Terramaster Thunderbolt 3 RAID Boxes - Before You Buy

[@immortalzodd7474]

Minor comments on the units. I do own both the *D2 and the D5* units and have been using them for over 2 years. I have no complains about their stability and quality so, in general, I do recommend them if you are into DASes. As Rob said, they are *loud* , even at *IDLE* , I can hear my D5's fans even at 3 meters away if there is no floor noise (like midnight when nobody is doing anything). The D2 is quieter because it only has 1 fan and can only host 2 drives. I have both units populated with *Iron Wolf Pro 16TBs* and they are louder because of the chassis being big and made of aluminum, so whenever doing anything (READ/WRITE) the mechanical drives make way more echo because of the chassis. I have *QNAP DAS TR-004* and it makes slightly less echo. Most likely because it has less empty room in its chassis and can host 4 drives. The other problem I have with them is that the *D5 requires a driver/controller to be installed to be properly configured and detected* while the *D2 does not require any external software* . The driver/controller is only available for Windows and Mac so be mindful of that when picking the *D5* . The *D2 works perfectly in Linux* as it is managed using an old school button thingy to configure the *RAID* controller. The *D5* , even after properly configured in a Windows/Mac machine, is not even recognized in Linux. Max speeds even when *populated with SATA SSDs for the D5 are capped at ~1000 MBs* . With mechanical drives they are go around *450-550 MBs* even in *RAD0* (although performance seems to be better when set in *RAID5* ). My guess is that it is using an USB-C 10GBps hub inside or the RAID controller is fairly limited to not even double the performance of a single SATA SSD. In all honesty, these DASes are kind of expensive, but they provide a few benefits from being Thunderbolt: + They have 2 ports so they support *daisy chaining* + The second USB-C port allows for video output and data on its own + They have an additional *DisplayPort* port. So I would argue these DASes are convenient for *paced scalability* . If you need more drives you can buy another enclosure and daisy chain it to your host without loosing another TB port. Speed wise, I think they are OKish although I was expecting more performance from the *RAID0 setup on the D5* . If you really need non-Windows/Mac support and more than 2 drives, maybe the *QNAP TR-004* is a better pick. It runs on USB 3 and maxes out at *200 MBs even at RAID0* , but it does not require a controller and supports 4 bays. It does have a software to manage the unit, but it is only to for that, management. Once set, it can be recognized anywhere. Wish everybody the best of lucks and hopefully this helps somebody.

[@roamingyak]

Thanks mate - took me a while to find somebody who is talking about exactly my situation... It's surprising how poorly this area is serviced by companies...

[@barryo3315]

I looked at this solution vs the Terramaster USB 3 solution. Turns out that whether you use rotating media, SSD, USB or Thunderbolt, the read/write performance is surprisingly similar at around 700 - 900 MBytes per second read, so I am not sure nVme makes a lot of sense. Not sure why, but it may be a hardware limit of the controllers. Certainly daisy chaining a nVme gives 2.5X the performance, so its not the Thunderbolt bus. Also, the USB version may be a better solution as its about 1/2 the speed, for the cost conscious. It may be worth doing a video comparing the various drives (Rotating vs SSD vs nVME) in DAS and NAS as a lot of confusion in the market about adding nVme drives etc to DAS and NAS (I am not talking about cache)

[@johnsmith1996]

The big selling point of Drobo for me was that I could RAID discs of any size and if one got full, swap it for another and it would rebuild. All of the other systems I've seen so far require that ALL the discs be the same size. It becomes very expensive to have to go and buy multiple 8TB discs because your 4TB ones are getting close to full. The Drobo would let me incrementally add storage and replace the smallest drive each time. I have 4 Drobo desktop units but I fear they will all fade away as the kernel driver is not compatible with MacOS 13. All my Macs are still on MacOS12 simply because I can't use my Drobos if I'm forced to update 😞

[@billgates3699]

Tim Curry has a KZbin? And he’s a tech guy, no less.

[@NSWMods]

Thank u Sir

[@videoeditingpro9618]

any enclosure with thunderbolt 4 ? im still confused i buld raid with 4 ssd 8th or i stay safe with hdd 7200 6 or 8 bay for video editing vfx some peoples recomend raid 6 if 2 hdd fails is it true? thx Mr nas for helping

[@ANGRY_AMERICAN]

strike mark agenst synology is they now reqire the use of only their hard drives that cost 2-3 X an iron wolf or other similar drives

[@ThisisnotTwitter]

Is daisy chaining not only a mac supported feature? Are there any Das systems that allow their fans to be changed out with 3rd party PC fans like noctua for noise and efficiency?

[@jaimeduncan6167]

Really, does the software allow you to grow a storage pool without backup and restore? I know both Synology and Qnap can (and nowadays qnap is pretty easy, even replacing lower capacity drives. Is no drobo but it's easy)

[@cvdavis]

Thanks for the video. Anyone know what the top competitors there are to this?

[@nascompares]

Stay tuned for the vid coming later today..tackles EXACTLY this question, in detail

[@trollingprophet]

How is he talking about things released in 2023 when this video was published in 2022?

[@Wansviewofficial]

Hi,maybe your email is plenty. Could you advise me when galayou G2 video will be finished?

[@nascompares]

The Wansview G2 review is now complete, produced and is being placed in the schedule

[@Wansviewofficial]

@@nascompares Hi, will you publish galayou G2 video this week?

[@tomwells8093]

What a puff piece. Just tell us this is a sponsored video. 5 reasons to be on the fence only included one of relevance, with the noise. Terramasters have many issues with their hardware and software. Look at the reviews everywhere. Even i had trouble. Populated drives were asking to be formatted, terrible write speeds, trays were wonky. Would also turn off individual drives constantly, so there’s nothing showing on the system. Thats only half of the issues.