Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 3D2, QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW010T8X1

Just died this morning with No warning or blue screen of death. I found that the data disk was not initialized. Earlier this week I checked for firmware updates and ran a manual trim performed a full diagnostic scan and all went well. I was able to reinitialize and format the drive after but now I am tasked with finding the backup for this particular drive. I should consider raid 1 for this ssd but that would require me to buy another. I will not be recommending this ssd to my clients unless the price comes way down so I can buy 2 and mirror them.

I’m giving this 5 stars because of the price. The performance is definitely admirable! However, it’s not as fast as other NVMe drives. Amazing bang for your buck drive, more than double the speeds of 2.5 sata drives, well worth the money! Ugly green! Definitely get a heat spreader. Also, not that any M.2 drives really do, but the cooling on this thing sucks. Under heavy loads you will get throttling. I put a cheap $20 spreader on it and have 0 issues with heat/now this ugly green thing isn’t messing up my black/red board

I bought this and have it in a Sabrent external USB enclosure I put it in. The only issue Ive been having (besides USB c not working) is that data transfers burst at great speeds but after like 10 seconds they drop to only 100MB/sec. Probably has something to do with the USB enclosure but could also be because this nvme doesnt use a dram cache I doubt think not sure. Otherwise this is by far the best deal for a 2tb nvme ssd.

Prior to this SSD drive, I had a SanDisk 960 GB SATA SSD M.2 drive. I am transferring files at ~200-400 MB/s with that drive, but this Intel M.2 NVMe SSD blows it out of the water. I would personally say this is in between the speeds of SATA SSDs and high-end NVMe SSDs since I was getting benchmark speeds of ~ 1.4 GB/s. It was super easy to install on Windows 10 Pro 64 bit OS on an Alienware 17 R3 laptop, and I plan on transferring this drive to a new laptop in the future once the 9th gen Intel processors release to retain data. Keep in mind that this isnt a glorified Samsung Pro series NVMe SSD, but it definitely raises brows amongst the tech community in terms of value and performance. At a rated 200 TB TBW, this NVMe drive will go a long way. Lets say I transferred 10GB of data daily... That means I would be writing 3.65 TB of files a year making this theoretically capable of lasting about 55 years. Realistically, I plan to replace this drive after 5 years of use due to the exponential advancement in tech... In the meantime, this is the best deal you can get from a reliable company in regards to speed, reliability, endurance, and value. Overall, this makes a perfect storage drive for content creators, gamers, or tech enthusiasts looking for value and performance.

I use this to store my Steam games when Im not actively playing them. I keep a couple games on my laptops internal NVME drive, which is a top-shelf gaming NVME drive and consequently costs a LOT more per GB than this drive. This drive is still incredibly fast, and I regularly reached transer speeds in excess of 800MB/s with an external M.2 enclosure (previous SSD w/ external enclosure averaged ~400MB/s). Note: This drive is capable of transfering faster if mounted internally. The 800MB/s limit is from the USB-C port it connects to.

Going from 5400rpm HDDs to a full PCIe 4x NVMe drive has been a treat. Windows installs and hits the desktop in just a handful of minutes or less. Have bought two of these now and they have both been perfect, fast and have lasted a while. Keep in mind these drives dont have as long as a lifespan as competitors NVMe drives that are another whole $100, but thats my point. If youre not running some kind of NAS or storing precious memories long-term, Id highly recommend this SSD.

I bought the 2 TB model and it runs right at advertised reads and writes- I used crystaldiskmark to check. It only took about 5 minutes total to physically install, and maybe another 5 minutes under hardware manager to format. Seems to run fine and it was cheaper than the 512 GB 970 evo I bought last year.... I wonder how cheap NVME SSDs might get here with the glut of flash memory? I would recommend for fast cheap gaming storage.

I have been using the Intel 660p M.2, as a storage medium for editing videos (4k), meaning I dump the raw footage onto the 660P using either or even both Resolve and PrPro/AE to edit, without any lag or having to wait hours for footage to load. I will admit some of the more intense graphics may take a tad longer but I suspect that is more due to limitations of the CPU/GPU.

Bottom line: Its a nice NVMe at an awesome price from a highly reputable manufacturer. I just wish they had not dropped the ball on implementing Opal and Full-Drive-Encryption. :( What a great price for Intels 660p 2TB NVme! The unit also has a 5 year warranty to support Intels confidence in the QLC. I have had not issues during testing and the unit is getting solid reviews. The only issue I have found, which may not be easily noticed because in Intels specs it says Supports AES-256, is that does NOT mean it supports the ATA Password found in many laptops like the Thinkpads. I found this afer having tested the unit for a few hours. When I booted to BIOS to set the NVMes ATA password, no password could be set. Hmm, thats odd so after some digging I found that while Intel publishes the drive supports AES-256, they do not clearly specify that they support something something called Pyrite which a less secure subset of the more secure Opal Full-Drive-Encryption (FDE) standard. Why oh why did Intel omit Opal FDE when it has been available on so many of their units in the past? I mean come on guys? So for me, on a portable Thinkpad laptop, any SSD or NVMe unit which does not support an ATA drive password and FDE is a show-stopper. What that means is that the Intel 660p does NOT support full HARDWARE encryption in machines that use/support the ATA password to do so. For instance, Lenovo Thinkpads have had ATA HDD passwords for a very, very long time but when this unit is installed, the familiar ATA HDD password in the BIOS is not available. So if the NVMe is removed from the machine and you do not have bitlocker fully enabled, then the drive can be compromised. Im not a happy camper because I specifically checked for the AES-256. What I assumed is that meant it also supported the ATA password used for encryption and it does not. I just didnt read the fine print. IDK if Intel will eventually enable this via the firmware - that seems doubtful as are running custom firmware on these devices. The reason I derated the 2nd star is the software application Intel has released to support the 660p (and other models) seems quite lacking when compared to things like Samsung Magician which Ive also used. Peace.

I was a little concerned after ordering that the physical dimensions (length) was going to be wrong for my laptop (the listing title states 2281 which corresponds with 81mm as opposed to 80mm.. but the title also says 1.0TB M.2 80mm), but it ends up that it is 80mm, so the title should actually be 2280 instead of 2281. Anyway, its all good and its working well. I did have to purchase the Lenovo caddy adpater and cable because my T480 came with an older SATA HDD drive. I did this on purpose when configuring the laptop, planning on doing this upgrade myself, but I didnt realize that I would need to purchase the adapters (which added an extra $50 to the upgrade). Anyway, if youre a little concerned about the length as I was, rest assured that it is 80mm and not 81mm.