QNAP 2 Bay DAS with 4TB Storage Capacity, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, Preconfigured RAID 1 Seagate IronWolf HDD Bundle (TR-002-24ST-US)

I spent an embarrassingly huge amount of time researching options for my needs. I know reading this you could probably name 2 or 3 other options that would easily fit my criteria, but I'll explain why I chose this one. To start, I use a Mac Mini as a home network server. I run Home Assistant and Jellyfin, primarily, for now. I wanted a DAS that had a physical on and off switch. This one has that; in case of a power failure (it should be connected to a battery backup UPS anyway), it will power back on when power restores. Although I don't store Home Assistant data on this enclosure, I do store Jellyfin media, and I didn't want my family to have to go reset this device in case of a power interruption. I did not want an internal power supply. Some people prefer that, but I figured there's more heat and internal components to fail with an internal power supply. Plus, an internal power supply of a DAS is likely proprietary and not easily replaced like a desktop computer's power supply. This has an in-line power brick, meaning it goes from the DAS to a brick, then uses a traditional C13 (I think, I actually can't remember if it's grounded or not) cord to the wall. I wanted the enclosure to accept 2.5" and 3.5" drives, and both HDD and SSD. This one does. It was not clear in the product description for me if it accepted 2.5 SSDs, but the manual confirmed it, and I am successfully running a combination of HDD and SSD. Though I am not using the hardware or software raid, I wanted the option for that. Right now I have it configured to be individual drives. I cannot attest to the software, but the hardware raid is working for me with the setting I have (configured via switches on the back side of the unit). I also wanted either thunderbolt or USB C, which this has the latter. I wanted to use the Thunderbolt port on my Mac Mini because there are only two USB that I wanted to leave open. I realized I am not getting Thunderbolt speeds, but using spinning hard drives, my bottleneck was those anyway. It is quiet! The hard drives spinning is louder than the fan on the unit. No complaints there. I have the four drive option, and it is about a hard drive wider and taller in dimensions. It's a good size, and isn't too obnoxious sitting in my office. The lights aren't bright, and they could easily be covered with a piece of electrical tape if they are bothersome. As I mentioned, I am using it with a Mac, so it is compatible with that OS. It does also work with Windows. Set up was really easy. I slide out the cages, and if you're using HDDs, there are no tools required. If you want to mount a SSD, you do need to use screws and you will also need to remove one of the side clips that hold in a traditional HDD (you'll see what I mean if you do it). Slide the trays back in, lock if you'd like with the included key, and boot it up! My mac instantly recognized all the drives as external volumes, and they automatically mount any time I need to restart the system. I have transferred many, many TBs so far, and all have been hash verified to be copied perfectly, with no interruptions or disconnects. 10/10 would recommend, at least so far. Again, I cannot speak for the RAID aspect of this, so you're on your own there. Will report back if there are any issues. I guess it would be nice if the enclosure was a nice aluminum, but I think the fan does a good job of drawing out heat from the unit. I don't plan on moving this thing around at all, so once it's set up and just sitting there, the durability aspect is fine. Oh, and it was also packed very well. It arrives in a box much bigger than the unit itself, and the DAS is surrounded by plenty of foam.

Been using this for the past 2 years for RAID for a plex server, among other things. At first I thought it was just going to be junk as compared with some other devices it was pretty cheap. But I'm pleased to say this has been a workhorse and stable. I've got mine connected to a Mac Mini that I use for home networking stuff and I've had no issues at all. Just bought a second one for individual backup drives. Great value for the money.

