The Best Storage: SSD, HDD, NAS & More

[Jos]

With dozens of hours testing storage devices under our belt in the last year alone, we have a pretty clear idea of what are the top devices you should buy right now, divided into six categories: Best performance SSD, best value SSD, best hard drives, best portable storage, best external storage device and best home/SMB NAS.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/storage/

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Those Sammy NVMe M.2 drives, although desirable, are still far too expensive to be taken seriously just yet. Give them a couple (two) years then things will be different... and probably even faster. I do agree with the TS staff about hose Crucial SSD's though, you can't go wrong picking them up.

 

[Greg S]

While I agree that the crucial drives are the best value, it's definitely worth getting the Samsung 960 Pro nvme drives if you can. I have 2 in my laptop in raid and it's a glorious thing. Do I need it? Not really. Would I say it's worth the saved time and annoyance, heck yes.

 

[Technosense]

For NAS, I've been sticking with 8tb WD Red Drives, after years of migrating from 4TB to 6TB, I've found them to be the most reliable and best bang for your buck. Other brands were faster, but usually noisier or more expensive.

 

[Technosense]

While I agree that the crucial drives are the best value, it's definitely worth getting the Samsung 960 Pro nvme drives if you can. I have 2 in my laptop in raid and it's a glorious thing. Do I need it? Not really. Would I say it's worth the saved time and annoyance, heck yes.

Agreed, noticeable difference in performance. Only issue I had was using "Backupper" to restore had issues. When rebooting from the desktop it somehow gets borked with recognizing the drive, but booting from a USB drive via F11 works fine.

 

[trparky]

My only problem with the Samsung SSDs is that their warranty process leaves a lot to be desired. I would probably get the Crucial drive simply because the support/warranty process is better. And yes, like others have said the price is still an issue.

 

[Jad Chaar]

LOVE this "best of" series guys! I usually head to Tom's Hardware for their "Best ... for the money" (recently changed to "Best ... of 2017"), but the fact that TS is doing this now as well is great!

Please do a PC case roundup as well since I am struggling to find a good case for my budget.

 

[Mike89]

I remember years ago when SSD's came out. Everyone was saying they would come down in price equal to Hard Drives. Yeah right. That just isn't happening or likely to happen ever. You want SSD in any decent size, you pay the bucks, all there is to it and I don't see that changing any time soon. Someone's comments said the price would go down in two years. Start the clock, in two years they will be more expensive than they are now.

 

[vhfan]

Not only are the fastest SSD drives like the 960 Pro grossly overpriced the biggest problem is what TechSpot said below which is 100% true.

(Things like boot up times and game load times will certainly be much the same)

That being the case forgetabout it , if it doesn't boot MUCH faster and respond MUCH faster than say my 2.5 850 Pro not interested at all .

I don't transfer mega tons of files which is the new drives strongest points , my PC already boots in less than 5 seconds and as soon as I click something it comes up instantly , if you have a good 2.5 save the $$.

On another note I do notice a lot , I mean a whole lot of complaints about the 960 EVO lasting a few months at best which is very disheartening.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Those Sammy NVMe M.2 drives, although desirable, are still far too expensive to be taken seriously just yet. Give them a couple (two) years then things will be different... and probably even faster. I do agree with the TS staff about hose Crucial SSD's though, you can't go wrong picking them up.

I just can't get around those perf figures. There's no way I'm going to build a home PC without NVMe SSDs from here on. SATA had it's chance. It was never up to the task. Solid state is just way too fast for it and I hate unnecessary bottlenecks.

The bus should always be much faster than the devices otherwise you're not doing the spec right and future proofing the bus.

 

[Darth Shiv]

I remember years ago when SSD's came out. Everyone was saying they would come down in price equal to Hard Drives. Yeah right. That just isn't happening or likely to happen ever. You want SSD in any decent size, you pay the bucks, all there is to it and I don't see that changing any time soon. Someone's comments said the price would go down in two years. Start the clock, in two years they will be more expensive than they are now.

They'll take a long time for price/GB parity sure. But the performance is blistering and completely incomparable. For virtualised servers, large applications, large data, NVMe is a massive game changer. IOPs is king and HDDs just don't have any IOPs.

Until internet speeds really take off worldwide large consumer storage like 6TB isn't really practical to a large amount of the mass market. Who wants to worry about a consumer drive dying? People just want something that works and automatically backs up to the cloud. Try backup 1TB of data to the cloud on a 1mbps uplink. Or even 5mbps uplink. It's a joke. It's just not worth it.

 

[Julio Franco]

LOVE this "best of" series guys! I usually head to Tom's Hardware for their "Best ... for the money" (recently changed to "Best ... of 2017"), but the fact that TS is doing this now as well is great!

Please do a PC case roundup as well since I am struggling to find a good case for my budget.

Thanks. We've been doing them for about a year now. We are in the process of updating all guides, though that will also depend on the release cycle (e.g. we didn't update CPUs until Ryzen finally came out, etc.)

Links below for other Best Ofs, and last year's update on cases. A new update to that is coming in a few weeks:

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/cases/

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/

 

[Jad Chaar]

Thanks. We've been doing them for about a year now. We are in the process of updating all guides, though that will also depend on the release cycle (e.g. we didn't update CPUs until Ryzen finally came out, etc.)

Links below for other Best Ofs, and last year's update on cases. A new update to that is coming in a few weeks:

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/cases/

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/

Shows how out of the loop I am hahaha! Been so out of it recently.

