Like SSDs, NAS devices have become popular with businesses of all sizes. This has left people wondering if, instead of hard disk drives, can you use an SSD for NAS?
SSDs (solid state drives) appeared on the mass market as an alternative to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) for storage in the 1990s and have increased in popularity ever since. While HDDs retain popularity in large businesses, shipments peaked in 2010 according to Statista.
Similarly, Network-attached storage (NAS) technology started making waves in the 1990s and interest has accelerated from there. NAS devices are used in all sizes of company, but for small businesses and individual users in particular they offer an array of benefits including simple management, less financial outlay compared to other storage systems, and fast remote access.
In most cases, you can use SSDs in NAS devices too, since they are often able to support 2.5in and 3.5in drives – ideal for both SSDs and HDDs.
The cost of SSDs has dropped significantly in the past ten years, making them an even more attractive proposition for those looking for storage hardware. Compared to HDDs, SSDs are known for greater speeds when installed in PCs, but these don’t necessarily translate when they’re installed into a NAS device.
Due to the nature of NAS, the access speeds of storage drives are dependent on the speed of the network to which the NAS device is connected. The majority of network speeds are not able to match the speed of an SSD, though the most powerful - those that make use of 10GbE hardware - may be in the right region.
That's not to say you won't see any performance gains by switching to an SSD. In our own SSD tests using the Qnap TS-453B with four SSDs installed, we saw a small increase in 4K read speeds, from 10.4MB/sec to 11.4MB/sec.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of using SSDs instead of hard drives is they are significantly quieter. NAS drives usually come with their own built-in fan, and when paired with the moving parts of a mechanical hard disk, things can get quite noisy. By using SSDs, you just have the noise of the fan to contend with.
Another major benefit is that SSDs usually require less power to run compared to mechanical disks. The tests we carried out on the four-bay Qnap TS-453B, which was full of four 1TB Seagate Barracuda 3.4in hard disks, used up 32w from the mains while not in use. It took 38w from the mains when it was streaming videos. After changing this to four SSDs, the number fell to 14w when idle and 16w while streaming.
There was a major drawback to SSDs in the past which was their price when you compared them to HDDs. For £40 you can purchase a 1TB mechanical disk, which means you can set up a 3TB RAID 5 array for around £160. However, SSDs have now started to narrow this divide. Up until a few years ago, a 1TB SSD would have cost around £250, whereas now prices have started to decrease so that you can get your hands on one for around £60.
Best SSD for NAS device
Choosing the best SSD for a NAS device will depend on the equipment available to the user. As previously mentioned, most network speeds will not allow users to take advantage of the full read speeds offered by SSDs. So, in most cases, purchasing decisions will largely come down to other factors.
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The decision may depend on different priorities such as power consumption, which is an especially important consideration during the cost of living crisis where individuals and organizations alike are taking active steps to reduce outgoings. SSDs vary by power consumption at different states, but the consideration won’t be an especially important one given how low the wattages are anyway.
The most important consideration would like come down to storage capacity. If speed isn’t an issue due to network bottlenecks, then for most people the best SSD for a NAS device would be the most affordable product that offers the storage capacity that’s required.
SSDs vs NVMe SSDs for NAS device
An increasing number of NAS devices are coming to market with support for the newer, faster versions of SSDs. The first generation of SSDs relied on SATA connections, whereas the newer M.2 NVMe SSDs slot into PCIe sockets, offering much greater potential for transfer speeds and sizes over its SATA counterpart.
NVMe SSDs shouldn’t be the first consideration for use in NAS drives because they aren’t supported as primary storage devices. They do, however, offer general device performance benefits since they’re used only as cache drives, acting a little like extra RAM. They come at a premium price, but if speed is of the utmost importance for your NAS use case - one that requires continual access to data - then they can be a worthwhile supplementary investment.
The main decision for most users of NAS devices is which primary storage drive type to choose: HDD or SATA-based SSD.