This review is for the 4-bay TR-004 model and covers my very early impressions and experience with initial set up. Summary: So far, I am fairly impressed with how easy this is to set up and use. Performance is as expected and I had everything up and running in under 30 minutes. Time will tell in terms of reliability. Pros: - Ease of set up - Easy to use RAID Manager software - Good read/write performance Cons: - Drive caddies are all plastic - the TR-004 unit only has a USB 3.0 connector (max 5 Gbit/s) while the smaller 2-bay TR-002 unit has the faster USB 3.1 Gen 2 (max 10 Gbit/s) Unboxing: This comes very well packed and includes the external storage unit, power supply, USB-C to USB-A cable, keys, a USB cable clip, and screws to attach hard drives to the drive caddies. The housing is all metal and feels sturdy. The drive caddies, however, are all plastic and feel flimsy. I'm not loving this, but only time will tell if this becomes an issue and they break. Setup: There are two fairly quick parts to setting this up - the physical installation of the drives and connection to the computer, and software set up. I found this to be very easy and straightforward. Installing the hard drives is very simple and doesn't absolutely require securing them with screws. These slide easily into the drive slots and close securely. Software set up was similar fairly simple - I'm using this with a macOS Ventura workstation. I downloaded the External RAID Manager from the QNAP web site, installed it without issue (it does require a reboot), and used it to set up the RAID volumes (I left the unit in Software Control mode). Starting the unit takes about 30-45 seconds to boot and for the drives to be recognized. Creating the RAID volume using the software manager was trivial and I had a usable drive ready to go in a few minutes. After getting this set up, I used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to get a sense for real world read/write performance - I'm getting about 230 MB/s write speeds and 240 MB/s read speeds, which is more than adequate for backup storage. Not blazing fast, but should be sufficient for back ups and retrieval. Of note, I am using four 10 GB Western Digital Red Plus NAS HDD's (7200 rpm, SATA6) and decided on RAID 10 for redundancy and performance and formatted as APFS. The obvious loss was overall storage space: with a total of 40 TB drive space, I have about 18 TB of usable space. Closing Thoughts: I am really looking forward to using this - I have about 12-15 TB of digital images and photos that I would like to copy to a centralized storage unit. The 18 TB of usable storage should be more than enough for my current needs and I can easily upgrade to larger drives as needed. I'll plan to leave an update once I've had more of a chance to use this.

