QNAP NAS Guide Part 1 - Setup, RAID, Volumes IP and Shared Folders

[@LarryCarlin]

As I watch this I think about all the hours you spent making the tutorial. And then all the hours you have SAVED the viewers who don't have to ferret this all out alone. Brilliant Work!

[@slicedpage]

OMG "Yes", I thought," get a NAS, you have always wanted one!" So I got a NAS, little did I know the learning curve involved. WOW!!! A curve that has been flattened a lot by my new bestest friend Robbie here. Thank you Sir.

[@mellochord]

I'd be lost without you, brother. I appreciate the time you take to produce these videos and for keeping it simple for newbies like me.

[@paulkolenda94]

Anytime I have questions or want to learn something I go to the source - - - thank you so much for making it easy.

[@HASSANDARU]

this video is a life saver. why on earth did i spend trying to access a volume by myself is beyond me. AWESOME VIDEO!!!

[@noizeemama3697]

Thank you for this. Four years later, the menus have changed but I was able to muddle my way through it with your help.

[@RossCampoli]

Can't thank you enough for getting this video together! Setting up my NAS right now, with your help. WAY more straightforward than the stuff QNAP has out there.

[@Tech-geeky]

that's because everyone who buys a NAS, the manufactures reckon we're all experts.... Clearly that's not the case.

[@Tech-geeky]

QNAP , like many other manufacturers 'assume' when you buy the product you already know some basic stuff.. Everyone deserves a little help from KZbin.. But if QNAP developed videos like these, they would probably be creating videos 24/7 (particularly how frequent firmware updates push out)

[@AnthonyFotenos]

Invaluable starting point for easing entry into the QNAP NAS world. Perfect for newbies. Thank you!

[@nascompares]

Thank you for your kind words.

[@richardkoeknyc]

Have no idea what I have been doing but so far I managed to follow you and implement it... Thank you so much!

[@NicksFort]

Amen

[@scotmcpherson9886]

I would seriously be lost without your knowledge and assistance. Thank you, you're a legend!

[@LSUEngineer1978]

Rob, Excellent video once again on your part. New QNAPTS-253D just arrived. Your videos are a life saver. Less than 30 minutes to set-up. thanks, Brian

[@HarborsUnknown]

GREAT video!! Thanks so much. I would not have been able to set up my NAS without this video.

[@mannyteixeira2773]

I used QNAP for more than 8 years and finally switch to Sinology because QNAP firmware update is almost every week and who have time to reboot a production NAS every week. It’s ridiculous and disappoint that you have to spend most of your time updating Windows 10 and QNAP NAS.

[@Lanatigrice]

Very useful video! Thank you for your help

[@mathuranubhav]

Thank you for making these videos.. The setup process for QNAP NAS is very overwhelming.

[@claude3990]

I got tired of waiting for Synology (existing NAS 1511+) to introduce new and updated NAS's. Switched to Qnap (TVS-872XT) and I'm here to watch your great videos and learn and apply some or all your suggestions. Thanx for your time on creating these helpful video's

[@officialmilhouse]

Fantastic video, QNAP should use this video in their official documentation - very glad I went for the 251+!

[@NicksFort]

Thanks for sharing brother. You allowed me to get up and running with my new QNAP

[@Jambo1999]

Thanks for the run-down. I set RAID 5 on a new QNAP-TVS-672XT using 6 x 8TB drives.

[@Percipient4]

You are a badass! This made the setup process a lot simpler and more comfortable for me.

[@batdroid2705]

Man! I can't stress this enough, you are freaking legend. I can't thank you enough. Thanks alot

[@projectmanager379]

18:44 the Network Drives button is greyed out for me. How do I fix this?

[@lelanacroft]

I've been researching NAS over the last few weeks and your channel has helped me tremendously. I'll be using your links to purchase when the time comes. I'm pretty sure I'm going with Qnap and wanted to be a little more familiar with the interface before I started. Thank you so much for these videos! I'll be watching again once the system arrives.

[@mikewarrender9646]

What a great video, got me sorted when I had a problem setting up my first NAS, much better than the info from QNAP. Thanks

[@mohammedabdulquayum2612]

Please share video on accessing folder from QNAP NAS map drive & opening files example notepad ,or autocad drawing , etc and editing saving.

[@Soggytiri]

Can’t be stressed enough how important mapped network drives are. Just set up TS-464 and in the process of transferring data from an old Netgear ReadyNAS 1100. Using browsers and FileStation 5 is limited, with transfers stopping due to file size. Using mapped drives, that is, transferring directly from folder to folder has dramatically reduced my stress levels. Thanks for your videos!

