I’m planning to upgrade storage for a couple of servers and I’m torn between using SATA, SAS, or even going all-in with NVMe drives. Each has its pros and cons, but I’d love to hear from those with hands-on experience.
Which type of hard drive are you currently using in your servers?
For what kind of workloads (e.g., file storage, virtualization, database)?
How do you balance performance, reliability, and cost?
Any particular models or brands you swear by — or avoid?
I’m also checking out options from Hard Disk Direct and would appreciate any recommendations before I make a final decision.
the choice of storage media depends on what you are going to store. If you have a ton of movies, going all-flash still is a costly route to take in 2025.
(SAS and SATA are interface specifications like PCI Express is for NVMe SSDs. For SAS as well as SATA there are HDDs and SSDs.)
IMHO SAS (and its expensive controllers) today is only necessary for SSDs or HDDs in an enterprise environment where you have e.g. 24, 48 or more HDDs forming RAIDs.
For agile data that must be read and written rapidly, like system files, cached data, databases or the like, SSD is the weapon of chioce.
Basically, I’m thinking NVMe SSDs for the OS, NVMe or SATA SSDs for agile data and SATA HDDs for storage of large files.
Assuming the context of TrueNAS, and not speaking to servers more generally…
For spinners, SATA. SAS are generally more expensive, provide less SMART data, and really don’t provide any benefits. Unless you can get used enterprise SAS drives at a good price (and “used” is an acceptable risk for you), there’s just no reason to use them.
SSDs are much more expensive on a $/TB basis, but naturally perform much better. NVMe perform better than SATA SSDs and generally cost more. Is it worth it? Well, that depends on you. If you don’t need much fast storage, the cost delta in absolute dollars may not be that much. If you have a critical need for fast storage, then the cost delta may not matter.
They’re only expensive if you insist on buying the latest-generation equipment new. Anything newer than SAS3 is a waste, and those controllers are widely available and cheap.
The last point is no longer true. SATA SSDs may cost more than NVMe at the same capacity, and do not go to the highest capacities. But NVMe requires lots of PCIe lanes, more than consumer-level plateform provide.
Most boards will only bifurcate lanes down to x4 though - if a motherboard manufacturer allowed an x16 to break down to 16x1, then I’m sure some enterprising vendor would make a PCB that would let you chain out the necessary cable spaghetti, but at that drive count it’s where you start looking at fixed backplanes and U.2 form factor drives instead of M.2’s on a carrier card.
And my two cents… @aronlawrence You should have been more specific with your Use Cases as it matters.
Cost per TB is in the favor of spinners? I prefer SATA interface as it is very common.
Access speed depends on your pool layout. Spinners can be almost as fast as NVMe.
I also like the 2.5" SSD again SATA. Why? If you need a quiet system then do not use spinners. Spinners are significantly quieter than they were 30 years ago, but they still make some noise, and create more heat.
NVMe (M.2 or URE) cost more and are fast. Did I mention they cost more. They are quiet too.
I have a nice all NVMe M.2 system. It was a task to use less power and possibly last longer. If I could do it again, I’d use an Intel CPU. I just have a personsl preference.
You need to figure out a few things:
Use Case
Slow storage capacity
Fast storage capacity
Noise level
Cooling/Heating of system
The big one is Cost
Remember that more storage does not replace more RAM. So install a proper amount of RAM
To add to your post, spinning rust is slower but price per tb can’t be beat. And with a weapon like shucks.top, you can get good deals on quality externals and shuck them for fast internals. Also, raid type can speed up throughout. Someone once said more vdevs with less drive, more speed. Big ass 12 drive pools will run like shit but half a dozen mirrors will smoke it. If you don’t mind sacrificing total capacity. I’m a z1 fan but I keep those pools to 5 drives.
