So once I needed to add some storage to a Pi and I opted for an SSD. I added the SSD by installing a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter. It was a good solution for the price but configuration was somewhat involved.
But now Raspberry Pi OS supports SATA devices natively. That allows you to connect via a proper SATA add on board from Geekworm instead of a USB SATA device. At $30 (not counting a case, power supply, and Power Management with Safe Shutdown add on board which costs all total around $100).
What you gain here is the ability to boot the Pi from the SSD drive and not the SD card. This speeds things up. A LOT. You could take this device and install Plex and have your very own portable media server that you can travel with.
I’m not doing that here as I want to use 100% of my SSD drive for a SAMBA share. This gives me a terabyte (or more if I get a larger capacity SSD) of network attached storage. And while this isn’t a proper NAS with an array of drives, it is still pretty cool. You can never have enough network attached storage and you can use this device for specific tasks. In fact I was going to put Handbrake on it however there is no docker image for armhf7 for handbrake. Still, you get the idea. You can run any docker image and have it do a task or just be network attached storage. Or as I suggested above use it as a traveling media (music, movies, shows) server.