SATA SSDs are still the smartest second drive you can buy, and I can't justify spending more on NVMe

Published Oct 9, 2026, 7:00 AM EDT After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh). Talking about a SATA SSD in 2026 is anathema to many PC users. It's akin to recommending a console to a PC building enthusiast. I fully expect people to bring up the outdated performance and needless cables of SATA SSDs when I still recommend it as a secondary drive. NVMe SSDs are faster, sleeker, and more convenient, and I would always use them for the primary drive, but SATA SSDs aren't outdated by any means. Most PC users don't need NVMe read/write speeds for the bulk of what they do on their systems. Spending more on NVMe drives in this market won't make a tangible difference to your day-to-day experience, except for a few workloads that most people never touch. Moreover, some users may not even have the option of installing a second NVMe SSD, making SATA the only choice. Most of what you do on your PC doesn't need NVMe speeds The SATA to NVMe transition hasn't benefited the average user It's tempting to do a repeat and get a second NVMe SSD (Gen4 or Gen5) for your PC. Even a Gen4 drive is nearly 13 times faster than a SATA SSD, and all that extra throughput would surely go somewhere, right? After using an NVMe SSD as your primary drive for years, you're probably not willing to entertain the notion that a SATA SSD is still more than enough for your workloads. The reality is, however, that most people don't need 7,000 MB/s or 15,000 MB/s read/write speeds for their PC to feel snappy. NVMe drives are in a different league when it comes to large file transfers and productivity workloads like video editing and database processing. That said, these sequential speeds don't really matter for what you probably do on your PC every day — gaming, browsing, working, and restarting the PC a few times. OS boot times and game loading times are storage-dependent, but once you've moved from a hard drive to a SATA SSD, there's little room for improvement. And regular system navigation and launching applications is no sweat for a SATA SSD. Adding a second NVMe drive might seem simpler, but there's another aspect to it. Buying a SATA SSD is cheaper in this terrible market The lesser of two evils There was a time when the price difference between a SATA and NVMe SSD for the same capacity was non-existent. Then, the "AI-powered" DRAM shortage hit the globe a year ago, and everything changed. Within a few months, SSD prices saw a four-fold increase, and NVMe drives were the worst hit. A year later, things aren't looking much different, but as it stands, SATA SSDs are indeed cheaper than equivalent NVMe options. You don't need to look beyond Amazon to see this in action. Popular 1TB NVMe Gen4 drives are going for around $170, whereas 1TB SATA drives are sitting at "just" $130. That's a 23% discount for virtually the same experience. This disparity grows as you compare larger SATA and NVMe drives, strengthening the case for the former. No one knows if prices will ever come back to pre-2026 levels. If you need additional storage right now, buying a SATA SSD makes sense from both financial and performance standpoints. The value for money is just not there for NVMe drives, unless you're a professional or power user who can actually make use of blazing-fast transfer speeds. Buying SATA is way simpler for older systems When you run out of M.2 slots There's another angle to this NVMe vs. SATA comparison, especially for people with older motherboards. It's possible that your old motherboard has a single M.2 slot, which is already occupied by your primary NVMe SSD. Dual M.2 slots became common on budget and mainstream motherboards only around 5–6 years ago, before which a single M.2 slot was fairly common. On such systems, adding a second NVMe drive isn't feasible, making a SATA SSD the only choice. Moreover, the PCIe lane-sharing situation on older motherboards might make it complicated to introduce additional M.2 slots using PCIe adapters. Doing so can deprive your SATA ports or other expansion slots of PCIe bandwidth, so it's a whole different consideration. In contrast to M.2 slots, even older motherboards had ample SATA slots to accommodate additional hard drives or SATA SSDs. If responsive secondary storage is all you need, a 1TB SATA SSD is the smartest choice on an older PC. Buying SATA over NVMe is the smarter choice in 2026 It's no secret that PC hardware prices have exploded across components. From RAM and SSDs to GPUs, nearly everything is wildly overpriced due to enterprise demand. In this market, SATA SSDs are the ideal pick for secondary storage, even on a gaming PC. Unless you're a professional or heavy productivity user, you don't really need the performance of Gen4/Gen5 NVMe SSDs. PNY CS900 SATA SSD