Today’s Question: What is your take on using an external NVMe [Non-Volatile Memory Express] drive for image/backup storage, as opposed to traditional hard drives or SSD storage? Are they sufficiently dependable?
Tim’s Quick Answer: An NVMe (NVM Express) storage device can indeed be used effectively for storage or backup, typically providing considerably faster performance than other storage devices.
More Detail: Technically, NVMe is an interface specification for storage devices, not an actual storage device. In other words, an NVMe device is typically an SSD drive, just like the SSD internal drive on many computers or an SSD external drive. An NVMe device connects directly to a PCI Express bus in a computer, which enables it to achieve considerably faster speeds than an external drive or even an internal drive using a SATA connection.
Therefore, overall I’m completely comfortable using NVMe devices for storage or backup, with two caveats.
First, an NVMe device connects to a PCI Express port, which means it is located inside your computer. That does create the risk of excessive heat buildup, which can reduce the lifespan of an NVMe storage device. As long as your computer has a good ventilation system with temperature monitoring, this shouldn’t be a significant issue. It could even be argued that the risk of overheating is less likely to cause a failure compared to physically damaging or losing an external storage device.
The second caveat relates to best practices when it comes to backing up data. One important rule of a good backup workflow is that the backup should not be stored on the same physical device as the source data. If you use an NVMe device as primary storage and back up that data to an internal SSD drive, the data is on two different storage devices, but they are both contained within the same computer. Therefore, there is a risk that a major issue with the computer such as a power surge could cause both storage devices to be lost.
So, while I would be perfectly comfortable using an NVMe for storage or backup, I would also want to be sure to use a backup workflow that ensures the source data and backup data are on different devices. For example, I would suggest using an external hard drive and perhaps an online backup service to back up the NVMe drive so that the redundant data is stored on separate drives.
