TERRAMASTER F4-212 4 Bay NAS - Quad Core CPU, DDR4 RAM, Network Attached Storage Personal Cloud with Rich Backup Solutions (Diskless)

Getting frustrated on having my Wi-Fi losing signal every 2 days with a USB drive attached, I went with this option seeing it receiving a full 5 stars and wanting to set up an NAS for my home.Installation and set up was relatively simple; install the hard drive, hook it up to your network, add power, run the setup program, and you're good to go.Transferring files is easy; you can either transfer from your computer to the TNAS (through the Terramaster OS, or TOS) or, if you have the files you want to transfer on a USB hard drive or flash drive, you can use the USB 3.0 connectors on the back of the unit to transfer the files over via the TOS.Couldn't be simpler to get things up and running out of the box. However, there's some things I'd nitpick at.1. The program that you need to install isn't verified by Microsoft. The app is in the same state, where your phone/tablet warns you that the app isn't verified in the Google app store. There *shouldn't* be any problem with it, just a caveat for future purchasers who are leery of what they install on their computers and devices.2. As convenient as it is, I really dislike the web interface for file transfer. As mentioned, you can use a USB drive as well to transfer your files, but I personally would like to be able to drag and drop from my Windows desktop without needing to have a web browser open. Again, I'm nitpicking, but it's all preference. (I'd really give this a 4.5 stars just for this.)The TOS interface looks and works familiar with Linux users. There are TNAS/TOS specific apps available to install. I mainly use it as a multimedia server for my home and, since remote access to the NAS is possible, from my phone or tablet when I'm out.Honestly, for what it is, it works great. Simple enough to set up and use for any user. Worth getting if you just need a simple NAS for your home.

I'm quite pleased with this Terra-Master NAS. Consider my rating a strong 4 stars, just shy of 5. It took me a while to get it set up properly but Tech support was very good. I initially fit it with one drive and then decided to add a second after I'd set up the first. This raised the issue of how they should be formatted -- as single drives or JBOD (just a bunch of drives). Stuff I found online (not from Terra-Master but other sources) was mutually contradictory. Some sources said that JBOD would give me access to each drive separately while Single Drive would treat both drives as one large driv, i.e., two 8TB drives would appear as one 16TB drive. Other sources said the exact opposite. Another issue is that there are different terms for the storage areas, with a nested hierarchy. None of that was readily apparent to me initially, which made the setup process fairly confusing. But tech support responded within 24 hours and provided me the information I needed to get everything up and running properly. I think that if I had decided from the get-go to set up the NAS with drives in both bays, things would have been simpler than first setting it up with one and then adding a second after the fact. By the way, to have each drive accessible as a separate drive location (e.g., two separate 8TB drives rather than a single 16TB storage area), the Single Drive formatting is the way to go. I mapped them as network storage locations and now have icons on my desktop for each drive.Once everything was set up, it's been completely straightforward to use them. While the documentation could be better for people like me who are less familiar with network storage protocols, tech support got me up and running and the drive works very well with a couple of Seagate NAS drives installed.Once everything is set up, the user interface is actually pretty slick and user friendly. It runs inside your web browser. There's also a utility program that can be used for managing the NAS but after setup, I don't think most users will need to access it. The NAS comes with a bunch of apps that can be downloaded and installed. Again, better documentation would help. While I suspect that people who do a lot of network stuff would be familiar with these apps, I wasn't and had to look up what they were individually. Turns out, I had no use for most of them but people in a business context well may.There's definitely a learning curve to setting up a NAS for the first time but I think Terra-Master does at least as good a job of preparing you for the process as their competitors do and their quality-to-cost ratio was very attractive. For me, even as is, the Terra-Master gets close to a 5-star rating. If the documentation were better, both for the setup and for the apps, it would be a solid 5 in my judgment.