Many businesses, from large enterprises to SMBs, have adopted NAS devices as well as SSD drives for their storage needs. But this has left many of them asking the same question, rather than using hard disk drives, could they use SSDs in their NAS solution?
Solid state drives (SSDs) emerged as potential alternative storage options to hard disk drives (HDDs) in the 1990s, and their popularity among consumers and businesses has only grown from there.
While many large enterprises continue to use HDDs in their storage arrays, according to Statista, their popularity is dwindling with shipments peaking in 2010.
You will be pleased to hear that, by and large, you will be able to harness the benefits SSDs can offer in your NAS drive. Compatibility shouldn’t be an issue here, with the majority of NAS drives able to support both 3.5in and 2.5in drives, so no adapters will be needed when installing your SSDs.
Today, using SSDs in your NAS drive can make a lot of sense, depending on the size of your operation. Prices of SSDs have dropped significantly, with drives available in a wide range of capacities, which can take advantage of the functionality of NAS drives. Nevertheless, when it comes to achieving storage at scale, HDDs remain the optimal solution.
Will an SSD speed up my NAS drive?
The primary factor that pushes users to upgrade to an SSD on a desktop PC is speed. SSDs are noticeably quicker than HDDs, which means starting up your machine, launching applications, and processing data takes a fraction of the time it normally would.
But these advantages aren’t particularly transferable to NAS drives. In most cases, performance of your NAS drive is contingent on the speed of your network. In other words, most networks will not be able to offer the same write speeds of a modern SSD – so you probably won’t see much of a difference in terms of speed when moving data on and off the NAS drive.
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.
SSDs will also improve the performance of any maintenance tasks on the NAS drive itself. Anything that doesn't rely on the downloading or uploading of data is likely to benefit from an SSD.
However, 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.
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 likely 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.
For more information, read our lists of the best SSDs on the market.
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.
