Terramaster D8 Hybrid - Should You Buy? (Short Review)

[@psylenced]

Missed one use case. Data hoarders who have a bunch of old smaller hard drives and SSDs lying around that are too small to fit in current NAS. For $199, it means you can make use of all your old storage and also not need it on 24/7 with primary NAS.

[@jodajackson4489]

I’ve reconsidered my position on the Tarramaster H8 Hybrid. If the NAS OS can manage the RAID array then the lack of hardware RAID 5 is far less perplexing. They could eat Synology’s lunch when it comes to expansion units if it can function that way in DSM7. Same for QNAP, Asustore and so on.

[@dertermyd]

In my opinion it is nice unit as a storage attachment for a Tiny/Mini/Micro low power Unraid, TrueNAS or Proxmox server 👍

[@JeffJohnson]

That’s what I was thinking. I have an optiplex 3080 that I can install Truenas on and use the DAS as storage and run Plex on. For $199,thats not bad

[@Kosh42EFG]

I do that with my D4. Rock solid.

[@atomique90]

@@Kosh42EFG How is the performance on this? I play with the idea to get an MS-01 and add one of these DAS via TB4 to it. Would be nice if I could then install TrueNAS or add it to a single node ceph cluster on the MS-01. But I dont know how the devices would show up on my OS later on.

[@Kosh42EFG]

With Truenas it works fine. Not lightning fast, but that's what cache drive in the mini pc is for. Suits my needs serving media, CCTV, etc. Then the mini pc drives are where I host Home Assistant, etc.

[@thecartooncynic]

For me, I was looking for a more elegant solution for my Plex media. Having 3 external drives taking up precious IO on my Mini PC was becoming unacceptable to me. My current set up is a 4tb SSD inside of the computer, 1 NVME drive for 4K movies, and a 12tb HDD with a 250mb cache for everything else. This device was perfect for my needs.

[@agelikemilk351]

Thing is, you'll be more than fine storing your 4K remuxes on HDDs

[@PMcDonnell]

I'm a photographer and have backed the Kickstarter (€199 is an excellent price to performance). My main pc is a minisforum um790 pro with 64gb of ddr5 and I have a lot of external drives attached via USB4 and USB3.2 GEN2. I intend to house 4 hdds and 2 1TB NVME drives in the DAS. I'll keep a 1TB system drive and a 2 TB work drive (both NVME ) in my PC while attaching 2 further 'hot' photo drives (2 * 2TB NVME) attached to the 2 USB 4 connections. I have a docking station (USB3.2) for other peripherals. I think the logic is sound but if you spot any serious flaws please let me know... Oh I have a 14TB hdd attached to my router which holds backups of the important data from the other disks and additional online storage of my 'best' photographs. This is my hobby, not my profession

[@ChrisM541]

Nice setup!

[@ReceiveMusic]

What about cloud storage? I pay 100GB/ $2 a month for Google Drive/Photos. I store my jpgs of my best photos to at least have a backup of those on the cloud. I still keep my RAWs on hard drives and one SSD.

[@PMcDonnell]

​@@ReceiveMusicThsnkd for the reply. I went ahead with the TerraMaster DAS, have an online backup on Google of the 'best' too but my catalog is too large for that. Will be getting another 14tb nas drive for a mirror raid and keeping a cold copy of my photos 'off site' to get redundancy.

[@haukionkannel]

This is for people who has slim laptop with one or two USB ports. You get easily a lot of external storage space and only wastefull one of your precioous USB ports to have it.

[@dansanger5340]

I would attach it to a cheap, low power mini-PC, with one or more 2Gbps ethernet ports, share out the SSDs as NAS and then use the HDDs to take frequent backup snapshots that could be periodically swapped out for offsite storage.

[@blakeparry1983]

As a Qnap TR004 user i would have been keen to look at this unit if it had the hardware RAID onboard. The Qnap does (and is price comparable) but only 5gb/s USB and no NVME. My use case is as a photographer for photo storage (not generally live edited from but some decent performance to go through libraries etc is nice).

[@andrewlarking7492]

How do you find the QNAP? I need 16th storage for photography, thinking about this device but hear it disconnects often.

