Introduction

As the SSD market heats up, so will our coverage on the technology. Our predictions of rapid price drops and capacity gains are already starting to come true. Companies are starting to really ramp up production and retailers are starting to actually stock solid state drives on a regular basis.

Patriot is one of the companies enjoying the company of their retail partners. Just yesterday on my monthly journey to Fry's, I noticed several retail boxed Patriot Warp Drives in a locked cabinet. The 128 GB model like the one we are looking at today was on sale for 369.00 U.S.D., around 20 Dollars more than the Newegg price. For many the high cost will be a big turn off and the Warp will not enjoy the same commercial success that a VelociRaptor will, but a 128GB SSD just a few months back would have set you back 1100 Dollars or more. For the ultra enthusiast, a 128GB SSD at less than 400 Dollars is acceptable. The rest of us will just have to wait for the cost to go down a little more. But if the pricing trend keeps with the current timeline, we will not be waiting long.

The Patriot Warp that we are looking at today is actually the second revision to the Warp Series. Very few of the first versions were released and unfortunately I didn't have a Rev 1 sample on hand to test against the Rev 2. It should be noted that the packaging we received our Warp in did not specify if it was a V1 or V2, but we were assured it was the new V2. We will of course compare the drive to the other 2.5-inch drives we have tested since moving over to the new hard disk workstation.