Pros: Small, lightweight, quiet, cool, uses very little power.

Cons: Unreliable (failed twice, so far, in 10 months).
Very time-consuming to install properly.
Not at all cost-effective.

My first complaint is that you can't just clone your old drive to this SSD and get proper performance. For proper performance you need proper "alignment", and to achieve that you need to do a clean Windows 7 install. With all the software and settings, that could mean hours to days! So there goes any productivity gain right out the window, right up front. Patriot needs to provide software to 1) clone your old OS drive to this one, and 2) align the installation to yield proper performance. WD has a tool that might work (WDalign), but my Torqx drive died before I could try it.

Other Thoughts: When I bought this, I was cheering for Patriot and wanted this Torqx to work. And their 10 year guarantee indicated to me that they had faith in their product and were determined to stand behind it. But this is NOT a retail product. It is not even a Beta product. If you are a hobbiest and have lots of time to burn, this may be for you. But if you are looking for reliability and productivity, this is NOT for you.

In Patriot's defence, when my first Torqx failed after about a month, they were helpful and responsive and replaced the unit within about 3 weeks. This time around (about 9 months after the first failure) I have just contacted them so we will see how they respond. I really want Patriot to succeed with this product, but I cannot afford that success to be at my considerable loss of time, money, and convenience.

So now I just want a refund. I don't have the time or patience to deal with this unreliable time-killer anymore.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Dave,

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Please rest assured that we stand by our products. If you have not submitted your drive into us yet, please try our new 2030 firmware to see if it will revive the drive. The firmware can be found at patriotmem.com under support/download/PFZ128GS25SSDR.

Thank You for choosing Patriot Memory!

Kind Regards,
Patriot Memory Support

Pros: was super fast when it worked

Cons: cant update drive firmware without wiping out the drive...seriously. owned 2 drives, ran in raid 0. both failed.

Other Thoughts: I would be bothered by a bad batch of drives, but i bought these 2 drives months apart & they both failed. Patriot needs to fess up that they screed the pooch on this product and make things right for it's customers. It looks like this product is now discontinued since they're not instock anywhere. Or they just rebranded it and started calling it "Inferno".

Manufacturer Response:

Dear maui,

I'm sorry for any inconvenience you've had with the Torqx drive. Your drive is backed by a ten year warranty. Please don't hesitate to contact support@patriotmem.com to exercise the warranty option for your drive or if you have any further technical questions. Furthermore the reason why the drives are being discontinued is because the components are not available anymore. The Inferno is a completely different drive with a different controller.

Thank You for choosing Patriot Memory.

Kind Regards,
Patriot Memory Support

Pros: fast

Cons: Unreliable, poor customer support, poor RMA process.

Other Thoughts: Had this drive for 9 months so far. It died after 2 months, RMA took about 3 weeks. updated firmware and died again after 6 months. Originally bought from patriot cause I never bought anything from them so I thought I would give them a chance. $360 mistake.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We are sorry that your replacement failed on you. Please rest assured that all Patriot Products are completely tested to ensure quality, durability and reliability. Please contact the last RMA rep you were working with or send an e-mail to rma@patriotmem.com and our RMA department will be glad to accomodate you.

Sincere Regards,
Patriot Memory Support
Support@Patriotmem.com

Pros: - Fast

Cons: - Unreliable

Other Thoughts: I've got my PFZ128GS25SSDR in August 2009. In six months of ownership, it corrupted my file system 3 times and caused numerous crashes. Another similar OS installation on the same machine never had any problems. I got tired of the multiple problems caused by the drive and sent it back to Patriot. They replaced it within 2 weeks or so.

The second drive appeared to be better, but after a few months it started causing random crashes again, and now it managed to render my Windows installation almost unusable.

I'm extremely frustrated with this drive and would not recommend it to anyone. I'm seriously considering throwing this on trash can and be done with it.

I've bought a Corsair SSD for a Netbook that I also own and didn't have any problems with it. I do not know what's the difference between these two drives, but it's clear from the statistics that Patriot is doing something terribly wrong here.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Hirai,

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Please don't hesitate to contact rma@patriotmem.com or the last rma rep that was assisting you. We will gladly accomodate you and get you a working solution. Rest assured that all Patriot products are built with superior quality and we stand by our products completely.

Sincere Regards,
Patriot Memory Support
Support@Patriotmem.com

Pros: 128 Gigs, SSD

Cons: Bought two of these for RAID 0 back in 9-2009. They worked spectacular in RAID 0 for five months and one crapped out. Not wanting to deal with RMA, i shelved the bad one and went solo with the other as my main drive. It has now crapped out at 9 months.

