I got a note asking to update my original benchmark for the Patriot PS-100 32GB with results from the new Patriot PS-100 Firmware v2.008. Performance is said to be better and it is!

Update 6 June 2010: New Patriot PS-100 32GB Firmware v3.000 benchmarks are up.

The specs of the update are:

Firmware update #2.008

• Firmware v2.006 doesn’t support Active Protection feature in Lenovo laptops. Firmware 2.008 fixed it by enabling Active Protection identify bit.
• Some platforms had issue installing Windows 7 into SSD with firmware v2.006. The root cause is partial command will be NAK in background process and bank (0) is not loaded in PRAM. Firmware v2.008 has fixed this issue.
• Firmware v2.006 has power on and loading Windows XP issue with some NVIDIA chipsets. Firmware v2.008 fixed it by changing default setting to MDMA mode 2.
• In Apple Mac Book and Mac Book Pro, sometimes SSD with Firmware v2.006 will fail in reboot. Firmware v2.008 fixed this issue.

Quick Teaser: The results got better!

First the update process. Patriot did a great job here as this can be done with Windows 7 running. If you have ACHI also enabled, you can just re-plug the drive after the firmware update and this takes a total of about a minute. Compared to Indilinx SSD’s where you need to boot out of windows to update at this point, this is a nice feature. Bad news is that my data didn’t survive, however I am installing this into a new ESXi v4.0 server so I did not need the old Windows Server 2008 R2 installation on there. Here is the process:

1. Download, unzip, and run firmware update:

PS-100 Firmware Update 2.008 Program

2. Click upgrade:

PS-100 Firmware Update 2.008 Successful

3. Re-plug the drive in… and you are done! Very easy process.

Now for the benchmarks. First ATTO:

Patriot PS-100 32GB Updated Firmware ATTO Benchmark 2.008

Note the new benchmarks show significant write speed improvement, and in most places some decent read speed improvements. Now for CrystalDiskMark:

Patriot PS-100 32GB Updated Firmware CrystalDiskMark Benchmark 2.008

Here we note again a slightly lower sequential read speed, but sequential writes up over 40%, 512k reads up almost 50%, 4k reads up about 50%, and 4k writes up 25%. That is a BIG improvement from a firmware upgrade even with the lower peak sequential write speeds.

Overall, if you are a current or perspective Patriot PS-100 32GB owner, this firmware upgrade makes a big difference. It may not be in the performance category of an OCZ Vertex/ Vertex LE, Crucial C300, or Intel X25-M, but this is much improved performance.

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