[@blakeparry1983]

@@andrewlarking7492 cant say ive ever had a dropout

[@penguindrummaster]

Appreciate the review. To answer the initial question, I think I fit the bill of a target demographic, lol. So, I bought a 4-bay NAS that should get me by for a while, but I immediately started considering how I might expand the system. Specifically, I just watched a video last night (Techno Tim) about how to improve the reliability and performance of TrueNAS. One point he made was to have NVMe SSDs in a mirrored vdev for the L2ARC, and another mirrored vdev for the SLOG, so as to reduce pressure on the ZPool. Watched a separate video on Hardware Haven where he reviewed the Aoostar WTR Pro (the NAS I ordered as a result of his video), and he demonstrated how you could use the M.2 E-key to boot from, and add 2 x NVMe SSDs for caching. This would only give me a single SSD per task, and Techno Tim was emphatic in saying RAID 1 fault tolerance is highly recommended for the SLOG. So, what's a guy to do? Well, enter this DAS solution. 4 x NVMe SSD slots, so 2 mirrored vdevs, one each for SLOG and L2ARC. And then an additional 4 x 3.5" HDDs worth of storage. Seems like a perfect fit for upgrading a TrueNAS ZFS instance without having to fully invest in migrating to a new box. Then again, in the short term, I'm probably going to go the route of fully-upgrading the WTR Pro, and see about using the single SSD each for L2ARC and SLOG

[@SlowCheetahs-w3l]

Great questions, great video! Thanks mate!

[@marksaunders3055]

I have a ROG XG Mobile dock with a D5 attached for when I put my flow 13 on the desk so I can have my steam library sitting ready. I only have a 3.1 Gen 2 USB port available so not having anything faster wasn't an issue for me.

[@famitory]

i like JBODs for the same reason i like unraid; if the pool fails and data is lost, it only loses the data on the dead drive, every other drive's data is fully intact and retreivable. also makes it possible to use the hot swap bays as truly hot swap bays, effectively treating hard drives as massive usb keys for moving huge files around faster than any network could ever do it.

[@AndreasA.S.]

so, this is a fantastic backup box for truenas, at least my build 4x16hd+4x500ssd, i just wonder how Qnap will see it, as a jbod box? please look into that, ill by 2, and have 2 offsite backups or how it fairs with one of those new microcomputer boxes, or zema(sp?) board

[@ChrisM541]

Kickstarter, if you're aware of the product - and are happy with the feature set and non-reviewed status - then there is no issue joining in primarily since you'll be getting a significant discount - it's an extra £/$100 today. As for this product, it's a most excellent spicy meatball for many folks out there...obviously.

[@udirt]

Since it has a JBOD port, I'll strongly consider getting two of them to expand a cluster of two Dell VEP4600 VM hosts - they only have two internal SSD slots (M.2/NGFF SATA). So each cluster node would be connected to one Terramaster. Cost pretty much nothing compared to the base system and you don't _have_ to use multiple bays, you can just increment once you have a reason to. Yes, performance will be limited, but look at me caring. Not to mention that what perf you get is much more dependent on the type of SSD you get (i.e. Micron 7450 MAX instead of a Samsung Pro model - only one of those two will be performing well for small IOs. You'd pretty much need 4 top of the line enterprise M.2 SSD or Optanes to even max out the USB interface on 4k writes) Would be awesome if they notice the market opportunity and make one with two power supplies (i.e. an external one like on mikrotik)

[@blocksrey]

What FS would you use?

[@maxdxs]

there are alternatives to extend a nas (unraid /truenas ) but getting better performance.. (probable is avoiding the usb-c and use a ls mini sas? )

[@sfperalta]

Amazon is asking $299 for this today. Given the rather constrained RAID functionality, it's hard to see the appeal at the higher price point.

[@terrygriffin5201]

What would be a good solution for dense media for video editing? I edit 5k and 6k timelines.

[@JeremeHancock]

I use a similar device for Plex. I don't need RAID for Plex since I have never had any issues with my JBOD setup. Since RAID is not a backup I just prefer to have a simple set of disks with my media files. If I lose a drive I will just re-build my library. Also this device would be nice because the NVME drives could be used for downloads and Plex cache/transcoding disks. So this could be plugged into and old Dell OptiPlex and would be a great upgrade for Plex.

[@harryvekaria7478]

Looking at this for exactly the same purpose.

[@Supperconductor]

JBOD for a Proxmox server, that's what I need most.

