The Patriot PS-100 32GB continues to be a very low cost SSD after rebates. I purchased two of the drives early on and did both single drive and raid 0 benchmarks. After that I did PS-100 firmware 2.008 benchmarks. Recently, Patriot released a new firmware, v3.000 so I decided to try the flash and see if the claims of better small (4K) reads/ writes were better with the new firmware. I found that they are better, but there is a significant drawback.
The Firmware Release Notes
Test Configuration
- CPU(s): Intel Xeon X3440
- Motherboard: Supermicro X8SIL-F Rev. 1.02
- Memory: 4GB of Kingston ECC 1333MHz DDR3 KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G (Unbuffered)
- Case: Norco RPC-4220
- Drive(s): Patriot PS-100 32GB
- Power Supply: PicoPSU 150XT
- OS(es): Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Firmware Upgrade Tool v1.06
First, one needs to download the firmware upgrade tool from Patriot’s website and run the program as Administrator.
If you forget to run it as Administrator in Windows, then the firmware upgrade tool will not find the PS-100.
Remember, this upgrade will destroy all data on the drive. Make sure you back up all data. After the upgrade is complete, you need to power cycle/ disconnect the PS-100. I disconnected it from a system that had AHCI enabled so I could disconnect the SATA cable and power cable, waiting ten seconds before plugging them in. Shortly thereafter I was greeted by a new blank Patriot PS-100 32GB with firmware v3.000.
The Benchmarks
Here I will just cut to the chase here is the v2.008 firmware versus v3.000 firmware in ATTO.
The ATTO benchmarks show that the PS-100 32GB has vastly improved small file reads/ writes and sequential reads with firmware v3.000. On the other hand, the v3.000 firmware seems to be limiting sequential writes to under 100MB/s. It would seem as though Patriot optimized for small reads and writes along with large reads and sacrificed some larger write speed.
Next CrystalDiskMark v2.2 results
One can clearly see that the Patriot PS-100 32GB firmware v3.000 has better 4K reads and writes versus the v2.008 firmware. Clearly, this is a major improvement as can also be seen in the sequential writes scores rising. On the negative side, 512K writes fell with the new firmware. The sequential reads and 512K reads seem to be about the same as they were previously.
Conclusion
Overall, I am flashing the other PS-100 to firmware v3.000. The significant improvement in 4K speeds from the simple firmware upgrade made it worthwhile. Also, as these drives sit in my HTPC’s, they do mostly reads after Windows Update reboots. Media is read off of servers so they do very little writing once the machine is into Windows Media Center.
