I'm guessing still pricey. Too bad there are no NAS enclosures designed for NVMe only. Even a 2-bay standard enclosure is a pretty bulky thing to have on your desk.
P.S. A NVMe only NAS may exist at some point but it doesn't make that much financial sense right now. If it is to have any reasonable capacity it will need quite a few slots (a lot of available PCIe lanes), quite a bit of processing power, and necessarily has to be faster than 10G (so probably 40G) otherwise it makes no sense. This would make it expensive even before filling it with drives compared to the equivalent HDD+SSD cache NAS. And you'd lose features like hot swap.
So manufacturers probably don't see more than a very niche market for a very expensive device. If you have 10+G network around you probably don't want *just* NVMe, you'll want and SSD cached HDD NAS for capacity *and* speed.
For streaming/file copy maybe. Even a small amount of random IO on top makes those pretty numbers go away real fast. I'd love to go all SSD if it wasn't for the cost, even on a 1Gbit NAS.
I would imagine that there is a space in the market for a M.2 SATA based NAS. For roughly the footprint of a portable, external optical drive, you could easily fit 6-8 m.2 SATA SSDs in it, with a small SATA controller, a tiny ARM processor to handle the light weight OS, a gigabit port, a USB-C port and an external power brick (if PoE or USB-C power isn't available). It would have more than enough throughput available to saturate even a 2.5Gbps link and draw very little power.
There's no need in the pro-sumer market space for a multiple NVME drive NAS box, and higher performance solutions already exist in the professional market.
Does the above solution work? I already have a recycled old SFF PC with a quad port M.2 SATA card in it with 4 M.2 SATA SSDs and two more SATA SSDs in the drive bays running a linux NAS distribution. I got the drives as used pulls from business laptops that were being retired. It does just fine for what I need. I have a big external USB connected HDD for online backups that I swap with another one monthly so I can have an off line backup that's not too old.
Small typo in the table: last one should be 4TB, not 4GB. Hopefully you guys get confirmation on the controller soon. If WD is just using some off-the-shelf one from Marvel or Phison, then we pretty much already know how the drive will perform. But if it using an in-house developed controller, that makes it much more exciting, even more so if it happens to be a brand-new purpose-built controller for this drive.
Pro Tip. Thousands of SKUs for different applications is the hardware equivalent of auto-tune in music.
Give Best Buy thousands of SKUs to stock and they won't stock any of them. It really makes no sense at all in 2021 with shortages. Vendors should focus on a small number of SKUs that are high quality and reasonably priced. Give people too many choices and they'll just use cloud storage.
Any word on if the controller handles sync transfers well? Just wondering if this is set up more like an enterprise drive versus consumer, and I'm also guessing it doesn't have power loss protection?
Yep, and unfortunately these days even Samsung and Crucial are guilty of swapping SSD controllers and NAND with inferior versions without notifying customers. It's hard to trust anyone in the storage market lately.
The warrantied write endurance is significantly higher on these, though. 2000 TB vs 600 TB for the 1 TB model, for example. And at $145 vs $130 for the equivalent SN750 (as of right now, via Newegg), it’s not a huge increase.
Yeah, this looks like a rebranded SN750 with a slightly extended warranty (2-3x the DWPD). And given that this isn't a "Plus" skew, I wonder how they will implement SMR in NAND.
Based on a quick search the SN700 looks like might be the least expensive option for a 4TB NVMe SSD that's not QLC.
A handful of years ago the groundbreaking 2TB model of the Samsung 960 Pro was ~$1300. When the SN700 becomes available, you'll be able to get a 4TB drive for half that.
Granted, the 960 Pro is probably still faster, but the WD Red SN700 should be a lot closer in perf than any SATA drive.
This is well worth the money! I know it's expensive, but the specs it can add to your PC are incredible! I'd like to take advantage of this for my <a href="https://igtasecurity.com/security-cameras/"&g... camera installation</a>
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
20 Comments
Back to Article
bug77 - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
I'm guessing still pricey.Too bad there are no NAS enclosures designed for NVMe only. Even a 2-bay standard enclosure is a pretty bulky thing to have on your desk.
at_clucks - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Also I'm sure WD managed to somehow make these SSDs SMR.at_clucks - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
P.S. A NVMe only NAS may exist at some point but it doesn't make that much financial sense right now. If it is to have any reasonable capacity it will need quite a few slots (a lot of available PCIe lanes), quite a bit of processing power, and necessarily has to be faster than 10G (so probably 40G) otherwise it makes no sense. This would make it expensive even before filling it with drives compared to the equivalent HDD+SSD cache NAS. And you'd lose features like hot swap.So manufacturers probably don't see more than a very niche market for a very expensive device. If you have 10+G network around you probably don't want *just* NVMe, you'll want and SSD cached HDD NAS for capacity *and* speed.
sandtitz - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
NVMe NAS systems are available, Dell Powermax for example.NVMe drives are hotswappable, though obviously not in your home pc.