 

[sac39507]

I'm surprised there's no mention of 3d xpoint and Intel Optane

 

[kapital98]

While I agree that the crucial drives are the best value, it's definitely worth getting the Samsung 960 Pro nvme drives if you can. I have 2 in my laptop in raid and it's a glorious thing. Do I need it? Not really. Would I say it's worth the saved time and annoyance, heck yes.

I just put together a Ryzen system with a 960 EVO. I'm currently using an 850 EVO NVMe (SATA III) on my laptop and an older Intel 3xx SSD on my desktop. The difference is night and day The 960 EVO is about 3-4x's faster than the SATA III EVO. It's shocking transferring a 10gb file in 1-2 seconds.

For most people the cheaper SSDs still make sense. Especially if you don't have an NVMe slot. The problem is I think a lot of people don't really get the idea behind NVMe and are still stuck on the 2.5" form factor as being the 'right' type of SSD. They'll go out and buy a 850 EVO because their friend told them rather than get a far superior 960 EVO/PRO for just a little bit more.

I'm looking into RAID. My Asrock motherboard has two onboard NVMe slots. It would be expensive but pretty nice to have RAID. I need to see some benchmarks before pulling the trigger.

 

[kapital98]

I'm surprised there's no mention of 3d xpoint and Intel Optane

Intel is highly situational though. I'm a little afraid they would confuse consumers. The benchmarks on Optane are very promising but price wise it's a niche product.

 

[ddferrari]

Those Sammy NVMe M.2 drives, although desirable, are still far too expensive to be taken seriously just yet. Give them a couple (two) years then things will be different... and probably even faster. I do agree with the TS staff about hose Crucial SSD's though, you can't go wrong picking them up.

I'd say that calling the Samsung M.2 drives "too expensive to be taken seriously" depends on one's perspective.

I paid $225 for the Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) four years ago. Now, for ~50% more I could have twice the storage and 4x the speed (6x for sequential read). I'd jump all over the 960 right now if my mobo had M.2 support.

 

[Darth Shiv]

I'd say that calling the Samsung M.2 drives "too expensive to be taken seriously" depends on one's perspective.

I paid $225 for the Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) four years ago. Now, for ~50% more I could have twice the storage and 4x the speed (6x for sequential read). I'd jump all over the 960 right now if my mobo had M.2 support.

There are several m.2 PCIe cards around that are bootable if you have a PCIe x4 slot spare. They are very cheap too.

 

[ddferrari]

There are several m.2 PCIe cards around that are bootable if you have a PCIe x4 slot spare. They are very cheap too.

Thanks for the info! It never occurred to me that m.2 cards could be used in a PCIe slot. I just looked at my mobo specs and all three PCIe slots are 3.0, so it's time to start shopping. (y)

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I'd say that calling the Samsung M.2 drives "too expensive to be taken seriously" depends on one's perspective.

I paid $225 for the Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) four years ago. Now, for ~50% more I could have twice the storage and 4x the speed (6x for sequential read). I'd jump all over the 960 right now if my mobo had M.2 support.

Well then it's time for you to invest in a mobo that supports M.2 if you're keen to pay those kind of prices just for storage. Although mine currently does, it goes unused and will remain so for another 2 years or so because that's probably how long it'll take for the tech to become mainstream, faster, higher capacity and prices palatable. Tech never gets any slower or worse but it does become cheaper.

 

[ddferrari]

Well then it's time for you to invest in a mobo that supports M.2 if you're keen to pay those kind of prices just for storage. Although mine currently does, it goes unused and will remain so for another 2 years or so because that's probably how long it'll take for the tech to become mainstream, faster, higher capacity and prices palatable. Tech never gets any slower or worse but it does become cheaper.

I'm keen for the speed, not the storage- I already have plenty of that. Darth Shiv just informed me that I can use a PCIe slot (with an adapter), so my current mobo is fine. Yes, tech does become cheaper and I'm rarely an early adopter, but at some point in life one has to stop waiting and just "do".

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I'm keen for the speed, not the storage- I already have plenty of that. Darth Shiv just informed me that I can use a PCIe slot (with an adapter), so my current mobo is fine. Yes, tech does become cheaper and I'm rarely an early adopter, but at some point in life one has to stop waiting and just "do".

Yes, he's right, you can do that because M.2 uses the PCie lanes. You're right too, sometimes one just has to bite the bullet and damn the consequences.

 

[mattfrompa]

For magnetic drives, go helium man!

 

[Greg S]

For magnetic drives, go helium man!

Still a little pricey though, but maybe worth it: http://amzn.to/2qRHjEw especially compared to the Seagate IronWolf drives that are pretty nice.

 

[hood6558]

While I agree that the crucial drives are the best value, it's definitely worth getting the Samsung 960 Pro nvme drives if you can. I have 2 in my laptop in raid and it's a glorious thing. Do I need it? Not really. Would I say it's worth the saved time and annoyance, heck yes.

Storage is the last bottleneck, so after CPU, RAM, and GPU are as quick as needed, storage is the next thing to upgrade. I "only" have a single Intel 750 400GB, so I can only dream of the speeds you're getting. My next personal build will be X299 with 2 960 Pros in RAID (or whatever faster drive Samsung or Intel releases this year). I'm spoiled now and can't be bothered with waiting on my drives anymore...