[@cordlesswire]

went with qnap tr-004 for das. no raid, no nas here, just a htpc with fractals big node that has 9 drives (10th impossible to install due to sata controller being right above the space for 10th drive). so, running the qnap in das mode, all great, drives nice and comfy and cool, software is rudimentary in das mode, but does display smart data. mind you, now i have 4 red plus drives which will be eventually replaced with 16tb red pro drives (since those are only 70$ more expensive then 12tb red plus drives - 4tb and 2yrs of warranty for 70$ is a nobrainer imo). so, those will run hotter, but i dont expect much more than these which are around 30c. true, they mostly sit idle, lol, since all my drives are just storage for htpc media. 91tb all filled in the big node. need. more. space. more. more. more! lol. cheers.

[@furnibird]

Perfect for me. This plus a mini N100 pc would be perfect for my EMBY server. I don't need raid.

[@DavidZappala]

Thank you for your video and the work you are doing on your channel. Every time I think that the product I'm looking for is out, I'm in some ways disappointed... I'm looking for a fast RAID 5 capable DAS Thunderbolt 3 (or more) or USB4 with 4 to 6 bays... I miss my old Drobo 🙁

[@EliasUKMusic]

Can the 4 3.5" drives be set up in software RAID0? If so what's the best software to use on Windows? And can it then be connected to different computers, e.g. desktop and laptop? I'm asking because in my use case, it would be nice to be able to purchase 2 of these, populate with 2 x 18TB Seagate IronWolf Pro drives each, then set them up in RAID0 and cloning from one to the other as a local backup. It would work with the included hardware RAID onboard for now, but thinking of future proofing it'd be good to be able to utilise the additional 2 3.5" inch bays to extend for future requirements to add in additional 18TB drives as required and then expand the RAID0 (even if having to reformat, as would then be able to clone everything back from the other enclosure once set up). The additional NVMe drives would then be possible expansions too, just for pure capacity if needed, rather than any RAID expectation.

[@vidx9]

No! Not another kickstarter. TerraMaster is not new to the NAS market to go for crowdfunding

[@I_like_science]

This is not a nas

[@iham1313]

1) it is a das (direct attached storage) 2) kickstarting a product is viable for companies as they can check the market before going into full production. 3) i prefer companies asking their audience, instead of producing tons of senseless products that go to trash. this method is another puzzle piece to not waste resources on sh*t we don't need.

[@spanky-wrath8339]

I have the terramaster d5-300c with first 2 bays that you can select jbod or raid, if you select jbod it fails after a week and dont detect any drives, due to that i wouldnt trust this and use anything but raid

[@adamgarceau]

This is a great review. I ordered this as an expansion for my two bay terramaster NAS. And it makes me feel better knowing I’m not really going to want to buy the fastest drives available since there is that bottleneck. So a budget case makes me buy budget drives. And I’m really going to be very happy with 900 mb/s read and write. I’m planning to basically make those first two drive bays mirror my NAS to give me an extra backup since my NAS is the only place all of my data is stored. Then I’ll use the m.2 nvme drives as a hot array for editing 4K video. I’m saying goodbye to working directly off my Mac! That said, I’m wondering what drives you recommend I get so I can get the max read and write this thing is capable of without spending more than is necessary? What drives will be optimal in this case to keep cost down but take advantage of the most performance? Thanks

[@MarioScott]

Yea I am in the small multiple data pools in one box group

[@topperdude2007]

Love your videos for all the helpful information. I started watching your videos when I was considering the storaxa(?) NAS on Kickstarter and ended up NOT backing it thanks to the useful information shared in your videos. Also appreciated all the information regarding the recent UGreen NAS, especially the collaboration with Logan (TwoGuysTech) and others regarding the UGreen NAS. I have also seen your reviews about the recently announced Terramaster F4-424 Pro NAS. I understand Terramaster's TOS lags behind the industry leaders but from your video regarding TOS 6, I understand they might be catching up. I wonder how well this D8 Hybrid might work with the newer Terramaster F4-424 Pro NAS with TOS 6 - especially if there might be any extra features in TOS 6 for Terramaster branded DAS such as the D8 hybrid? Similarly, wonder how the D8 Hybrid might work with other (non-Terramaster) NAS devices? Any chance you might be working on videos for either of these scenarios? Thanks as always and keep up the great work 👍

[@FreedomDaddy]

$400 in Canada. They said it's very plastic. I am interested as I don't want a NAS.

[@KonKhmer83228]

Can you say if is it hot swap? thanks for your response

[@docsavage1234]

I have the d5-300c which is the older brother of this I guess. I have created arrays on the T6-423 externally once built work using just JBOD mode. however power off the D5-300c or reboot the NAS and the config is gone. Is it the same with this?

