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Today we are checking out the newly released Patriot Inferno Solid-State Drive series and comparing them with the industry’s leading MLC based SSDs. To date Patriot has released a long list of SSD products, and the Inferno series is now at the top of that list. With so much competition already present, we are keen to see what they have in store for us...
Solid-State Drives are still all the rage, at least in the enthusiast community, though the opinions of those on the front line are filtering down to the masses, as more and more average Joes are asking me if they should jump on the SSD bandwagon. While we do still strongly believe the single most impressive upgrade anyone can do to boost the performance of their system is to add an SSD, we do not necessarily think you should.
 Currently SSD technology still carries a serious price premium, and as an example today’s 100GB SSD review item costs a cool $370 US. That’s not much storage for the asking price, but it’s a reality all SSD owners will have faced. However for us the price is not the biggest concern we have for SSD technology right now. Rather, we feel reliability is still the greatest challenge SSD technology faces, and this is something that is often overlooked. Generally speaking it is quite rare for a product to die during testing, and the vast majority of those that pass the testing phase go on to work for years to come and are often re-tested dozens of times. However this is not the case with SSD products, and we have found the failure rate to be alarmingly high. Admittedly most of the dead products were based on the original JMicron controllers, though we have had two out of the four SSDs based on the Indilinx Barefoot controller fail, while a drive using the SandForce SF-1500 controller has also died, as well as a drive using the SF-1200 controller. In fact, one of the only SSDs we have had for more than a year is the Intel X25-M, which is still going strong today. So while reliability is evidently an issue for this young technology, it is not all bad news, as drives are slowly improving and so is the warranty service that manufacturers are backing their SSD products with. In fact, today’s review item is backed by a rather impressive warranty period that extends beyond the usual 2 years, and even the 3 years now being offered by OCZ and Corsair. Rather, Patriot is backing their new Inferno series with an incredible 5 year warranty, which is the same warranty period that Seagate offers on their hard drives. This extended warranty period helps Patriot set their Inferno series, which is based on the popular SandForce SF-1200 controller, apart from the rest. This is important as most will need that peace of mind when spending $370 US on a 100GB drive or $680 US on a 200GB drive. Before we move on to see how the Patriot Inferno 100GB performs, let's first check it out in more detail... |
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Dave P |
Posted on: 06/30/2010 01:50 PM
I have one of these drives. I have asked Patriot if you are going to fix the capacity size like other makers. No reply yet. Please update the review with any info about this if you can find out when and if they will release a new firmware. Ohh and nice review. |
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Richie |
Posted on: 06/30/2010 09:51 PM
The performance of these things is getting better but the price is still insane. It was interesting to read about the reliability issues. Thanks for the hard work and keep it up. |
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Peter |
Posted on: 07/01/2010 11:48 AM
If you buy a 10-pack, 1 TDK 1.44MB floppy-disk will cost you about 0.50$ .. buy 700 and you will have about a GB worth of storage for the super-cheap price of only 350$ . Or you could buy 3 Corsair Flash Voyager 32 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drives at the bargain-price of 93.99$ each = 281.97$ for 96GB unformatted capacity .. and about 15 MB/s write-speed under ideal conditions . You still think SSD's are "expensive" or could it be that electro-mechanical HDD's are so dirt-cheap that it messes with your perception of what "expensive" is ? |
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ProX |
Posted on: 07/01/2010 01:31 PM
hahahahah nice one Peter. You are right they have it all wrong LOL |
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Bluescreendeath |
Posted on: 07/07/2010 12:54 PM
This SSD is HOT  |
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cynthia nelson Posts: 1 Joined: 2010-07-03 |
Posted on: 07/03/2010 06:21 AM
I appreciate the concern which is been rose. The things need to be sorted out because it is about the individual but it can be with everyone. |
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kenny |
Posted on: 07/04/2010 09:33 PM
nice looking drive and the results are great. shame they don't make a smaller cheaper version. |
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Bowser |
Posted on: 07/12/2010 03:20 AM
I think the warranty is really important for these things given the price. I have already had my Vertex die on me once, it was still under warranty which was good but I did loose the data that I failed to back up. Not that much can be done about that  |
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Chootia |
Posted on: 07/21/2010 10:10 PM
Its a shame that 100GB is the smallest drive they make. I would love to get a pair of 50's for RAID1. Looks like I will have to go with Corsair or OCZ. |