In a 10G or slower network even a SATA or SAS based NAS can easily saturate the network.
Kjella - Friday, October 1, 2021 - link
For streaming/file copy maybe. Even a small amount of random IO on top makes those pretty numbers go away real fast. I'd love to go all SSD if it wasn't for the cost, even on a 1Gbit NAS.lightningz71 - Thursday, September 30, 2021 - link
I would imagine that there is a space in the market for a M.2 SATA based NAS. For roughly the footprint of a portable, external optical drive, you could easily fit 6-8 m.2 SATA SSDs in it, with a small SATA controller, a tiny ARM processor to handle the light weight OS, a gigabit port, a USB-C port and an external power brick (if PoE or USB-C power isn't available). It would have more than enough throughput available to saturate even a 2.5Gbps link and draw very little power.There's no need in the pro-sumer market space for a multiple NVME drive NAS box, and higher performance solutions already exist in the professional market.
Does the above solution work? I already have a recycled old SFF PC with a quad port M.2 SATA card in it with 4 M.2 SATA SSDs and two more SATA SSDs in the drive bays running a linux NAS distribution. I got the drives as used pulls from business laptops that were being retired. It does just fine for what I need. I have a big external USB connected HDD for online backups that I swap with another one monthly so I can have an off line backup that's not too old.
Valantar - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
It needs saying: isn't one of the main advantages of a NAS to _not_ have it on your desk?NextGen_Gamer - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Small typo in the table: last one should be 4TB, not 4GB. Hopefully you guys get confirmation on the controller soon. If WD is just using some off-the-shelf one from Marvel or Phison, then we pretty much already know how the drive will perform. But if it using an in-house developed controller, that makes it much more exciting, even more so if it happens to be a brand-new purpose-built controller for this drive.PaulHoule - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Pro Tip. Thousands of SKUs for different applications is the hardware equivalent of auto-tune in music.Give Best Buy thousands of SKUs to stock and they won't stock any of them. It really makes no sense at all in 2021 with shortages. Vendors should focus on a small number of SKUs that are high quality and reasonably priced. Give people too many choices and they'll just use cloud storage.
Drkrieger01 - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Any word on if the controller handles sync transfers well? Just wondering if this is set up more like an enterprise drive versus consumer, and I'm also guessing it doesn't have power loss protection?shelbystripes - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
It’s too bad this is from WD, and you can’t trust them not to change the specs and sell you an inferior product at any time.kaidenshi - Thursday, September 30, 2021 - link
Yep, and unfortunately these days even Samsung and Crucial are guilty of swapping SSD controllers and NAND with inferior versions without notifying customers. It's hard to trust anyone in the storage market lately.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-se...
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/325824-buyer...
GNUminex_l_cowsay - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
If you ignore the 4TB drive those specs are identical to the WD Black SN750.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13760/the-western-d...
Samus - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
I was thinking the same thing. Outside of undisclosed firmware tweaks, these are basically SN750's - which are often found cheaper.Small Bison - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
The warrantied write endurance is significantly higher on these, though. 2000 TB vs 600 TB for the 1 TB model, for example. And at $145 vs $130 for the equivalent SN750 (as of right now, via Newegg), it’s not a huge increase.Samus - Friday, October 1, 2021 - link
True. More write endurance and not 'that' much more in price is ideal for some applications.Wereweeb - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Yeah, this looks like a rebranded SN750 with a slightly extended warranty (2-3x the DWPD). And given that this isn't a "Plus" skew, I wonder how they will implement SMR in NAND.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Based on a quick search the SN700 looks like might be the least expensive option for a 4TB NVMe SSD that's not QLC.A handful of years ago the groundbreaking 2TB model of the Samsung 960 Pro was ~$1300. When the SN700 becomes available, you'll be able to get a 4TB drive for half that.
Granted, the 960 Pro is probably still faster, but the WD Red SN700 should be a lot closer in perf than any SATA drive.
LeonaHardyy - Monday, November 8, 2021 - link
This for sure a very expensive upgrade for my PC NAS units are very quality for sure! https://www.akrtowing.ca/Liam_Brown - Monday, December 6, 2021 - link
This is well worth the money! I know it's expensive, but the specs it can add to your PC are incredible! I'd like to take advantage of this for my <a href="https://igtasecurity.com/security-cameras/"&g... camera installation</a>