QNAP TS-431K 4 Bay Home NAS with Two 1GbE Ports

From a functionality standpoint, this system is amazing. It's geared towards IT users used to server setups, so if you're a novice at that, it will take some reading and a learning curve. I'm not a novice, but not an expert either, and it took me maybe 90 minutes to get it set up and operating. It offers JBOD and all RAID configurations (I'm running RAID 5), and provides secured web access. Overall a great product.

If you are looking at this you are looking for mass storage for pictures, videos, or anything that you need to store. However it’s a bit too expensive in my opinion, if you build your own computers you can totally do better than this. The underpowered CPU and 1gb of ram is unacceptable for 2021. If you have multiple people accessing this it will get slow quick. However since it’s mostly just me accessing this NAS, it’s perfectly fine, even two or three people can access at the same time and still be ok. However if you have the technical know how to build your own NAS, I would take that every time. I’m giving this four stars because it didn’t seem hyped in the description and it does what I need it to do, I just want people to make an informed decision before purchasing.

It’s been a good buy works great haven’t had any issues

(Revised and lowered the score due to continuous instability and extremely slow response after upgrade to latest reboot.)Strangely enough there was a YouTube review by some self proclaimed expert on the NAS systems, who assured the audience that while Synology is more about apps, QNAP is about stable HW and software.Don't believe any such hogwash. QNAP NAS in general has a bunch of very inexperienced HW designers, who chose a CPU by an Amazon subsidiary, which claims it is superior to most of the NAS CPUs out there. NOT TRUE AT ALL! Annapurna CPUs are NOT for this purpose and it is a bad choice with very response time.On top of this QNAP seems to have issues creating proper embedded SW image. The boot time is ridiculous -- over 2 and a half minutes. Why? What is taking so long? This is the slowest booting system I have ever seen. Even MS Windows does not take that long on a slow HW with low memory and bad, slow HDD.Linux based system, even embedded (like on a NAS or a home router) boots much, much quicker than that. Synology NAD for example boots in less than 30 sec. Regardless of the device model.While python is a great language, QNAP does not have competent programmers. The processes sometimes fork so many instances with quite a lot of overhead, that the OS is overwhelmed with the Python interpreter, running hundreds (yes hundreds) processes, which it keeps piling and does not respond, at which point I have to hold the Power button for > 10 seconds and downgrade to a stable SW version, which is released about 2-3 months ago. This happened to me twice with two separate builds (FW updates). What a sloppy and incompetent job. With latest FW version I was able to stabilize the runtime state, but I had to go into the console and kill all spawned Python processes by hand, which took me a while, since the system was very slow to respond. Once I killed the processes it returned to its quiet state with the stable previously mentioned firmware.Alter all this when I filed a ticket and a rep asked me to give him access to MY DATA. Yes, they would ask you to use TeamViewer and expose all your work and data to a customer service rep. RRRRIIIGGGHHTT!!! I did not believe what I am hearing. Really, wanna see my data? How dare you ask such a privacy violation action? Apparently QNAP does not have privacy policy and does not respect any such out there at all.Last thing was really unbelievable. Instead of asking for logs, diagnostics data, the rep said they cannot help me diagnose myself and and I have to wait for their new release.I would like to challenge the competency of the SMEs in QNAP from HW designers, software integrator and developers to CSRs. I am wondering who is running this company and how did they get so many nice reviews? Is there something fishy going on?

I bought two of these for movie storage. That makes four QNAP NAS drives that I have. I really appreciate the "Qfinder Pro" app on my desktop which makes it real easy to access and configure these devices.

Installs as easily as other QNAP NASs. Only has 1GB of RAM that is not upgradeable/ expandable. The lack of memory affects applications (Plex in my case). Works great as basic network storage.

As a power user with 10+ terabytes of data I need to hoard, good storage at a home user price is tough to find. This is my 4th qnap, which is now serving as a backup for my TS-963x. Absolutely recommend it, it is light years beyond a standard 1 or 2 bay consumer grade NAS. Having integrated hybrid backup is huge, it seamlessly backs up to idrive.

You want the QNAP TS-431KX. Let me explain.We use multiple QNAP rack mount NAS at work, and we needed a device for offsite air-gap backup. First, we tried the TS-131K 1-bay NAS. Had to return it after discovering that you cannot use a generic USB enclosure to expand the storage; you must use a QNAP-model expansion device.Next, we tried the TS-431K 4-bay NAS. Had to return it after discovering that it runs slow due to insufficient RAM. Furthermore, the RAM is hard-wired and cannot be upgraded.However, the TS-431KX is what you want: it comes with 2GB of RAM, upgradeable to 8GB.