[@joestefano4136]

Good day. I have a new Qnap TS453D with 4) 4TB drives. My reason for purchase is two fold. I need about 6TB of backup for my desktop and Laptop. I also need to access my autocad files remotely but I don't want to connect to my desktop just the files. I will also backup the qnap to a WD 8TB My Cloud device. Should I set up separate volumes for Shared folders and Backup? Or would you recommend another set up? Thank you in advance

[@a.accioly]

Static vs DHCP: Personally I would select DHCP. You can always bind a fixed IP to the NAS Mac address in your DHCP server settings. That way you get the best of both Worlds (i.e., "fixed" ip + centralised configuration).

[@thebigogre4704]

This is what I did originally, and what I have done with most other devices on my network, but then I got a managed switch and did a link aggregation of the gigabit ethernet ports to get more bandwidth to the NAS and kept getting errors, so I had to use static IPs on the NAS for about a year. The new version of the switch´s software now handles it correctly and I set it back to DHCP with the assigned MAC address. IMHO I beleive it´s one of those things everyone should be doing since it is a good practice.

[@Tech-geeky]

Alternatively, on a mixed-network (DHCP + static) like, me, every time i reboot router IP always jumped in so rather than set static on device, "reserve" IP on router (by MAC address..) Assuming you don't factory reset router to factory defaults, your good.

[@MrSteveSimons]

Thank you for your videos, very useful. I have a question about something that you haven't explained: which are the differences in selecting Static, Thick or Thin Volumes? I see that there is indeed a lot of difference. Have you gone deep in some other videos? Or can you explain their differences and mostly when a particular type should be selected? You understand that if I select the wrong type and after having transferred all my data I realize that I should have selected another type, I might end up stuck if I don't have any extra space onto where transfer momentarily my data so to recreate from beginning the volumes with new type. :)

[@ArtManNL]

What an excellent guide!! Now I know how to set up my new Qnap Nas.

[@ZirJo]

Amazing step-by-step guide with easy to understand explanations! Thank you!

[@MrGidaro]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! to go through all the steps without this guide would have been a bit difficult.

[@asherdog9248]

I bought a 6 bay QNAP unit. The more I think about Raid and Pools, I don't think I need a raid system or even a storage pool. 90% of the data that I want to backup is static, Photos, Video and Audio files. They won't ever change again once they are written to archive disks. If I have 6 simple 18TB drives I can keep one drive empty and make a mirror copy, 5 in total, of each of my 5 archive drives and save them to to a local location and to an offsite location. If one of the drives goes bad, I can replace the bad drive with one of the backup drives and then back up the backup drive? It seems like raid is best for dynamic data that needs to span drives? I started with Reid 6 but realized it uses 50% of my total drive space. Any way you cut it if you want to back up your NAS you need another NAS or fixed drives.

[@jorgebarreiro7329]

Thank you for this invaluable video tutorial. I am currently installing a qnap ts-451deu for home. I thought I could do it just by following the manual, but I just got confused and frustrated from the start. I cannot thank you enough.

[@martinisalive]

I just got my QNAP TVS-872XT yesterday and was happy to use this video setting it up! (In fact it’s still synchronizing after 12h). Anyway, I have used the Synology DS415+ since it came out. Great little machine. Reasonably good interface but for me it’s just too slow. Smaller files, smaller volumes - its great! (Will keep it). I will however be editing FCPX video straight from the QNAP. Will have that setup today. Thanks for great videos! To the point and crammed with good information and advice. Keep up the good work! 👍✨

[@MarkWallbank-w2z]

A very helpful insight re how to set up my first ever NAS.

[@yossigabsu]

Great video. thank you so much. I do have two questions. at 13:03 why did you skip the explanation between thin, thick and static? as per creating a volume, do I have to wait for the sync to complete before I create the static volume?

[@Pythonagrator]

I suggest enabling disk encryption when you are setting up your volume. It’s not very secure if someone can just whip the disk out and access all your data.

[@bennysh]

Thanks, just got my first ever NAS and it helped a lot.

[@stephengapper817]

Thanks for the excellent videos! Did you ever do one on the Plex Media Player and the QNAP Club, which seems to have disappeared?

