For long term planning or lowest cost, there are alternatives. NVMe SSDs are sold in three lengths, 2230, 2242, and 2280. The Pi M.2 hat compact option only allows 2230 while their full size M.2 adaptor can take 2230 or 2242. Other brands accept one or two NVMe SSDs up to 2280 size.
2280 is available up to 8 TB and some of the 4 TB options are low cost plus I found 2280 NVMe SSDs with very low usage available from decommissioned PCs. The Win 11 release is forcing lots of organisations to junk recently bought PCs.
2242 is available up to 2 TB and, in our area, excellent choices are occasionally on sale but not as often or at the same discount as 2280.
I have the official M.2 adaptor plus Waveshare and Geekworm. All work reliably with a range of SSD brands. I do not have a two slot adaptor. There are two slot adaptors with chips that support PCIe 3 speed and cheaper two slot adaptors limited to PCIe 2.
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You could replace your NAS with a Pi 5 using a 4 TB NVMe in a 2280 size adaptor then plug in a USB 3 disk for the incremental backup.
The Pi 5 supports full 5 Gbps speed on both USB 3 ports. This works out at about the same practical speed as the SATA III in most NAS boxes. My "NAS" project uses a Pi 5 plus 2280 NVMe plus USB 3 for backup of backup. I had a Qnap for something similar. The Qnap offered many options including a Web server but could not run the services at the same time. After configuring the Qnap for NAS, the remaining resources were only enough to bring up the Web server config screen. During the config, the Qnap would fall over from overload. A Pi 5 with all SSD kills a NAS box for up to 8 TB of storage.
2280 is available up to 8 TB and some of the 4 TB options are low cost plus I found 2280 NVMe SSDs with very low usage available from decommissioned PCs. The Win 11 release is forcing lots of organisations to junk recently bought PCs.
2242 is available up to 2 TB and, in our area, excellent choices are occasionally on sale but not as often or at the same discount as 2280.
I have the official M.2 adaptor plus Waveshare and Geekworm. All work reliably with a range of SSD brands. I do not have a two slot adaptor. There are two slot adaptors with chips that support PCIe 3 speed and cheaper two slot adaptors limited to PCIe 2.
You could replace your NAS with a Pi 5 using a 4 TB NVMe in a 2280 size adaptor then plug in a USB 3 disk for the incremental backup.The Pi 5 supports full 5 Gbps speed on both USB 3 ports. This works out at about the same practical speed as the SATA III in most NAS boxes. My "NAS" project uses a Pi 5 plus 2280 NVMe plus USB 3 for backup of backup. I had a Qnap for something similar. The Qnap offered many options including a Web server but could not run the services at the same time. After configuring the Qnap for NAS, the remaining resources were only enough to bring up the Web server config screen. During the config, the Qnap would fall over from overload. A Pi 5 with all SSD kills a NAS box for up to 8 TB of storage.
Statistics: Posted by peterlite — Sat Nov 29, 2025 11:14 pm