Storage

The storage category covers storage drives for PCs, NAS devices and servers: internal SATA and M.2 NVMe SSDs, 2.5 and 3.5-inch mechanical hard disks (HDDs), SAS drives for enterprise environments and drives designed for use in a NAS.

To choose, decide on the use first. SSDs give fast start-up and loading, especially in NVMe PCIe form, while HDDs offer more capacity for archives and backups. Check the capacity, the interface (SATA III, SAS, NVMe), the form factor, the read and write speeds for SSDs and the rotational speed and cache for HDDs. For a NAS or server, choose drives designed for continuous operation; for a professional SSD, also consider encryption and the intended workload. Brands include Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung, Transcend and SanDisk.