Introduction

Before Chuck Yeager’s historic flight with the Bell X-1 aircraft, the concept of breaking the sound barrier seemed beyond the capability of even the world’s most mathematically gifted engineers and the most daring pilots. Once the barrier had been broken, reaching Supersonic for most aircraft became the norm. In the world of computing, this accelerated pace of technological enhancement is parallel to the rapid evolution of Solid State Drives. In early 2009, the speeds reached by the latest generation SSDs were only possible through multiple drives in RAID. Compounded by the drop in NAND flash memory prices, the lightning fast and high-capacity SSDs are now within reach of most computer users.

Solid-state drives are basically made up of flash memory and a storage controller. SandForce controllers dominate the SSD market in 2011, showing strong performance and massive support from storage manufacturers, like Patriot. To further reach speeds beyond those achieved by last generation’s SSDs, most of the new SandForce based drives use the SATA3 6Gbps interface for sufficient bandwidth.

The Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD claims to deliver enterprise-class performance on a home PC. The Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD is equipped with the SandForce SF-2281 controller paired with 16 8GB Toshiba 32nm toggle mode NAND chips. Much like other next generation SandForce based SSDs, the Patriot Wildfire 120GB has DuraWrite technology, Windows 7 TRIM support and is 256-bit AES encryption capable. With a sequential read speed of 555MB/s and write speed of 520MB/s, as well as a max random write IOPS of 85,000, the Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD is aimed squarely at enthusiasts who want raw speed and uncompromised performance.