Other Thoughts: Yes, I know what I'm doing. Don't have time to justify everything I know about building PC's and OS Trim, Firmware update, no disk defragment, blah blah. These are bunk drives. I can't afford another SSD now, I'm goin back to my Raptors.

Oh ya, 1 Egg coz I can't give it ZERO Eggs!

Pros: Fast

Cons: Flaky, unreliable and subject to absolute failure without notice.

Other Thoughts: I've had this drive 3-4 months. It corrupted a file system and I reformatted. A few months later it spontaneously dies. This is an unreliable piece of hardware and it should not be used under any circumstance where any assurance of data integrity is even slightly assumed.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear rnxrx,

Please don't hesitate to contact support@patriotmem.com to get your issue troubleshooted. Furthermore we would strongly recommend updating the drive to the 1916 firmware if you haven't already done so.

Sincere Regards,
Patriot Memory Support

External Link(s):

1916 Firmware|

Pros: Very quick. Very very quick. Capacity is twice what you would need as an OS drive: has some breathing room. Photoshop starts up in 3 seconds even on a single core machine.

Cons: Must update firmware as soon as received... otherwise it's a huge pain to have to have to take to another machine or boot another OS disk.

Other Thoughts: Very fast, perfect operating record for about 7 months. Mine shut down, and stopped functioning, while I was using powerpoint. Spindle drives can go out in a moment's notice, but my drive was kept cool and clean, on a stable Corsair 620HX psu, and failed for no reason. As time has progressed, the review's 1-star category has filled up!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear bloodgrvv,

Thank You for choosing Patriot Memory. Please don't hesitate to contact support@patriotmem.com to get your issue troubleshooted. One of our knowledgable reps will be glad to take care of you.

Sincere Regards,
Patriot Memory Support

Pros: Fast when it worked.

Cons: Died as all the rest did, buy from a more reputable brand than Patriot - I should have known better. RMA process is a joke, the Patriot forums are full of people complaining about this product. They have an entire series (batch/lot) that are faulty and fail (taking all my data with it). The formal RMA process of Patriot is fill out a form, wait 2 days - mail the product back to them at your own expense and about 2 weeks later they'll send you another (it may or may not be from the same series 6 batch that are junk). Yay - no more patriot products for me. Buyer Beware.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We are extremely sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Although the majority of failures may come from this lot, please rest assured not all lot codes from this particular "effected" batch are necesarily defective. We encourage you to upgrade the firmware to 1916 regardless of lot as this should increase the stability and enable trim support. Howver, with that being said, replacements via rma are from a different batch.

Kind Regards,
Patriot Memory Support Team

Pros: Yup... it's fast. Really fast. I love this drive for it's speed, power usage and all the other things that are great about the new SSD's.

Cons: This drive failed in less than 3 months, which is ridiculous. I've been waiting for my replacement drive for nearly a month now... the past 2 weeks have been waiting on their returns manager to get back to me. Apparently they're out of stock on this model, and offered me a Samsung based drive as a replacement. If I wanted a Samsung controller, I would have bought one in the first place! What good is a 10 year warranty if you can't back it up with replacement parts? I'll be saving my purchase dollars for the Intel SSD next.

Other Thoughts: After glowing reviews from Anandtech and other review sites, I had high hopes for this drive. The performance met my expectations in every way. I really wish the product support was better. I'm VERY relieved I decided against using a pair of these in a server build and went with the 10K velociraptor drives instead.

Pros: Super fast, sips power with a sippie straw

Cons: I was unfortunate enough to receive a "Lot 6" drive which failed after 7 months of use.

At first the drive worked wonderfully. The first signs of trouble were random Blue Screens followed by periods of time were the BIOS couldn't detect the drive at all. Initially the drive would eventually be recognized after several reboots and would boot without issue for a week or so, only to have the problem occur again. Finally the drive completely failed and could not be found by the BIOS.

The RMA process with Patriot is terrible. It took nearly two weeks to simply get an RMA number. According to my UPS tracking information, the Patriot RMA department received my defective drive 5 business days ago. As of today I haven't heard anything from Patriot - not even an email confirming receipt of my RMA.

Other Thoughts: After my own experience and browsing the forums on Patriot's own website it is apparent that their customer service skills are lacking. The RMA process can take weeks and even months in some cases.

The Better Business Bureau has given Patriot Memory a score of C+. In my opinion this rating is accurate and a lower rating may be warranted.

So weigh your options carefully before you buy. I would consider the Intel X25 and the OCZ Vertex drives as alternatives.