Intel 660p as boot drive

[lukewhrit]

Are the Intel 660p series of Optane drives safe for general use beyond caching? Do they have worse reliability or sub-par write speeds? I wanted to purchase one as my new boot drive and though, from my own research, they seem fine I've had numerous people tell me they aren't.

[BiotechBen]

3 minutes ago, lukewhrit said:

Are the Intel 660p series of Optane drives safe for general use beyond caching? Do they have worse reliability or sub-par write speeds? I wanted to purchase one as my new boot drive and though, from my own research, they seem fine I've had numerous people tell me they aren't.

It's a solid price/performance drive, and it's got a dram cache so there's that, they're fairly speedy drives, and solid performers.

[DigitalGoat]

46 minutes ago, lukewhrit said:

Are the Intel 660p series of Optane drives safe for general use beyond caching? Do they have worse reliability or sub-par write speeds? I wanted to purchase one as my new boot drive and though, from my own research, they seem fine I've had numerous people tell me they aren't.

Had one as a boot drive for over 3 years now, a 512GB one, it has been fine, still at 98% health. You only really notice an issue if you want to transfer files/ folders to the drive that overflow the SLC mode cache (so 50GB, 70GB etc, depending on drive size).

There is a lot of snobbery surrounding QLC drives, especially as boot drives, they do have certain limitations but those are situational.

I have never personally been using my system and thought "Damn, I wish this drive was faster".