You start by deciding whether you want a thick volume (space is allocated immediately) or a thin volume (space is allocated as needed). Next, go through and create one or more volumes in the pool. This gives you the flexibility to assign different attributes (such as encryption) to different volumes. Finally, you create shared folders that use storage from the volume. The process first creates a Storage Pool, and then once that's complete, you create volumes that live in the pool. Once that's complete, you'll be dropped into the QTS interface and ready to setup your disks.Ĭonfigurating the storage volume is an extremely easy process that is handled by a wizard. Double click on the discovered device and a wizard will prompt you through the steps to create a new account and install the OS on the device.
Install QFinder Pro on your computer and it will automatically detect the device on your network. Initial Setup and ConfigurationĪs with the hardware installation, the intial setup of the QNAP TS-464 is also straight forward. The system will boot up, obtain an address via DHCP, and you can connect to begin the installation process. With the QNAP TS-464, simply connect the disks to the sleds, plug them into the front drive bays, connect an Ethernet cable, plug the power cable in, and then turn the device on. While you can built a PC, install FreeNAS or something similar onto it, and have a great server, that takes time to do.
One of the main advantages of buying a NAS device is the simplicity of setup. The QNAP TS-464 is priced at $549 in the United States, and €699 in Europe. This keeps someone from accidentally removing a drive and makes the TS-464 look nicer than some of its competitors, but the type of plastic attracts all of the dust in the environment. There's a button on the left that lets you slide the panel off, and it's held firmly in place with magnets. The device has a plastic panel in front that covers the four drive bays. Finally, the drives themselves can be locked with an included key. You can secure the TS-464 with a Kensington lock if you're concerned about the physical security of the device. There are also two USB 2.0 ports on the back, as well as a "copy to NAS" button on the front, something Synology has removed from their devices, not that I think many people are using it. If you're confused about the new USB naming standards, you aren't alone, but can read more about it here. The QNAP TS-464 has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one on the front and one on the back. You can review QNAP's compatibility page to identify what drives are supported in the TS-464.įrom a connectivity perspective, there are two 2.5GbE ports on the back that can be aggregated into one to improve performance via 802.3ad, and QNAP provides a tutorial on their website. There's the obvious four drive bays, allowing up to 88 TB of storage space (4x22 drives), although keep in mind that you should not only have backups of your data but redundancy using RAID-1 or RAID-5 is also recommended to prevent data loss due to a single drive failure.
During my testing, the TS-464 was roughly six feet (1.8m) away from me, and I could rarely tell that it was running. There's a single 120mm fan in the device that runs extremely quiet. Although I've read some people comment that they're unofficially running 32GB of RAM on the NAS, Intel says that the CPU only supports 16GB maximum, so I wouldn't recommend it. This is big advantage over the recently reviewed Synology DS1522+.įrom a memory perspective, the QNAP TS-464 comes standard with 4 GB of DDR4 SODIMM and is expandable to 16GB (2x8GB SODIMMS). The processor has Intel UHD Graphics built in, running at 450 MHz with bursts up to 750 MHz, making it a very good candidate for use as a video streaming platform if you need to transcode your files. The TS-464 comes with an Intel Celeron N5095 CPU that has four cores, four threads, runs a base 2.0 GHz and can burst to 2.9 GHz.