what is a solid state external hard drive
Solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. It is also sometimes called solid-state disk;[1] the word "disk" is inappropriate since SSDs do not have physical disks. SSDs primarily use traditional hard disk drive (HDD) interfaces, such as SATA and SAS, greatly simplfying usage of SSDs in computers.[2] Following the initial acceptance of SSDs with HDD interfaces, new I/O interfaces like M.2 and U.2 have been designed to address specific requirements of the Flash memory technology used in SSDs.
Network-attached storage NAS is useful for more than just general centralized storage provided to client computers in environments with large amounts of data. NAS can enable simpler and lower cost systems such as load-balancing and fault-tolerant email and web server systems by providing storage services. The potential emerging market for NAS is the consumer market where there is a large amount of multi-media data. Such consumer market appliances are now commonly available. Unlike their rackmounted counterparts, they are generally packaged in smaller form factors. The price of NAS appliances has plummeted in recent years, offering flexible network-based storage to the home consumer market for little more than the cost of a regular USB or FireWire external hard disk. Many of these home consumer devices are built around ARM, PowerPC or MIPS processors running an embedded Linux operating system.