Am I FINALLY Ditching My Synology? - QNAP TS-462

Products I mentioned (affiliate links):

Info On The QNAP TS-462 and 10Gb Card:

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Music (in order):
"If You Want To" - Me
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Curious About the equipment I use to make my videos?
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Timestamps:
0:00 Will this replace my Synology NAS?
1:05 Transparency
1:34 Sponsor - Manscaped
2:59 TS-462 Specs
4:48 Setup and SMB Share
5:50 Using NVMe as a Cache
6:56 Backups with Hybrid Backup Sync
7:48 Some things I liked and disliked
8:58 Plex Issues
9:33 Running Containers
11:55 NVR using QVR Pro
14:04 Installing TrueNAS
15:13 Is it replacing my Synology?

[TheCynysterMind]

Great review! I appreciate the fact that you didn't pull any punches.
I was looking at Qnap vs Synology, My main purpose for a NAS was just to replace My Drobo 5D3, (I cried when they went out of business)
I started out with a Synology 220j and immediately realized that I needed a bigger one as this was a viable replacement.
I ended up with a DS1522+ with 32RAM, 2x1TB NVMe cache drives and 4x 18G Ultrastore and 10GB NIC

I originally got it as just a dumb storage but now I am using it as a VPN, SFTP, & Media Server
(sorry Not plex fan...mainly because you cannot uninstall it cleanly)

But you are right. Synology software seems to be better developed than Qnap.

Thanks for the review

[JohnPonthecuff]

I have been using an older QNAP TS=453 Pro for almost 6 years. It is used primarily for PLEX (works great). Other uses are mainly for a file/FTP/Telnet/SSH or server. Great thing about it is, I am at this moment upgrading the NAS from it's 4 each 6TB drives to 4 each 12TB drives on the fly and will also resize them on the fly. It's nice to do that. One more thing I like is (not sure about synology), if I change QNAP boxes when mine goes out, I just have to make sure the Firmware is updated and insert my drives (in order), to continue to operate. I did this when I upgraded to the one I have. There are other things that are good, (i.e.HBS Backup, QVPN, QuFirewall, Music Station and the Qfile, or Qmanager, Qmusic from my phone). Yeah I'm stuck, and it wasn't easy in the beginning. My 6 year old machine has a Celeron J1900 CUP (4 cores 4 threads) and maxed out at 8GB RAM. Not to mention the 4 ethernet ports. Not bad. I want to upgrade, but my other half says it has to break first.

[marcelteunissen]

Good luck with QNAP! i reverted back to Synology last year because of security. Qnap is one big security issue ending up in ransomeware infection. Even it is not open to the internet and only using their cloud-backup software.

[chrisbrooks]

Given the past security issues with qnap devices and the companies lackluster response to them is a hard pass

[JMassengill]

Software that is intuitive is sometimes the exception not the rule. I think Synology is the home NAS leader and most competing products are gunning for them. I would love to rebuild my NAS with a NAS case and leave it at that. Great video and good review

[yoshy]

I have sold my actual Synology and returned the ordered DS923+ because of hardware compatibility limitations.
I did built a custom NAS, going this way is better for me,
the power consumption is higher with 30% but the processing power and the limitations are no longer an issue.
Until now there was no issues what type of ram or hard drives are used,
now they want to milk the users for some more funds, in this case no thank you.

[RobertPendell]

QNAP - Flip on SSH, SSH in as 'admin'. If you are like me it is possible to setup a script to run at boot that adds your normal user id into the sudoers file. With that said QNAP is clunky to me and I've debated on replacing the OS with something else. Running on Unraid on a different machine and it has been doing a bunch of things better than the QNAP ever did.

[ppBizU]

I have old two bay Synology NAS, I'd like to stay with them, but the lack of 2.5 Gbit NIC is a bummer.

[JohnPonthecuff]

You can use one of the PCIe NVMe SSD to load the operating system. You just have to (I was told) load the OS when preparing the NAS with the Hard Drives out. Then you can use it to boot up on. Again I was told this by QNAP while I was looking to upgrade my system. It's slower than most but hasn't failed me yet (although I failed it a few times).