[@fobo79]

Nice tutorial! But unfortunately not much is correct after qunaps os update :(

[@bencebalogh3736]

I am soooo so so greatful to you for this guide, it helped me an awful lot. I'm kinda of the Barbarian of IT. On friday my boss came into the office with one of these, put it on my desk, and said: "Set it up!" ... sooo... yeah I felt kindda lost :D

[@albinosgambit1877]

Also, just wanted to say thanks and I really appreciated that you helped me to set up my new NAS for the first time:-) I am thankful

[@Tech-geeky]

I miss the older QNAP versions :P I choose never to do Storage Pool because to capacity is takes up. Plus. i have backups anyway, and to me storage is more important, then snapshots. You can also use General >Shared folder for more options.

[@sylvainalain6637]

I'm still new to the synalogy and qnap NAS environment but I must say that Synology software seems easier to use and configure. Synology is like an Apple software really easy to use and qnap is for someone who knows what he is doing and that person doesn't a hand to setup his stuff. I'm learning a lot :) Thanks for that serie

[@sylvainalain6637]

I guess that the qnap interface is more straightforward while the synology is more user friendly for beginners

[@TheShuteye]

Great video, just looking if you have a video on mapping a QNAP TS-453B with a IMAC?

[@nycsonic3738]

Awesome video, thanks for explaining.

[@viaschivan]

Thank you for this great video. It helped me a lot setting up my new NAS.

[@salvamando1]

Love your videos, they have saved me so much time and headache!

[@rjaiya]

Very helpful, even better than tech support. Many Thanks

[@garryjames1198]

Fantastic video, incredibly helpful

[@andrewbaerm.d.3984]

So, after looking at your videos, I finally purchased the TS451+. I purchased WD Reds for it only to find out that WD had pulled a fast one....so I was lucky in being able to send them back. I recall, at least as of a few years ago, WD was considered to have a better failure rate than Seagate. Now, I am not sure what to purchase for my NAS....WD Red Pro or Plus....or ditch WD all together. Then there is the question of RAID configuration. I was going to use RAID5 but then read a number of articles about problems doing a rebuild if one drive failed and there was a bad sector on one of the other drives. But, RAID 6 for a 4 bay NAS has quite a storage overhead.....you get only 50 percent capacity. Can you use RAID 5 and setup drive scrubbing in order to be certain of catching bad sectors and changing drives before trouble starts? Then there is this. I wanted to use my NAS to back up our files and operating systems of our two PCs and two laptops. I heard there was a way to keep the nas turned off and that it would only automatically turn on to do backups say once a day or week....whatever one chooses. Is that true? Can this NAS be used both for backup and in part as a file server...say for streaming videos at the same tie you use it for backup?

[@DD-sw1dd]

I just got a brand new TS-451+ for $169 (supposed to be $470+) . God bless Microcenter’s policy on mispriced items. Ive only ever owned a WD MyCloud. I can’t wait to set this NAS up.

[@nascompares]

You DID do well... It's a little old, but still a robust as hell device. The TS-251+ still does well on sale at SPAN and as an affordable Intel NAS, it's a bloody tough one to beat at this price point, even without your bargain! Well done

[@yunlungkuo9113]

my dad appreciates the explanation of qnap.

[@MopedWanderlust]

High quality, entertaining and educational. You do it all right for me. May I copy your style?

[@bitpickersplace494]

Good Video. I recently purchased the QNAP TVS-872XT just about a month ago. I exchanged emails with nascompares.com because I wanted the best for Plex/Embry all of the way up to 4K. I had been running with a Synology DS1813+ for many years and it wouldn't handle the plex stuff very well. What I found was, Synology is like the Mac. The software is easy to use and configure, but you are stuck with what they want you to configure. The processors are typically small and in my mind, under powered for intensive applications. You can move up to a Pentium d1508 and Xeon, but the performance is greater with the i5-8400T 6-core 1.7 GHz Processor in my QNAP for video transcoding. The QNAP would be like the PC. The software has some basic configurations, but if you need more, they are there. For example, one thing that this video didn't show when the raid was being created is that you can change the settings for how fast the disks are prepared. There are multiple settings. Each setting takes more cpu power which will limit the amount of power available to the users, but it does a much faster job of getting the raid ready for full use. It's things like this that gives the QNAP an edge in my mind. Backing up the NAS's is also different between QNAP and Synology. Synology provides a nice interface to create backups to another device or cloud storage but. . . it is slooooow. I'm using just plain old Rsync on the QNAP and I get 600+mbps backup speeds to another network device. I'm very happy with my QNAP. It's going to take a while to learn it intricacies, but in the long run, I'm going to get much more out of it than I think I would with a Synology. Better hardware, more choices on how I want to run it. And, I think I got a better price for the performance than I would have gotten from Synology. Definitely better performance.