[@ferdinandbardamu3945]

USB4, 4 SSD slots, 2 HDD trays. That is the magic combination for something like this.

[@ChrisM541]

...for you ;)

[@nerkymusselman8843]

is this good for someone simply using it with a 2012 mac mini w/16gb ram, to play their tv & movie libraries with plex?

[@i0ntempest]

USB HDD/SSD boxes are ALWAYS problematic for me. I run a Mac mini as my NAS and when using USB enclosures I always have disks randomly disconnecting on me. I've had enough so I went Thunderbolt. 150% more expensive, 100% less headaches.

[@klokskap_]

199USD? In Scandinavia, it sells for 1000 USD.

[@kojpetersson]

Hi there, sorry for posting this question here since it's not about the Terramaster but have you done an idiots guide to setting up your own NAS. Im a photographer wanting to save some dosh and build my own rather then buying a synology and I was hoping you have a noob guide but I could not find one in your videos collection. And btw I really appreciate you videos, it has saved me from a few very impulse purchases that sounded to good to be true.

[@AKATEATime]

6:33 You may need an avalanche hazard sign. 😊

[@hans-peterschmid7749]

The week point of this device is its USB commection. Truenas warn you to create a RAID over USB and I had also bad experience to do so 😢

[@VinB24]

This has hardware raid built in. The issue you're referring to is when people use multiple USB drives and use software to create a raid for those drives.

[@mrdali67]

Still don't think that just short of 1gb/s systained performace is great. maybe if it had a TB4 interface you could get what little over 4gb/s. Its much like the NAS systems based on NVME drives, very few home or SOHO users a have multi 10gb LAN system to support what NVME drives is capable of. in most cases people are limited to maybe a 2.5gbit lan a spinner based system is more than good enough unless you absolutely have to be able to stream high quality 4k or 8k videos. With a TB4 connection it would be a nice little box for especially Mac users where the max is what 4tb internal SSD ?

[@frankwong9486]

If it going TB / usb4 then the price won't be 199 😅 First TB/usb4 controller is not cheap And since the maximum bandwidth is wider then you need to using controller/ switch with higher speed than what they currently using = another price hike reason

[@john_in_phoenix]

Streaming 4k over gigabyte ethernet is not a problem. I have no 8k videos or displays to test that.

[@mrdali67]

@@frankwong9486 I know its more expensive to implement, but look around .. 95% of the latest farely cheap small form factor PC's beside Apple also come with TB4/USB4 connectivity so those that make periferies need to step up cause within the next couple years people will start to demand this. I have no need for an old USB2 drive when my computer offers 40 times faster connection tru a 40Gbps TB4. I am pleased to see the change finally comming to mainstream PC's Problem is that the periferies always lack a little behind. Just a few years ago it was almost impossible to find an AMD product with buildin tb4, and now like everything suddenly have it.

[@mrdali67]

@@john_in_phoenix Ya I also wrote "HQ" most 4k material is encoded with fairly low complexity to keep the datarate down. You can very easy saurate a 1gbe connection with a 4k video if you use the highest possible quality. I know I have experimented a bit with what settings that makes my AppleTV crap its pants. slowly trying some settings to see when it starts twiddling thumbs when you jump in the video. But honestly it's not that the change in quality is that bad when you keep the complexity at a point where the player don't have a problem jumping in the videofile

[@john_in_phoenix]

@@FrenziedManbeast Yes, I am just pointing out that a hardwired gigabit ethernet has zero problems streaming (direct play) a 4k UHD rip for me. I can't speak for an Apple device or any WiFi problems. I have noticed the cheap 2.5 switches no longer support 100 Meg interfaces (yes, I still have some). Blu Ray will stream just fine over 100 Meg as well.

[@Kosh42EFG]

Damn it. Just bought a D4. Though why do you need NVME over USB?

[@Kosh42EFG]

Though to be fair running my D4 on a mini PC with Unraid has been rock solid for a month.

[@frankieg7575]

this is currently £299 on Amazon UK

[@ZodiakSL]

This is great for video game emulation!

