Considerations When Using USB/PCIe* Adapters and Enclosures with Intel® Solid State Drives

While using Intel® SSDs and Intel® SSD Management Tools, it's highly recommended that the drives be connected directly to the motherboard.  If you are connecting the drive through an adapter or enclosure (USB to SATA, USB to M.2 or Thunderbolt™ to M.2), keep in mind that the BIOS, motherboard, backplane, or some tools may not recognize the drive properly.

Some third-party cables or adapters do work, but it's important to keep the following in mind:

• Make sure that the adapter or enclosure exports the correct model string to the operating system. If the tool doesn't receive the correct model string, the various tools may not work or have unexpected results.
• The adapter or enclosure must supply power to run the drive.
• Protocols supported by the adapters need to convert the protocols properly between the drive and adapter. For example, a USB 2.0 enclosure won’t work with an NVMe* SSD, the adapter should be USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt™

It should also be noted that there could be a performance impact. To get best performance of Intel® SSDs, we recommend connecting them directly to the motherboard.

Intel® SSD Management Tools

• Intel® Memory and Storage Tool GUI
• Intel® Memory and Storage Tool CLI
• Intel® SSD Firmware Update Tool