# Searchable Snapshot and HDD vs SSD/NVMe Performance

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/searchable-snapshot-and-hdd-vs-ssd-nvme-performance/377039>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-searchable-snapshots\
**Created:** [April 11, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/searchable-snapshot-and-hdd-vs-ssd-nvme-performance/377039 "2025-04-11T13:05:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BenB196](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/benb196/32/83401_2.png) [@BenB196](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/BenB196)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/searchable-snapshot-and-hdd-vs-ssd-nvme-performance/377039/1 "2025-04-11T13:05:01Z")

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Hi All,

I have a question that I couldn't really find an answer to:

When using searchable snapshots, is the data stored and read in a "sequential" order, in a way that would be ideal for using HDDs with, or is the "recommendation" to use SSDs/NVMe for searchable snapshot nodes.

For context, the nodes would be AWS EC2 instances mostly of the "storage optimized" class.

If there are benchmarks somewhere of a comparison of these 2 storage mediums somewhere as well, that would be interesting.

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**Author:** ![DavidTurner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/davidturner/32/22453_2.png) [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 2:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/searchable-snapshot-and-hdd-vs-ssd-nvme-performance/377039/2 "2025-04-11T14:03:56Z")

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The data on disk on the node itself is laid out pretty much just like any other Lucene data, with the usual expectations about access patterns: multiple concurrent readers, each of which will often only read forwards but may skip rather than doing purely sequential reads, and others will do more of a random pattern. The data is retrieved from snapshot in a fairly chunky sequential fashion, but again with multiple concurrent writers that probably won't play nicely with spinning disks.

TLDR yes use SSDs.

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**Author:** ![BenB196](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/benb196/32/83401_2.png) [@BenB196](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/BenB196)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 2:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/searchable-snapshot-and-hdd-vs-ssd-nvme-performance/377039/3 "2025-04-11T14:05:29Z")

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Great! Thanks for the info 🙂