[ofbudrw]

I have run one for a while (QGD-3014-16PT) I can say it has been solid as a NAS and a 16 port switch. However....the network setup is not straight forward and all their software is as described in this video, Mostly ok, but just a bit....sith. Nothing is intuitive and you do tend to spend some time scratching your head about what needs to be done. Support is somewhat poor and if you are out of warranty, forget it. I had one update pushed to the device with just a two weeks of warranty cover left to me. The update killed the unit dead and it took 6 weeks to get an RMA even after they had a remote connection to the unit to diagnose/test it. Then came the "its out of warranty" problem even though it started within warranty. But....all sorted after 6 weeks. I would say if all you want is a basic file share NAS, these are a good choice. But when you are spending the money these cost, almost any older PC with two drives and truenas or Unraid will be cheaper and easier to support. If you are spending QNAP money on a NAS device, go synology. I have no experience of synology on a day to day basis, but what I have seen of it says to me that I made a bad choice when I bought into my unit.

[destronger]

i went the route of using a Terramaster 4f-423. it’s pretty much the same thing as this QNap but has 2 2.5g network connections. the usb’s are 3.2 iirc. i run UnRaid instead as the TerraMaster OS sucks. i was about to go Qnap but got the TM for less at the time. i have 32gb for the memory too and that works fine.

[kolbyadams]

Awesome video!

Near the end of the video, you mention setting up a VPN to have access to a NAS from outside of the home network safely. Could you make a video on this? I understand the general idea and what you're are trying to accompli, h but a video tutorial showing how to set up it up safely would be really cool! I have been thinking about doing something like this with my unraid server however I haven't yet attempted it yet cause I am not sure how to properly set it up so that no unwanted person can get access to it.

[MattKurkowski]

Honestly I'm overwhelmed with the options. I'm using Samba with Ubuntu currently just for storing files. I did the next cloud thing for a while. Unraid, Trunas, Proxmox w/ vm, CasaOS, Synology, QNAP. I have no idea what I should go with. I'm mostly worried about family photos and videos.

[jumpmaster]

😂 bro went Synology forever
But, if a nas has nvme ports for cache drive we can use those as additional drive slots right
Don't worry family comes first we can wait a few weeks extra for this king of quality stuff

[xKruzr]

"don't worry, I'm going to install TrueNAS" 😂 side note: do you think the value proposition for these with putting SATA SSDs into the drive bays is ever worth it? do you get a real performance boost? certainly data durability is going to be better.

[avang]

What I've learned is that if you use SSD caching, it's better to have a backup battery in case of power failure. Anything in cache when power fails is either gone forever, files get corrupt, the entire array won't work correctly, or all of that in combination until you wipe and redo the entire array. At least that's what happened to me on my Asustor NAS where I lost a small chunk of files, files corrupted (most video/audio files only had partial working portions), and the array kept crashing. I eventually used the SSDs as the main array for the OS and apps, which Asustor allows (Synology doesn't allow this, at least non-Synology branded NVMe), and the HDDs as the storage array which had worked great with no issues since. This actually allows the HDDs to sleep when not in use so you won't hear the drives and/or save on power. It worked great when I was using it but it was a pain with Plex when playing because it'll need to spinup all drives (2 by 2 sequence HDD spinup). I tried Synology later but as I mentioned earlier, the HDDs all need a copy of DSM on each drive in case of failure so no disk can sleep unless you turn off all the automatic updates and background processes which was a no go for me. If I could keep the NAS in a different room, noise wouldn't really matter but space is pretty limited for me. It's generally cold storage anyways so putting drives to sleep is a must for me for noise and power savings. I ended up going TrueNAS again which meets all my needs with the hardware I already have laying around. It's also a bit more flexible for me, too.

[gmanohio]

Quite happy with my QNAP TS-464. Its a tad beefier than the version you tested, but it does everything I needed it to do in a NAS and its rock solid stable. Bumped the memory to 64GB, trunked the 2.5GB NICs, running a 2TB cache array, and 4x18TB for the storage. Agree with you that some of the software should be more intuitive or provide some better documentation to understand this version from that variant. But those things are minor to me.

[reinaweis]

Thank you for this review. I was going to buy a QNAP TS-464-8G (very similar to the model you reviewed), primarily as a plex server but also for security cameras. I like that TrueNAS runs on it well, but I think i'll wait for synology to come up with a better NAS for my needs worth the upgrade from my DS218+.

[riopato]

I feel that Synology has the advantage when it comes to consumer level experience. Things are changing though for Synology and it feels as though they are abandoning the prosumer market and regulating their consumer level products to their upcoming Beestation products which at first glance seems to be more locked down than their budget DSM Nases. The depreciation of certain apps lately is notably concerning.

[adamczyz]

Important thing. QNAP TS-462-4G have soldered RAM. Cannot expanse.