TERRAMASTER F4-424 Pro NAS Storage - 4Bay Core i3-N305 8-Core 8-Thread CPU, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 2.5GbE Port x 2, Network Attached Storage Peak Performance for Business (Diskless)

My previous RAID was a PC running Windows 10 and using Storage Spaces to create a JBOD pool. The hardware from 2012 was too "old" to upgrade to Windows 11 so my choice was to purchase new hardware with a new version of Windows or a dedicated NAS. The Terramaster F4-424 NAS with the 4 core CPU has been a different type of challenge by having to learn how to make it do what I needed and to be prepared when disk replacement is necessary. I did upgrade it to TOS6 and setup the storage pool with TRAID. I started with a couple of regular 1 TB desktop drives and a 2TB WD Red drive. Things I learned is that it installs the running software to the hard drive (System Disk). I thought it would stay on the onboard USB boot disk. If you remove the hard drive with the (System Disk) then the NAS won't boot. In my short tests you can install a new drive and then re-install TOS and your storage pool data should still be there. I chose to spend another $40 to add a 256GB NVMe to put the (System Disk) on in hopes that it will never die. With the NVMe I can remove or add drives at will and just need to repair the RAID to keep it working (they must always be larger than the smallest in the pool). I am now running with a 1TB WD blue hard drive and (2) 2TB WD red drives.My needs for a NAS is keeping photos, videos, documents, and downloads from the last 30 years. I created a shared folder in my RAID volume to keep it all in and setup my Windows PC with a mapped network drive to access the data. I am not interested in Plex server and do not understand dockers or other Linux things. I just want a place to keep my 1 Terabyte of data safe. I plugged my APC UPS into the USB port and setup TOS to have the NAS shut down when the APC battery gets low if the power is out. I have an external Western Digital Elements USB drive plugged in that the Terramaster USB Copy app will do a scheduled daily backup to each day. I can even share that USB drive and map a network drive to access it with my Windows computers.Access speeds appear to be a little better than what my old storage PC had. I have my computers setup to run a batch file using xcopy each day to copy files/changed files to the NAS.Now the bad, on my old Windows storage PC I used a Lacie 2 big Quadra external USB RAID drive. The Terramaster does not like this drive. I can plug it in, see it, access it but if I reboot the NAS with it then it won't be there after it restarts and I lose the APC UPS connection. Something messes up the USB ports with the Lacie plugged in. That kills my second layer of redundancy that I still need to figure out. I had the ethernet port of the Terramaster plugged into my secondary Netgear R6300 router that is used as an access point/network switch. I have the Terramaster setup with static IP. The Terramaster did not like the Netgear router. I had slow access speeds and unreliable connection to the NAS. I changed out to a Linksys EA7200 in bridge mode and that problem seems to have been resolved.Initially I had thought of adding a VPN to the Terramaster so the external family can use the space for storage as well, but I will have to learn how to secure it before opening it up to the Internet.The summary, this has been running good for 3 weeks now. I wanted something that would not need constant OS updates or cost me more money for hardware/software upgrades for the next 10 years. I don't need a project to tinker with, I just need it to WORK as expected. Time will tell if I can get a decade out of this hardware before it fails.

This thing is a beast. I was torn between this f4-424 and another brand around the same specs. The build quality is good. The unit feels solid. The setup was easy to do. I did stick with the Terra master os, and it isn’t too bad, especially for beginners. I will probably buy or build another server and run a different os.This device is great for plex. I have had up to 4 simultaneous video streams, 2 hw transcodes, while streaming music via Plexamp without issues.Customer service is responsive. There is a lot of support out there as well.Adding drives is easy. 32gb ram. Transfer speed from windows laptop via wifi is usually around 70mb/sec. I really have no complaints. I’ve had it about 6 months now running with no issue.

I got the F4-424 intending to use it with Unraid. It works well, but there were some quirks I hit so I wanted to share what I found.I wanted to upgrade it to 32 GB of RAM. Reports conflicted online if it actually supports 32 GB or if it tops out at 16 GB. I ordered a stick of Crucial RAM 32GB DDR5 4800MHz CL40 -- CT32G48C40S5, and installed it... and the system was immediately unstable. I tried Memtest 86+ and it almost immediately failed. I exchanged the Crucial RAM, and the replacement also failed Memtest. (The stock 8 GB of RAM passed just fine so I knew it wasn't the system itself.) I then tried a 32 GB stick of Patriot PSD532G48002S and it passed! I doubt I got two bad sticks of Crucial RAM so something might be inherently incompatible here, but the Patriot RAM is cheaper anyway so it’s fine.Another quirk is around fan speeds. In the bios I initially set the fan manually to 100 thinking it was 100%, but Unraid quickly complained about drive temps hitting around 50 to 55c. I popped back into the bios and tried changing the fan speed to something higher and it turns out the scale is 0-255, not 0-100. I set it to 255 and it’s no longer silent, but it’s not terribly loud either. Drive temps are now under 30c all the time. It also seems like from the front it has poor air intake, but interestingly the Terramaster logo on each side is made up of many holes and serves as an air intake as well, so keep the area to the left and right of the NAS clear.Another reviewer mentioned it but the internal USB drive is tight, the Sandisk Ultrafit they recommended worked well though. You do have to take the motherboard out to swap this but it’s not terribly difficult. Everything else is really easy to do including installing M.2 SSDs.I do wish the F4-424 had more than one USB-A external port. I have 3 devices total to connect which doesn’t seem excessive but still had to get a USB hub.