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.

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 had a hell of a time trying to find an empty 2-bay RAID enclosure that wasn’t already pre-loaded with hard drives (I already had two hard drives, just needed an enclosure), or a NAS. This one fit the bill. It’s reasonably priced and doesn’t come with hard drives (if you have your own drives). The software is pretty easy to use, and setup was quick. Once you set it up, it pretty much runs seamlessly in the background. Couple reasons to knock it a star: 1) It’s not the fastest. I’ve found it to be a little slow when it has to read/write continuously. B) It’s got these little easy-mount rails, but they’re these flimsy plastic things, and I’m not sure if I fully trust them to be sturdy

Really happy with this unit so far. I needed additional storage for my Proxmox server and this fit the bill. High-speed USB keeps performance good and the flexibility to deploy this in a variety of different ways is great. I have three 3TB drives installed and used Proxmox to setup a ZFS RAID-5 array. I get redundancy and reliability without a lot of additional cost. Installing the drives is trivial (you don't need to use screws though they do provide them if you want the additional reassurance). The ability to use my own drives of whatever size I want is incredibly important to me. The unit hasn't shown any compatibility issues so far.

It's very budget friendly, but the speed is like it says in the description, which is slower than most 3.5 inch HDD's performance, around 200MB/s. It's good for combining multiple drives into a storage pool, stable and reliable, not for performance.

I think the nicest thing I can say is that it was packaged very well and arrived undamaged. I first attempted to get it running with four Western Digital Ultrastar HC520 (HUH721212ALE604) drives, which are listed on the enclosures compatibility page. And it failed to even boot up completely. I couldn't even get it to tell me what was wrong because it won't connect to USB until it thinks the drives are connected and working. Removing all the drives and attempting to start it also fails because it needs at least one working drive to boot up properly. I eventually got it working by plugging in a single SSD just to get it to boot up. When it finally started up, I could connect the QNAP software to it, and at that point I learned that it shipped with 5 year old firmware. I figured that must be the reason it didn't like my drives, so I updated the firmware and plugged a single HC520 drive into the enclosure. And it still didn't like it, but at least it could tell me why. It claimed that the drive had SMART Errors, but when reading back the SMART data the drive had no declarative errors. So the QNAP enclosure was just gaslighting me. Reading online this seems to be a known issue, but the resolution is both extremely tedious, and unreliable. A series of steps involving DISKPART clearing the drives, and running a fresh format (not a quick format, so it takes 8+ hours per drive) and then plugging it back into the enclosure while praying that it works. I struggled to get the HC520 drives, which once again are listed directly on the compatibility page for this enclosure, to work but eventually gave up. I have a number of these drives, 14 in total, and not a single one was accepted by the enclosure despite none of them having errors. I eventually gave up on this and decided to try some WD Red 10TB (WD100EFAX) drives, which are also on the compatibility list for this enclosure. Those worked straight away. So the first lesson is, don't trust the compatibility page, and you just have to try drives until you find ones that work. Once I had 4 of these WD Red drives in it, I decided to run some basic tests. Using the QNAP software I set up a 4 drive RAID 0 across all 4 hard drives. Crystaldiskmark reported that it had extremely slow speeds, averaging 1Gbps (1 Gigabit per second), which is slower than a single one of these drives connected directly to my PC through a USB to SATA adapter. As an experiment I grabbed 4 SATA SSDs, and installed them as well, configuring them as a RAID 0 setup in the QNAP software and attempting the same battery of tests, but the results were the same, averaging 1Gbps. I verified that my cable is able to pass 10Gbps, and that the port on my PC is also capable of 10Gbps. I then tested a single SSD with a USB to SATA dock, connected to the same port, and got an average of about 5.2Gbps, which is right in line with expectations for a single SATA 6G SSD. So the second lesson is that it will not perform anywhere close to what you'd expect, even with the disclaimer that it is using SATA 3G internally, it underperforms pretty egregiously. In their product marketing information, they claim that you could see speeds up 199MB/s (1.6Gbps) Write and 227MB/s (1.9Gbps) Read, but you will never see anything even close to that in the real world. Again, I tested this enclosure with decent performance SSDs and saw roughly half to 60% of those speeds. Finally the enclosure itself is just extremely cheap feeling. The drive sleds feel extremely flimsy, and it feels like you are in danger of breaking off the latch locks every time you have to remove or replace a drive. It makes a surprising amount of noise, the fan only spins around 700-800RPM on mine, yet it sounds much louder than other devices I have that spin their fans at much higher speeds. It was quite loud even with SSDs installed, so I don't think it's HDD noise that's the problem. Speaking of HDD noise, there is very little drive dampening, there are little rubber washers in the toolless drive sleds, but the design of the toolless mechanism effectively bypasses them meaning they have little to no effect, and if you use the included screws to mount your HDDs, you lose pretty much all drive dampening.

This array has many great features. It can be used as a network drive OR can be directly connected to your computer. The drives in it can be configured to operate independently or used in a RAID array. The RAID levels include 0,1,2,5, an 10. It has worked flawlessly for me and was reasonably easy to set up. The RAID levels can be controlled either by software (easily downloaded) or by switches on the back of the unit. My only complaint is the online user manual. If you are not technically inclined, it can be a bit of a challenge to set this up, especially if you plan to use it as a network drive. ALL of the information is available online but if you do not know the technical terminology, it can be a little difficult to follow. Other than the manual issue, the equipment is wonderful and the fan noise is almost nonexistent.

I wish I could rate this higher. The enclosure works amazing with my 4 12TB drives, and I have it connected to a Raspberry Pi that easily pushes up to 1 gbps of USB 3.0 I/O speeds (limit of the rpi4 USB controller). However, I noticed that the enclosure would not let me run any SMART self tests on any drive. The drives are SMART enabled and the SMART data confirms that they can be tested, but trying to run any SMART ATA commands would return that the chip is incompatible. Therefore, I couldn't set up any periodic self tests to keep track of my drive health. Furthermore, the chip struggles to show drive health data for all 4 drives at the same time, so I have to keep cycling between them and check their attribute levels in the OpenMediaVault interface, rather than just checking the health overview. Also, I would not recommend anyone to trust the RAID chip with their data, since the data will be unrecoverable if the enclosure dies. Running a software RAID solution like SnapRAID with the enclosure set to individual would be ideal for anyone trying to preserve their data. This specific enclosure seems to be using an outdated chip as well, which doesn't even support SMART ATA commands as stated before.