Bottom line: I recommend the TR-004 with drives I mention below (or others on its list of supported drives) in one of the 3 modes: Individual, RAID 1/0, or RAID 5. Please keep in mind that RAID is not a substitute for a good backup. You should always keep a backup copy of anything important on a separate device! If you want to know more details, read on. As an IT professional, I appreciate the benefits of using RAID. It provides faster performance than any one of the drives in the array. How much so depends on the type of array you configure. Configured properly (more on that later*), it provides safety against data loss when a drive fails, and that's always a matter of when, not if. My only complaint with the TR-004 is that the trays that the drives go in are a little flimsy. The down side of RAID is often cost - it's not terribly cheap. Building a home network storage server using it can be expensive because motherboards that support it cost more that those that don't. Using a dedicated controller card is often even more so. I could never convince my better half to let me build a file server with enough storage to meet our needs using RAID because of this - until I found the QNAP TR-004. The TR-004 is a great price when you consider that it has the RAID controller built in. It's an even better value because it supports many of the various popular levels of RAID (more on that later*). Add the fact that you don't have to fill every drive slot to use it, and it's a high value for the money. I put it on a tiny PC also available here on Amazon.com for under $200, and **boom** - instant dedicated file server for home! You need to populate the TR-004 with drives, it comes without any. Get good NAS or other server grade drives. I recommend WD RED, WD PURPLE, or WD GOLD from Western Digital, or Seagate's IronWolf or SkyHawk lines. These drives are specifically designed for use in RAID arrays for Network-Attached Storage, also called NAS (WD RED & IronWolf), security camera systems (WD PURPLE & SkyHawk) or other servers (WD GOLD & IronWolf). They are made for very high reliability. At the very least, use either the Western Digital WD BLACK or high-end Seagate Barracuda drives. Anything cheaper, and you'll end up having problems with your RAID array loosing sync. "What's that mean?" you ask? In simple terms, all the drives in a RAID array look, to the computer, like a single giant drive. Data gets spread across the drives in chunks. This is how you get the speed performance increase from RAID. While one drive is busy handling one thing, others are frequently able to handle other things. It's also how you get protection against data loss if a drive fails, when you are using a level of RAID that provides this. * Here's the "more on that later" I promised above. RAID comes in different "levels", referred to as RAID x, where x is a number. All RAID arrays are made up of multiple drives. The TR-004 supports 6 different modes, though I only recommend 4 of them. These modes are: Individual - Every drive in the TR-004 is visible to the computer as a separate drive letter (ie: e:, f:, etc). The drives can all be different models, brands, and sizes. I can recommend this mode, but know that data on each drive will be lost if that drive fails and the data on it isn't backed up elsewhere. If you are going to use this mode, you can use any drive the TR-004 will support, not just the ones I mentioned above. JOBD - This stands for Just One Big Drive. All the space of all the drives is available to the computer as one giant drive. It requires at least 2 drives, but supports as many as the controller can handle, 4 in the case of this enclosure. This mode allows the use of different, models, brands, and even sizes of drives. It works by spreading the data within files across all the drives in the array (as do all the RAID levels in one way or another). DANGER: If any drive fails, all data on all drives in this mode is lost, unless it's backed up elsewhere. I do not recommend this mode. RAID 0 - This is technically the first RAID mode. It's the same as JOBD, with the notable exception that all the drives in the array should be identical, the same exact model number, the same brand, the same size. The only difference their should be is the drives' serial numbers. This requirement is continued to all the rest of the RAID levels. RAID 0 is fast, however it has the same danger as JOBD, so I do not recommend this mode, either. RAID 1/0 - This mode is also know as RAID 10. It requires an even number of identical drives, and a minimum of 4 (all bays filled in the TR-004). It copies 2 RAID 0 arrays between each other. In larger arrays, an even number of identical drives is required for RAID 1/0. This is the fastest of the RAID levels, but it has the drawback of only making half the total space of all the drives combined to the computer (ie: 4 drives of 3 TB each would look like 6 TB to the computer [4 drives * 3 TB = 12 TB, 12 TB / 2 = 6 TB]). Although I do not recommend RAID 0, the fact that there are 2 identical copies of a RAID 0 array, any single drive can fail without loosing data. Therefore, I do recommend RAID 1/0 for speed and data redundancy. RAID 5 - This mode is a good compromise between between the speed of RAID 1/0 and the desire to get more storage space from the drives in the array. RAID 5 also requires at identical drives. It needs a minimum of 3, but can go up from there to however many drives the controller can support, in single drive increments. It achieves redundancy, by spreading data across "stripes" that are duplicated on the multiple drives. At it's absolute simplest, it places 2 copies of each stripe in the array. For example, lets say there are 3 stripes stored in a 3-drive array. We'll call the stripes A, B, & C. We'll call the drives 1, 2, & 3. RAID 5 stores a copy of A on 1 & 2, a copy of B on 2 & 3, and a copy of C on 3 & 1. By doing this, any 1 drive can fail but there is still at least 1 usable copy of all stripes in the array. Replace the failed drive, and the controller will copy the necessary stripes to the new drive. The amount of storage available to the computer is the combined total of the storage on all but one of drives in the array (ie 4 drives of 3 TB each would look like 9 TB to the computer [4 drives -1 = 3 drives, 3 drives * 3 TB = 9 TB]). RAID 5 is not as fast as RAID1/0, but it gives more storage from the same drives, so I do recommend it in particular for home servers, where cost is a bigger consideration that many businesses. SFOTWARE CONTROL: When the TR-004 is in this mode, special software must be downloaded and installed on the computer it is attached to. The mode it will run in will then be controlled by the user from within this software. I do not recommend this mode because if you are going to move the TR-004 from one computer to another, you may accidentally loose everything stored on it. You never know when you may have to move it to another computer - say if the one it's on dies?

