TerraMaster F2-221 NAS 2-Bay Cloud Storage Dual Core 2.0GHz Plex Media Server Network Storage (Diskless)

This is a great solutionPlex works perfectly on it .. multiple protocols supported for various devices platforms

As a newbie to things NAS, my onboarding experience has been great overall. Assembling the hardware was a breeze. Next, was setting up the operating system (TOS 4.31) which was as handled by a very user-friendly Installation wizard.The single let down for me was not finding any information for my specific situation. My primary access to the world wide web is through my mobile phone along with a chromebook, plus a Linux laptop for more complex tasks. As Terramaster used Linux for their operating system TOS, it's not really unreasonable to expect that there would be instructions relevant to Linux users, isn't it? Well, I wasted quite a bit of time looking for how to set up TOS using a Linux machine only to find everything is about Windows and Macs !!!I had to use my imagination to get the job done. How? I saw from the guide that access to TOS was via the local IP address and I thought I would try using the same (I fired up my router admin page and looked up the TNAS IP address) on my browser to see what happens. Voila! that got me to the Installation Wizard!!! I didn't even need the apps that Terramaster was asking Windows and Mac users to download!Terramaster would really score positive points if they included this information in their support page as well as their guides.

I purchased this Network Attached Storage dual drive on on March 29, 2019 .The unit came in a very substantial box with pre-cut foam inserts to protect the unit during shipping.The unit was sealed in a plastic bag. Included was a smaller box with the power supply, 2 different sets of screws for mounting hard drives. The chrome screws for 3.5" drives and the black screws for 2.5" drives like SSD which apparently take a slightly differrent screw thread. Also included was a nice screwdriver and a Ethernet cable. Setting up the drive was easy. I just followed the instructions that came with it which said to download the TNAS-PC program from their web site to aid in the setup.I initially started out with just 1 4TB Seagate Ironwolf RED NAS hard drive in it configured as a "Single" HDD which worked fine.A week later I ordered a 2nd identical 4TB Seagate Ironwolf RED NAS hard drive. When it arrived I installed it into the 2nd available HDD slot.The unit recognized the new drive. I was able to go into the control panel and re-configure the NAS to be a RAID 1 mirror image configuration. This keeps an identical copy of all the data from the 1st drive on the 2nd hard drive to provide some additional security from lost files.I have had other NAS storage devices on my network but they were not stable or reliable. This unit is always there and is very intuitive on how to change things using the control panel. It has a variable speed fan that is super quiet.Many applications are available to download onto the unit. Like PLEX for serving music and video media for one.I also use this drive to record my security cameras when they detect motion. The FTP server feature that comes with this NAS is perfect for this.I created a user account for the cameras to use and created a "shared folder" for the videos to be stored on.I have each camera storing to their own folder so it is easy to locate the videos.Setting up the FTP function in the camera was a little bit trickier but with a support call I got through it.I am very pleased with this unit. It is a great value for the money and feel it is worth a 5 star rating.

I bought the F2-221 model during the 2020 Prime Days sale for $199.99 ($50 off the regular price).My main three reasons for buying this model were:1. It has an Intel dual-core processor with embedded graphics capability that can run the PLEX server app and perform video transcoding and recording of live-TV (using an external network attached Silicon Dust OTA digital tuner).2. It can support large NAS drives (in my case 2 12 TB shucked Western Digital Element hard drives, using the better BTRFS file system in RAID1 redundant mirroring.3. It has generally good reviews for both the hardware build quality, and for its custom flavor of Linux TNAS.I got the device running easily the 1st day, and ordered a used SK Hynix 8gb DDR3L 1600MHz PC3L-12800S SODIMM (the smaller laptop ram) on Ebay for $25, and it is now running well with no problems with 10GB of RAM. Note that this is the high limit this processor can access. The model of the memory I purchased is HMT41GS6BFR8A. If you decide to purchase your memory from somewhere other than TerraMaster, make sure it is the low-voltage variant of DDR3 RAM, known as DDR3L, aka PC3L. While the TerraMaster only says this unit can support an additional 2GB of ram (total of 4GB), it can support the 8GB SODIMM, giving the machine a total of 10GB of ram to work with.As many of the reviews mention, the TNAS "app store" has all the basics, but doesn't have a lot of options to choose from. That can be remedied by installing a package management tool like Entware. Entware is a package tool and app respository specifically oriented towards NAS, routers, and other linux embedded hardware -- so the packages there are kept to a minimum size to work on these devices. You can get information on how to install this on your TerraMaster NAS on the Entware wiki pages on github. I would put the URL here, but Amazon doesn't allow external URLs in reviews.I highly recommend this NAS to anyone wanting to get the best "bang for the buck" for their NAS purchase and be able to successfully have it be a transcoding capable PLEX media server, as well as doing all the other stuff a NAS is usually used for (backups, centralized file storage, etc)..

NAS is new to me. I used 2 of my old 3.5" HDD (NTFS with data inside). I was expecting when I turned it on, I can see data on the old HDD (as a network drive). I turned it on and it sounds like running. I followed every step on the terra master website, my laptop could not find TNAS device (see photo). It took me one hour to find out why. I found that it did NOT bootup. I took out the 2 HDD, it boot up and my laptop can find the TNAS (by using TNAS PC). Finally, while it is still on, I put an unwanted data hdd and let it format it. For the 2 old hdd with data on them, I can only use USB port to read them.

This the perfect way to secure my pictures and videos on my local network. Reasonably easy to setup, once done all the files are easily shared to and played on all your local devices. I have not tried to set it up for access from the internet. I recommend this device, but make sure you use the correct hard disk drives as recommended.