# How bad is it for Elasticsearch peformance to use external disk storage?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-bad-is-it-for-elasticsearch-peformance-to-use-external-disk-storage/349442
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [December 15, 2023, 9:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-bad-is-it-for-elasticsearch-peformance-to-use-external-disk-storage/349442 "2023-12-15T09:36:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mtovmassian](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mtovmassian)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2023, 9:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-bad-is-it-for-elasticsearch-peformance-to-use-external-disk-storage/349442/1 "2023-12-15T09:36:45Z")
I am currently running a _small_ cluster of 3 nodes with a size (shards considered) of =~ _200GB_.
But disk usage keeps increasing and hard drives are about to reach saturation.
I know that Elasticsearch need to be as close as possible to the hardware to deliver its full potential. And the best option should be to migrate each node to a new instance type with a bigger hard drive.
But this option is more expensive and time consuming. Right now I would prefer the option of adding an external disk storage.
Will the cluster really lose a lot of performance?
What would be the requirements, in terms of _IOPS_ / _bandwith_, to preserve as much as possible the performance?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2024, 9:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-bad-is-it-for-elasticsearch-peformance-to-use-external-disk-storage/349442/2 "2024-01-12T09:37:40Z")
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