Patriot PI60GS25SSDR Inferno 60GB SATA II 2.5 inch Solid State Drive (SSD) with TRIM Support

I purchased an ALIENWARE M11X R2. It's a very fast laptop/netbook compared to any laptop/desktop I have or have ever owned. So I figured I would go all out and I did alot of research online and came across the Patriot Inferno and the Corsair Force with there 285 MB/s read and 275 MB/s write speed. I almost bought the Corsair Force SSD but came upon this really great price on Amazon with a rebate and free shipping for the 120gb Patriot Inferno.

So you know what this can do based on the stats and there are a ton of articles that do comparisons between all the other SSD's out there on google. So my personal experience goes like this: I thought my M11X was fast with a i7 core cpu, 320gb 7200rpm HDD, 4gb of DDR3 with no bloatware installed. With the Patriot Inferno having a fresh Windows 7 installed and all the drivers from Dell that I needed this thing is faster then I would have ever imagined! Here is a real number: 23 seconds from "OFF" to "On" and ready to go (with no Windows OS spinning wheel on the desktop)...and I don't mean "Sleep Mode" to "ON". I was downloading MP3's onto the M11X and I was coming off a WD 1TB external HHD and it was taking less then 2 seconds to copy each album over. I had used this new setup for a couple of days and then put the original HDD back in and it felt so slow that I chuckled thinking to myself how spoiled the SSD drive made me.

This isn't my first SDD. My first was in a Lenovo S10 netbook. I had put in an OCZ Summit Series 60gb with 220MB/s read and 120MB/s write and that made my little netbook scream. That SSD is what made me decide that my new laptop needed the Patriot Inferno to get the most performance out of the M11X. With that being said, this is an expensive upgrade and "not at all necessary"...at least that's what my wallet said...but the inner child said "way cool, what an excellent choice!"

The drive itself works great. Blazing fast, no noise and Windows 7 installs and boots up in minutes. It would have been a perfect product had they included a 3.5" bracket that worked with a standard HDD cage as many custom cases use HDD cages and the 3.5" bracket included is simply not long enough to work. Now I have to see about ordering an additional bracket.

I'm giving this product a 1 star review for two reasons. One is its reliability. It is the only hard drive out of approximately 100 I've had in my life that has failed. The drive failed to the point the BIOS won't even recognize it. I understand however, all products do have lemons. The main reason I'm giving it 1 star is Patriot's customer support. I shipped them the drive to swap it out. They offered me their second tier drive since they don't sell the Inferno anymore. I accepted their offer because they wouldn't budge. Almost three months later, I still have not received their replacement drive. Numerous emails to them went unanswered, and finally they responded today to please give them another week. What a waste of money. I will never buy another Patriot Memory product.