[@asdf51501]

Once again, thank you for the incredibly informative videos. I was originally thinking of using Synology, but I think I will likely go Qnap for the plex transcoding abilities.

[@nascompares]

Glad my videos helped.

[@jed2055]

Now I'm confused! My understanding is RAID 0 gets you all of the disks capacity via striping - loose one loose them all. JBOD gets you all of the disks capacity - one BIG disk, not as quick read/writes and one directory structure on one of them - loose one loose them all. Just as scary as RAID 0 imo. The only way to have "independent" disks I believe you called them is to use "Single" aka static disks, and that is done on a multi HDD NAS by adding and initialising disks one by one, selecting "Single" each time. From me looking at my new Qnap NAS, "Single" volume does not appear as an option if one starts with at least 2 HDDs in the NAS on initial installation but it does and has to appear if only one disk is present. On insertion of the next disk, the single disk option is again present. Seems logical to me. Good video and I thank you for helping me get around this somewhat baffling technology.

[@isaacsykes3]

Thank you for creating this video. the information that you provided is so very comprehensive...I've had my Qnap for a while, and now feel the need to just start over based on the useful information that you shared. If you haven't done so already can you please do a Mac version of this guide, particularly the "mapped" network drives. Thanks again.

[@Davecity65]

Very helpful, definitely a thumbs up! I have a question that you or anyone else might be able to answer. I have been using a two-bay model (TS-259) for quite some years now. I have it configured for RAID 1 with two 2TB drives. Last night, the power connection in the back of the enclosure melted for whatever reason and the unit is dead. Luckily, a friend had an unused TS-253 so I just popped out one of the drives, plugged it into the 253 and within minutes, was back up in a pinch. Was thinking of getting a new TS-231 or TS-233 to replace it. However, I only really use three folders out of a dozen or so on a daily basis. Those three folders combine for maybe 200GB in storage and the rest are long-term storage that I infrequently access. Would there be any benefit to having one 500GB SSD and one 2TB drive, with the SSD having the three folders I always use, and the HDD holding my longer term storage, plus a full backup (maybe daily overrides) of the SSD?

[@OlayinkaPopoola]

Please do you have a video on how to backup a mssql database on qnap. Also how to replicate database from a qnap to another

[@ratoneves2]

Goodnight. Very good explanation. I have a doubt. If you have 2 disks in RAID 1 and put a 3rd disk. Can I move to RID 5 without losing data or do I have to set everything up again. Thanks.

[@Anamnesia]

One concept I found difficult to understand was the difference between a *_Storage Volume_* and a *_Storage Pool_* I have a "better" understanding now, but don't quite understand where one would be more advantageous than the other? I came across this Volume/Pool query with my NAS & the TR-004 expansion unit, as it gives you the options when setting it up.

[@frank-vq4mx]

I am unable to find the setting for the "workgroup" of my TS-219P.

[@alistairbarclay3116]

An excellent guide series. Thank you for the effort. Please can you clarify a couple of points, having only used a slow and useless wd my cloud mirror this set up is way different. In order to understand Is the storage management of qts similar to this? Storage pool = format and raid setup Volume = partition/s Shared folders = folders accessible by others or a iPad or android app? Thank you

[@reanult457]

merry x'mas mate and your video is so useful

[@ruek66]

What would be appreciated would be a video on what to do when upgrading your NAS from one to another.

[@B0ylemeister]

Thank you so much! 2nd NAS for me but at least this new one is set up correctly this time :)

[@jewelbriard5444]

The first volume I made ended being the system volume so I had to shrink it I do not recall this mentioned in the video .

[@timnickname3530]

Is this still relevant for Oct 2021? Or should I wait for a qts 5 setup guide?

[@poodletalk5608]

Thank you for this - learning a lot....

[@HerewardDundasTaylor]

You mentioned you can convert Thin to Thick but not the other way around. However, under the Data Volume Management in my QNAP NAS, it has the option to convert the Thick to Thin. Maybe this ability to convert both ways has only become available since you recorded this?

[@angrystar]

Thanks! Exactly what I needed.

