NAS or DAS for me?

[Enquiries]

We run a home business and currently use a TerraMaster D2 with 2 x 2Tb Samsung SSDs. I am finding these are not the fastest solution to meet our needs and wondered what would be a better option. Based on NVMe prices now being pretty much on par with SSDs, do you think it would be a better option to get a purely NVMe or go with a hybrid? The machine hosting it would be an MSI B850 mobo so all the bells and whistles in regards to USB ports.

So the question, really, would be... DAS hybrid, or NAS hybrid over wifi (no ethernet ports available)

[ed]

If your setup runs entirely over Wi-Fi and your current TerraMaster D2 with SATA SSDs is showing limits, then moving to an NVMe-based DAS will deliver a far more noticeable improvement than a NAS connected over wireless.

A NAS, even a powerful one, will still be bottlenecked by Wi-Fi speeds (typically 200–800MB/s even on Wi-Fi 6), while a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 or Thunderbolt DAS can give you real-world speeds over 1,500MB/s with NVMe drives.

For your MSI B850 motherboard, I’d suggest something like the Yottamaster DF4 NVMe enclosure or the ORICO M.2 NVMe Pro 4-bay DAS. These let you run full-speed PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs and support RAID or JBOD modes. You can even mix NVMe and SATA in hybrid setups if the enclosure supports it, but I’d go all NVMe for consistency and speed.

If you plan to share files across multiple devices, you could later attach this DAS to a small NAS or mini PC and share it over the network, but for now, a USB-connected NVMe DAS will be your fastest and most cost-effective upgrade.