TERRAMASTER F4-423 4-Bay High Performance NAS for SMB with N5095 Quad-core CPU, 4GB DDR4 Memory, 2.5GbE Port x 2, Network Storage Server (Diskless)

Upon receipt I immediately installed TrueNAS. I wanted a stable, mature environment, and TrueNAS Scale was it. Fortunately, TerraMaster makes this very, very easy to do. What's more, they make it super simple to jump back if you ever change your mind. I'll post instructions at the end of my review because there is are a lot of confusing and contradictory tutorials out there.First, the hardware build quality is excellent. The case is solid aluminum and has a hefty feel to it. At idle, the fans are very quiet and do a good job at moving air -- more on that below. The drive LEDs are bright enough to be seen in daylight, but not bright enough to be obnoxious in the dark. I love that TerraMaster bucked the trend of using ultra-bright blue LEDs and went for a more subtle approach.CPU performance exceeded my expectations for a value-priced NAS like this. The N5095 is no gaming platform but it is more than ample horsepower for typical NAS tasks. I'm currently running scripts to back up all my cloud platforms into the NAS, send an encrypted backup of my NAS to B2, and run a few other tasks. The system is responsive and happily takes whatever I throw at it.The drive cages are well built and feel like they'll stand up to an acceptable amount of use. I wouldn't call them as sturdy as something you'd see on an actual server, but they're better than you'd expect for home use. That said if you plan on swapping drives around on a daily basis, I recommend looking for something more enterprise-grade.The internal components are packed in tight. The good news is that you'll never need to access this unit's internals if all you ever do is swap drives around. If you ever want to upgrade RAM or install M.2 drives, you'll basically lay the unit down on its face (on a towel), remove a few screws, remove the fan panel, disconnect the fans, and then slide the sides / top / bottom off as one piece. This isn't difficult at all, and again, most people will never need to do this. Despite being jammed in there, system temperatures remained reasonable thanks to good airflow and heat management design. Under extreme load my CPU got up to 79C. At idle it's closer to 40C.You will hear some drive noise, and how much depends on what drives you use. I'm using four Seagate Ironwolf 8 TB drives and I occasionally hear a small amount of access noise. It's only noticeable in a quiet environment; if I have music on in the background or we're watching TV, I don't hear it. Still, if you're planning on using this in a recording studio or somewhere where noise is absolutely unacceptable, you'll want to place this elsewhere. The drive mounts caught me by surprise, but if you simply follow TerraMaster's instructions, 3.5" SATA drives are easy to install.One of the great features about this NAS is how easy it is to install your own operating system. There are many NAS OSes to choose from including TrueNAS, UnRAID, and OpenMediaVault, along with conventional x86 operating systems like Debian or Ubuntu. I went with TrueNAS. Below are the steps I used to get everything up and running:First: Back up any important data; this process will wipe out all data on the NAS. Also make sure you review the installation instructions for TrueNAS or whatever OS you install.1) Download the TrueNAS (or UnRAID, or whatever) installer image and flash it to a USB drive.2) Carefully open the TerraMaster by removing the aluminum panels.3) Locate and remove a small USB flash drive on the motherboard. It may be hidden by a grey ribbon cable. This is the TerraMaster TOS installation media. You should set this aside somewhere safe in case you decide you ever want to revert to TOS.4) Reassemble the NAS. Do not turn it back on yet.5) Connect the NAS to a monitor and keyboard using the HDMI and USB ports.6) Plug in your TrueNAS installer USB. Contrary to what you may see elsewhere, you do not need to stick this USB drive into same motherboard slot that held the TOS installation media. Any USB port will work.7) Turn on the TerraMaster. Repeatedly tap the Del key to enter BIOS.8) Select your USB boot media and go. If installing UnRAID, you may want to adjust your boot settings to always boot from USB.9) Follow the installation procedure for TrueNAS (or UnRAID, or whatever).10) When installation is finished, remove the TrueNAS installation media, connect the ethernet cable, and reboot.11) Follow TrueNAS' post-install instructions.Congratulations! You now have a very competent NAS. If you ever want to revert back to TerraMaster's TOS:1) This process will wipe the NAS, so back up all your important data.2) Shut down the NAS.3) Plug the TerraMaster TOS USB into any available USB slot4) Turn on the NAS.Congratulations! You're back on TerraMaster's TOS.One final word of advice: if you plug it in and just get continuous beeping, your memory or your M.2 is not seated correctly. Power down, disassemble, and re-check everything you tinkered with.