[@sajeerhajib5881]

Thankyou for the video. Very useful

[@jmrod071955]

Thank you so much for doing these videos. They are totally awesome, the best ones i have seen about Qnap. I have the TS-221 With 2 4TB WD NAS drives. I eventually want to upgrade to a better and faster unit. These are videos that QNap should have done themselves. These videos are great for Newbies to NAS systems. I'm thinking of ugrading to the QNAP TS-453A-8G for media storage and sharing, Back up and all around Data storage. Do you think that it is overkill as I'm an intermediate user?

[@ronwatkins5775]

Im not seeing how to map a network drive to C:/Users folder. I need the "user" accounts to live on the NAS so no matter which PC you login to your Documents/Downloads/etc are all there, for each windows user. I can't seem to get this to work.

[@MrStewieH]

Great video, helped me so much love your work

[@sjb103052]

Just got a TS-431P and was I ever glad to find this video. The included instructions were abysmal. Thanks to you I now have it set up and running … sort of... I can't figure out how to simply transfer data (ie move) from my overcrowded desktop hard drive onto the NAS. I tried setting up a shared file folder and then tried to drag and drop from my hard drive … got a message saying that was only available through Google Chrome!! Is that right?

[@Murphy48rjx48]

Also found that the QFINDER will not proceed past the third set up screen in version 5.1.4256 - have a called logged with QNAP support but this thing is taking days to set up ... what a pain

[@hippiestafarii]

Just got one ... this video help me a lot ; tks man :-)

[@sgbibby]

I am following this building a 4 bay QNAP with 4 x6TB red Pro going ok so far

[@bertilbruin1290]

Great video, good explanation, very helpful for me👍

[@shanechiddy4303]

Thanks for the videos, excellent. Just looking, do you have a video of setting up the cloud access.

[@nostromo586]

Why my raid setup screen is different? I don 't have the "storage and snapshot" apps

[@jayonethree5082]

Mine too!!!

[@lorageproductions]

Hi, great videos and thank you for doing this. We have a TS 669 and when dealing with the storage manager it did not give me the option of Raid 1 after I selected the six drives. Is raid 6 basically the same as a raid 1 and that is the reason?

[@oneinten]

Great tutorial. Thanks, buddy.

[@RobertMazanik]

Hi, nice tutorial, but i have a TS212 without app Storage&Snapshot, any tip for this niec disk management?

[@bluedevil678]

Could you cover how to remove a drive from RAID in another video?

[@Taldree]

Great explanation. This newby had no difficulty setting up my new home NAS. Look forward to the next video in the series.

[@goddessoftruth]

This is my first NAS set up. I chose this enclosure because I was able to get a decent amount of "bang for my buck". I am following the tutorial but I have a couple of questions. First, when setting the Nas name and user account name AND PW is it supposed to take a while and hang while doing that or is it supposed to just process straight through that portion quickly? Additionally, since I will be using it with 2 laptops do I have to set up separate user names on each laptop even though I will be the only one using both laptops and accessing the NAS?

[@乐维丝]

great video, thank you for creating this video.

[@olivierschmidlin9016]

Best serie of tutorials ever and really used all of them as step by step approach. However I’m now falling into an issue. I did the wifi setup at one point in time and now changed by internet provider meaning that I can’t connect to the NAS using wifi. I saw some guidelines using a uci usb but was unsuccessful (even if apparently my usb is included in the supported devices). Any hint on how to change the wifi setup? Help really appreciated

[@erickgonzalez5777]

A coworker gave me an old NAS of his so can’t really follow along with the tutorial but do I need the login he created to reset the NAS completely and build my own?

[@karljoshi8156]

Great Video, However I am stuck, i followed your video up to the point of Mapping Drives, Im using Qnap TS 264 on my LAN, with Windows 11 on PC and when i click network drives on Qnap Finder all it wants to do is is Mount my TS264 rather then search file explorer ?

[@huntergreen1988]

Thank you for making this!

[@letanat8966]

Hello, We're having an error , we don't know how to handle it, can you help us out? thank you very much . QNAP is disabled for 5 minutes every time.

[@kontroversus]

About the Cross-platform file transfer services - If I am not sure which ones I ticked on the initial nas setup, how do I check now? Thanks

[@SWAGMediaLibrary]

Thanks for a great video series. I'm moving from an old single-disk TS11P9+toa four-bay TS453D. I have two 4TB WD Red+ drives for data (mainly music), plus two WD Purple 4TB drives for CCTV. The intention is to use RAID1 for each pair of drives: does this need two storage pools, one for the music and one for CCTV? Cheers!

[@fffred75]

This is a lifesaver video! Thank you!

[@nasserbrn]

Thank you for a much needed Tutorial!