USB SSD as small office storage?

[Adamaska]

I am currently using a TP-Link Archer C-7 AC1750 with a Samsung fit 3.0 flash Drive as an attached (into a USB 3.0 port) storage. My co-worker and I work collaboratively on the same files using a program (Calyx Point) which constantly writes to said files. We switched to this setup so we can work on the same file simultaneously and quickly retrieve one another's changes. When we began using this setup and relocated our data folders to the flash drive our program began throwing errors that the files it was attempting to write to were open by another user (of course we checked one another's machines to make sure this was not the case). Our machines are connected to the router through LAN which leads me to believe that the cause of the errors are the slow write speeds of the flash drive (the program is still writing to the drive then attempts to write to the same file again). Our intital solution is to replace the thumb drive with a Samsung EVO SSD. My question is; will the change in drives be adequate to keep up with the constant writing or will the router bottleneck the SSD's write speeds?

 

[RMerlin]

Not only will the router's poor IO and CPU performance badly cripple the SSD performance, but you will also be lacking TRIM support, which means your SSD performance will decrease over time if you do a lot of writing to it.

You'd be better served by a 2.5" HDD from WD IMHO. More durable than the majority of USB thumbdrives out there.

 

[Adamaska]

Thanks. We were also considering a small 1 or 2 bay NAS. Do you think that would be better suited for our purpose than attaching a drive to the router?

 

[sfx2000]

Thanks. We were also considering a small 1 or 2 bay NAS. Do you think that would be better suited for our purpose than attaching a drive to the router?

Yes - don't need to go overboard, but a dedicated NAS unit offers better performance, and additional flexibility...

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks. We were also considering a small 1 or 2 bay NAS. Do you think that would be better suited for our purpose than attaching a drive to the router?

Definitely. Much better performance (the router's CPU plus the USB IO subsystem are major bottlenecks here), better security (having data stored on your frontline router is like keeping the jewelry box right by your window)... If you go with 2-bay, you also greatly benefit from the RAID's added security. If uptime isn't critical for you and you have a rigorous backup mechanism in place, even a single-drive NAS would be an improvement, at a fairly reasonable price.