I installed 3 SSDs into the QNAP TR-004 enclosure and connected it to my M4 Pro Mac Mini. I am not using hardware RAID, just the "individual disks" mode where each drive mounts individually, so this should basically have been a simple USB / SATA enclosure at the end of the day. The performance of this device is beyond terrible. I found that my Mac Mini was constantly beach-balling when trying to access data on these drives. Further, it seems that it would put the drives to sleep (not sure if this was commanded by the enclosure's firmware or by the Mac's OS), but it would take ages to wake them up again. SSDs obviously don't need to spin-up, but it would take 30+ seconds (often a minute or so) before data was available. I would expect that a sleeping SSD should wake up in around a second or two (or less!). Out of the box, I was really disappointed by the cheap plastic used for the enclosure as a whole, and especially the drive trays. Releasing the latch and pulling out the tray just feels awful and like it's going to break easily (and with time, this may be an issue if the plastics become brittle). 3.5" drives mount with a tool-less system, but the 'rails' that hold it in also feel really low quality. 2.5" drives need screws to hold them in. That's fine, but the problem is that the 'rail' that would be used to retain a 3.5" needs to be removed because it mechanically interferes with the 2.5" drive. So now, where to put that rail so that it could be used in the future?? There's no place to store it, so you'd need to be careful not to misplace it. Fast forward and I picked up a 5-bay Sabrent enclosure at the same price point. The Sabrent unit has two downsides: it only supports 3.5" drives directly (an adapter fixes that issue) and the fan is noisier. But, the Sabrent is mechanically very well built and more importantly performs really well -- no more beach balls, super fast and reliable data transfers, fast wake-up, and it's even significantly faster to mount the drives in the OS. I did not perform quantitative performance tests, but it's clear that the QNAP is not fit for purpose. I also did not test the hardware raid capabilities (hopefully it is better, but I'd doubt it). I'd recommend avoiding the QNAP TR-004 as it is really a poor product with extremely poor DAS performance. The possible exception for this would be if you need to extend a QNAP NAS device, but I would still expect poor performance so you may be better buying an entirely new NAS system.

I purchased this DAS because i wanted to expand my storage. I could have saved a bunch of money by just buying external drive storage bays... but without spending more money than i did on this, you get something that looks like it was made in the 90's, and not very attractive sitting on the desk. HOWEVER, I bought this with the expectation of returning it, and let me tell you why. I watched probably 35 videos about this DAS, and NONE of the videos stated if putting in existing, already populated drives would work.... everyone said once you push the initialization button, it would wipe the drives.... ok cool, except no one mentioned if i didn't push the button what would happen.... This was because i never wanted to use this in RAID, i already have multiple forms of backup. So I put in 4 drives, 2 of which i had previously attached to my computer for storage. (1-10tb WD Black, 2-8tb WD Black, 1-6tb WD Black) I already had my 2-8tb drives with data, and upon putting them in and then turning the tr-004 on, it instantly recognized the drives, and my data was still there. THIS IS HUGE AND NEEDS TO BE BETTER COMMUNICATED!! I went into windows drive management, initialized the 10 and 6 tb, and everything is all good!!! -People mention it feels cheap.... its called "hitting a price point" not everything can be a $1000 apple accessory. for its price point, it feels solid, drive cages feel solid with 3.5'' drives in them. -I've had this on my desk 2 days, 1 of which i wasn't home, and you can see its a dust magnet on the glossy sections. -Drive install is simple, and installing into the box is just as simple -Besides the drives making noise the unit is dead silent. I would recommend this to anyone looking to expand storage

For a 7 year old device, it just keeps on working. The fan is still quiet at all times, even when the load is at its greatest. Data transfer rate is as good as can be expected, about 5Gb/sec. This will vary depending on the port you use, cable you use (use the one supplied), and possibly the speed of the drives involved. One thing to note, drives are not "hot swap". I've had to make a short procedure to put in a new, unformatted drive. I'm using the TR-004 in JBOD mode. 1 Turn off computer 2 Install the new drive 3 Turn on the computer 4 Format the drive 5 Transfer data I've had problems if I put in a drive that already had the data on it. That procedure works properly. I use the TR-004 as my primary, but not only, backup of my data. Always double back up your data. I have portable hard drives as my secondary backup.

This is a true DAS and you can download the configuration utility from QNAP to set it up, as well as get the full manual. This is a good value, goes up to RAID 5, has moderate speed with RAID 5 array and 4x 4TB WD Reds. I was able to write on one PC about 140-160 MB/sec and read about 200MB/sec. On a second machine it was more, getting about 190MB/sec during writes and 240MB/sec on reads. Once an array has been made, any new Windows PC will see the drive without any additional driver needed other than the built-in Windows driver. Not bad for a $219 DAS.