mac OS / Linux

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