The Terramaster network storage products are easy to use. It makes it easy for the multiple device household to store all its data in one location and have it accessible to all of the computers. Think of it as a central storage location for your videos, photos, music, and documents. All of your computer devices will be able to access the data. This is better than saving the data on the computer's internal hard drive. Smart DVD players and other media players will be able to access your videos, photos, and music. My Windows PC, Macbook, and Sony DVD player can access all of my media.I set mine in Raid 0 mode. I wanted to use all of the space available on the two hard drives. For those who want redundancy, you can use a different Raid configuration, such as mirroring, to automatically save your data and then a copy on the second hard drive. Basically, with redundancy, you save the data twice but takes up space. So if you have two 4GB hard drive, you will only get 4GB of storage capacity. With Raid 0, you do not have redundancy but you get the whole 8GB to use.This NAS and most other NAS do not come with hard drives. The hard drive bays will be empty when you get your unit. You will have to supply your own hard drive. My hard drives are Seagate Ironwolves. They are completely silent. I also programmed the NAS to power off at night. It comes back on in the morning. Doing this will help you save on electricity. There is no need to run the device at night when everybody is asleep unless you are using it to record from your security cameras.The Terramaster software utility could use some improvement. It is not as easy to use as it should be. I am an IT professional and had no trouble. The average person may need to read the manual. You can also go to Youtube and watch the step by step instruction from the many users of this product. I recommend using the ethernet connection. Use an ethernet cable and connect this directly to your router. Do not go wireless. Hard wire is more reliable.You can try using an ordinary desktop hard drive. They will work. For those of you who will only use this for a few hours a day, on less than ten devices at a time, yes. A regular hard drive would work. A regular desktop hard drive is something like the WD Blue or the Seagate Barracuda. If you have a lot of devices and this NAS will be operating upwards of 10 or more hours per day, do yourself a favor and get a hard drive that is specifically designed for network storage use. I am talking about hard drives like Seagate Ironwolf and WD Red. These are rugged hard drives that are meant for longer duty cycles. Is your data important? Get a Seagate Ironwolf and forget about the Barracuda. You can increase performance by using a faster hard drive but you may end up sacrificing reliability.This is a terrific product. I recommend this for light-duty business use, home office use, or for the household which needs to share data across multiple devices. Somebody who has a lot of really important data might need a NAS with at least four to five hard drives. Having a lot of hard drives will allow that user to run in Raid 5 mode. Raid 5 has both redundancy and enhanced performance. This product, the subject of the review, only has two hard drive bays. This will allow you to run Raid 0 and Raid 1. Striping for performance and data capacity. Mirroring for redundancy and data safety. Your choice. Either way, you should consider an off-site back up plan. Either an online data backup storage service or simply backing up your data to another external device and storing that in a safe location. Safe location is not under your bed or the bottom of your underwear drawer. Safe location is something like a safe deposit box. I back up my NAS to an external hard drive enclosure that has a WD Red hard drive. I take the hard drive off-site for safety.You cannot go wrong with this product. I recommend this to the savvy home user or small business owner. It will do the job very nicely. Those with very important data, like an accountant who has a tax service business, should consider a model with at least 4-5 hard drive bays. The more hard drive bays, the more options you will have for redundancy. But understand this, those NAS hard drives ain't cheap. And the price of the Terramaster units with more hard drive bays is substantially more. And they produce more heat and make more noise. So think this one carefully. If the NAS is to serve as a media hub and it will be near your TV or stereo, go with a two-drive model to keep the noise down. Pay the extra money and buy NAS specific hard drives. Your choice of hard drives will determine the reliability. There is a hard drive for each specific task. You want to use this to record feeds from your security cameras? Then get a hard drive made for that purpose. WD Purple is for security camera use.This is an excellent, excellent product.

It works but is extremely finicky.Everything seems to be working fine. Except I kept getting errors during data transfer. I've been trying to transfer around 10t of data from my old drives to the new one in the NAS. I reached out to Tech support and they advised me on some trouble shooting ideas. To isolate the issue I started testing things one at a time. Starting with The HHD. I used the utility within the Terramaster OS and a standalone program called Scan Disk Info. They both came back as the HHD is fine. Now everything seems to be running fine. I transferred 2t overnight while sleeping without errors. Both the TM and scan disk info are only diagnostic they don't fix anything all they do is report issues. I don't know why running them and getting a clean report fixed the issue but here we are. I guess it coincidentally got better at the same time I ran the diagnostics. I don't know why it got better and would like to find out. At the same time I am willing to except things as they are and move to other projects.

I ordered F2-423 after my 8 years old F2-220 died. I contacted Terramaster to recover files from F2-220. The tools to manually mount my old disks is packaged with the new TOS PC 5.2 but needed procedure to execute the commands. I had a long LiveChat session that went over my setup and were able to mount my old disk (config as Single Disk with v4.1.27) to access its content.Overall, my F2-220 had worked great for 8 years, it is a very sold product. I noticed many software and hardware improvements with F2-423. I will need a new backup strategy to external storage from this experience.