# Intel Optane SSD

54 Hacker News commenters recommended Intel Optane SSD and 33 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** People recommend Optane for very low latency and write endurance far beyond flash drives. Critics agree its high cost per gigabyte kept it from mass adoption.

## Why people recommend it

- Much higher write endurance than flash (7 comments): "those are 6+ dwpd depending on model which may as well be unlimited for personal use scenarios" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46057134)) "the actual difference in DWPD per spec sheets is more like two or three orders of magnitude" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47395140)) "the Optane media has better latency and far better DWPD endurance than existing NAND SSD's" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144345))
- Very low latency (5 comments): "Eliminating metadata from your drives seeking and letting them be written nearly instantly with Optane does wonderful things for spinning rust" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446583)) "they were absolutely king of the hill at mixed workloads because, as you note, time to first byte was so low" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389841)) "It still has much better latency than modern NVMEs and much, much better write endurance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135771))
- Fast random reads and mixed workloads (3 comments): "Intel Optane drives are worth experimenting with for the latter (they are stuck on PCIe 4.0) purely for their good random-read properties" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491821)) "It's so incredibly fast and responsive that the LuCI interface completely loads the moment I hit enter on the login form." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389565)) "Write-heavy workloads are king with Optane, and threshing to swap is the prototypical example" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389037))
- Fast boot and responsive system (3 comments): "It's so incredibly fast and responsive that the LuCI interface completely loads the moment I hit enter on the login form." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389565)) "noticeably faster to boot your machine than even the fastest available Flash SSD" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389741)) "it's even got an optane boot drive so that'll last till the end of time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47625978))

## What people warn about

- Expensive per gigabyte compared with flash (4 comments): "I agree that its a good, long-lasting fix, but when was the last time you checked the pricing on those?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981039)) "Yes, Optane would survive more writes. But it wouldn't survive more TBW/$, because much larger flash drives were available cheaper." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47394919)) "Intel had no roadmap to significantly improve Optane's $/GB which was unquestionably the technology's biggest weakness." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389487))
- Marketed as RAM, set false expectations (3 comments): "Optane was a victim of its own hype, such as "entirely new physics", or "as fast as RAM, but persistent"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388617)) "That conflation of Optane storage as "memory", hinting that this was equal to RAM, turned many people against it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47395003)) "And their whole deal was making RAM persistent anyway, which isn't exactly what I want." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390813))
- Slower than real RAM (2 comments): "it is slower than real RAM by a good amount for latency, but you can get similar bandwidth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863140)) "Optane was still much slower than Ram. And not that much faster than NVME (theoretically)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48437862))
- Stuck on aging PCIe 4.0 (2 comments): "Intel Optane drives are worth experimenting with for the latter (they are stuck on PCIe 4.0) purely for their good random-read properties" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491821)) "it's starting to show it's age and the gen4 gear is both old-ish and still expensive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50063452))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Samsung SSD](https://hackerapproved.com/p/samsung-ssd.md): 6 recommend
- [Micron 6600 Ion 245TB SSD](https://hackerapproved.com/p/micron-6600-ion-245tb-ssd.md): 6 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Intel+Optane+SSD&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Intel Optane SSD", https://hackerapproved.com/p/intel-optane/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).