[@psychoacer]

Apple has had Thunderbolt 40gbit since 2016. USB and manufactures have really been hindering performance out of serious laziness for almost a decade. 10gbit should be what 5gbit USB is right now. It should be for the cheapest garbage USB sticks and cell phones. It's just not enough people are complaining to them to be forced to want to do something. Every motherboard and computer should have at least 1 20gbit USB port and USB4 should be an almost certainty when you're not going budget build. The fact that everything around USB has been evolving at warped speed should have pressured manufactures to implement faster ports. This has just been terrible for consumers.

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

i'm surprised is already at 200k on kickstarter

[@focuspixvideoaudioservices68]

Hi. Yes interesting thing. So it is possible to setup raid in the H8 from a NAS! Is this hardware raid still from the NAS? Utilising the (hardware/software?) raid in the H8 in the first two bays? Also putting the other single drives in some sort of raid - would this be software raid? Thanks..

[@anotherrandominternetdog]

For what it’s worth, the TerraMaster D8 Hybrid is on sale on Amazon for 20% off at the moment, at least in Australia. That’s down from AUD$499 to AUD$399. Estimated shipping is a fortnight away.

[@AlloffroadAu]

Needs Thunderbolt 4

[@sNaKeEeDK]

The shipping is outrageous

[@KenoticMuse]

I think the D8 sounds very interesting, because I think RAID is a liability that I don't want to pay extra for (I prefer no RAID at all). Instead, I just want to store most of my hot-access data to SSD's, which have better file integrity compared to HDD as long as they are plugged it and receiving power, store some of my warm-access data to more affordable HDD, and then tell my OS to do a nightly backup of those two data pools to a third HDD data pool. I think that's exactly what the D8 offer. I don't need RAID, because if I run integrity check and one of the files in my hot-access or warm-access data pools got corrupted, then I can just restore them from the backup data pool. All I have to do is run an system-wide integrity check overnight once a week, and save myself the troubles with RAID.

[@hankkingsley9183]

I just have a hard time paying $300 for something with a plastic case

[@Keikdv]

I am in Camp 7: walking by to look for a real NAS (with the S of Storage and not the E of Editting...) Will certainly not by a kickstarter thing.

[@lewislane1143]

Only for $199. 299 is way too expensive.

[@plebius]

For me it was perfect and then fell with no network card. It is not a NAS in my opinion, its a glorified usb external hardrive. You can buy caddys that do the exact same job for 40 bucks. They wont run any applications, but they will use mutiple drives of different types. They blow the expansion arguement out of the water for me. Why have a processor when its running into another NAS that will more than likely do it already.

[@blakeparry1983]

its not a NAS In anyones opinion (including the vendor), its a DAS.

[@plebius]

@@blakeparry1983 they do not market it that way. They state it can be used as an external DAS storage solution, not that it is one. Their marketing is the same blurb you have for a NAS. The page has it front and centre NAS compares quote. An uninformed person would think it's a NAS going through it.

[@john_in_phoenix]

I have way too much prior experience with USB attached storage. Not interested.

[@NoBodysGamer]

1. Sounds like an advertisement 2. for couple more dollars for the brand they could of used USB 20Gbps chip, or for couple dollars more USB4 controller and than its a heaven but single 10gbps link? ROFL i usually dont use these for single NVMe device and go for the USB 20Gbps models, twice the speed So there is no benefit from going raid on the NVMe, youll get the same speed as 4 good HDDs [helium HDDs do 260 to 280MB/s sequential speeds, x4 and thats over 1gb]

[@focuspixvideoaudioservices68]

😆... hehe

[@agelikemilk351]

It was ALMOSTthe perfect DAS. Too bad it doesn't manage RAID5 and beyond, this is truely a missed opportunity.

[@Those_Weirdos]

“And beyond”? Do you want a 4 drive RAID6?

[@barrykirkby9626]

Okay, been looking at the Terramasters on Amazon and no matter what they all seem to have over 10% in bad reviews, |I have many a external drive and want something reliable and even the two main ones have their bad bits as well as being OTT cost wise for just a bunch of disk storage. it's a minefield to a degree.

[@NoBodysGamer]

Do you need RAID or no RAID? I found a good Chinese models t hat go for 100$ during aliexpress sales [otherwise 120-140$], they fully aluminum, hold 4 HDDs, latest model has 1GB link + 1Gb passthrough [you can plug first into PC and second into the first and third into the second] they have 2 fans [the 1Gb model uses auto fan that goes on 48c, i prefer the old on/off and used at full speed] also it has HDMI out, you can plug into TV and play movies from it, can be useful if you collect movies and have terabytes of BD rips