QNAP TS-264-8G-24WD-US 2 Bay High-Performance Desktop NAS with 4TB Storage Capacity, Preconfigured RAID1 WD Red Plus HDD Bundle

To note I've been using home NAS solutions since back in 2002. My 1st NAS (still running) was a Netgear Readynas (4 2TB drives = 6TB RAID5). This was the only NAS that had ever failed me (about 5 years old (I lost a controller card and was unable to salvage my RAID 5). I needed more space and purchased a Synology around 2006 (4 4TB drives for 12TB RAID5). These 2 were enough until around 2020 when I bought a TerraMaster (apparently the new price leader 5 8GB drives for a 32TB RAID5) and my 1st NAS that supported Plex.I've been expanding my digital media library rapidly due to getting a high end entertainment system supporting DTX pro, Dolby True HD, basically all lossless content. This had me maxing out all 3 of my NAS's and I finally decided to get a 4th this year (2024). My primary use is to run a PLEX server with over 1000 movies, 5000 TV shows and growing fast.I attempted to get another Terramaster (to note for same specs as QNAP the Terramaster was $140 less) . I apparently got a bad one and after over a week of trying to set it up I ended up with a brick (restoring factory defaults destroyed it somehow. Having had some issues with my 2020 terramaster, and now with a DOA, I decided to check out the competition.The main options were a 5 bay Synology, 6 bay Asustor, and this QNAP. The QNAP was the 2nd best price and I really wanted to have a 6 bay as I had already purchased 6 14 TB drives. My experience with QNAP has been stellar so far. It has much better app compatibility than Terramaster. The hardware I'm running (6 14 TB drives for 70TB RAID5, 1 TB M.2 SSD for caching, 16TB memory, and a quad core processor make this by far the most powerful NAS I've ever had (which can be seen in the very fast speeds I've observed since)I was able to get this NAS built (added 6 drives, created RAID5, synched the drive, added M2 SSD (1TB) setup for caching, added 8 GB memory to max out that as well. The impressive part is I had all this done in just over 24 hours from the N AS arriving at my house. I have also been able to setup an rsync that will allow me to migrate the data from my 2020 Terramaster (which I plan on using for backups). I will be setting up my new switch (2.5TB) and running the 4 NASs on that going forward with a total of 120TB. I'm hoping this will be my last upgrade for a while.I definitely recommend this product, although my NAS needs are basically pretty simple and all the info needed to get up and running was very easy to find online in a couple youtube videos or guides. The user interface is fairly intuitive and performance like I said is much better than anything I've worked on to date. The TerraMaster does offer a bit higher specs for 20% less, and I'm assuming I just got as bad one, but I do think this QNAP is much better than my current 2020 Terramaster and the one I tried to setup a couple weeks ago.

Upgraded from my 2009 TS-453 mini after the backplane went out. In the 35 years of IT work, I've rarely seen an emergency migration go as smoothly as this did. Not only did the new device immediately start reading my drives (2 pools both in RAID 1), It actually took on the identity of the previous device with such accuracy, that my virtual stack did not require any tinkering to get it recognized. I simply moved the drives over, and turned it on for the first time. It came up with the old device's IP, same login/pass, and I was able to verify my data was correct.System was also very graceful about requesting to update missing firmware. It let me do some of my checks to validate the data, then I upgraded the firmware. It could not have been any easier to setup.Solid piece of equipment. Secure door, easy to open panels for M.2 slot. Quiet while running idle. Some noise on large data transfers. Great value for offering 4-bays + 2-M.2 slots, with HDMI output and 2-nics.

I've owned the ts-464-8g-us (4 bay) and the ts-664-8g-us (6 bay). They are both amazing products.Since 2024, you can upgrade the ram in both. It's less than $20 for a 2nd 8gig DIMM and anyone can install it.You can also add an NVME 256gb cache for about $20. This is a big boost to those who have large Plex servers for instance, as you can place your metadata there and zoom!Do you use/pay for DropBox? Well you can do everything that DropBox does with QSync! And it's included for free.Setup of the qnap is, "So easy a caveman can do it!"I upgraded from a 464 to a 664 because I needed more than 4 drive bays to setup my raid 6 array. The transfer and upgrade took no more than 10 minutes! Just boot up the 664 and ensure it has the same firmware version as the 464. Then power both off and transfer the Ram, NVME SSD, and disks (in the same drivebay order 1,2,3,4). Then power on, done!I highly recommend these Qnap NAS for Plex as they can transcode very well on the fly (or just encode x265 and no more transcoding).Get one now!

Replacement for my old 2-bay 251+ model that was 10 years old. Was easy to move old drives then swap them for newer, larger drives without any data issues (yes, i did backup just in case). I got a new 5g with LACP switch to connect it and that works great but my hdd's are now feeling a bit slow, probably a ssd cache drive would help.Faster, more space, great product.