Little Book of Terramaster NAS
Little Book of Terramaster NAS
Little Book of Terramaster NAS
TerraMaster make a variety of NAS devices suitable for home and small business users, which can do all
of the above things. They are highly regarded, as the hardware is capable, well-designed and very cost-
effective, especially when compared to other brands of NAS. At the heart of the device is the TerraMaster
Operating System or TOS; this elegant software has a modern interface and provides rich functionality, yet
at the same time manages to avoid the over-complexity associated with some competing brands.
But, all this power and flexibility comes at a price and setting up a TNAS for the very first time can seem
a daunting prospect for someone who has not done so before. This guide, based around the latest version
of TOS and with copious illustrations, easy-to-follow instructions and based on years of real-world
experience, will take you through it from start to finish and help ensure that your home or small business
or other network is a success. It has been written according to the Goldilocks Principle: Not too much
information, not too little information, but just the right amount.
The roadmap on the next page below shows the structure of this guide. The first section covers the
Essentials, the things you must do, which consists of setting up the hardware, installing TOS, creating some
shared folders, creating the users and then connecting your computers to the NAS. The middle section
comprises things which are strongly Recommended: setting up security; setting up backups for the TNAS
and the connected computers; configuring TOS so you can access the server from outside the home or
office. The final section, Other Topics To Explore, includes ways to make your system more capable and
useful, along with some topics that may be of interest to more advanced and to business users.
In a hurry? The first five chapters will get you up and running ASAP. Then return and explore at leisure.
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Figure 1: Roadmap for this guide
1 PREPARATION
1.1 Choosing a TNAS
TerraMaster offer several different models of their NAS hardware, designed to cater for everyone from
single and home users, through to large enterprises with hundreds of users and high availability
requirements. The models vary according to form factor, number of hard drives that can be used,
performance and price:
Form Factor – Most TNAS units are standalone and designed to sit on top of a cupboard or desk. Larger
models are designed to be mounted in standard computer cabinets (racks) that take devices which are 19”
(48cm) wide. Home and small business users will typically use the compact, desktop TNAS units, but some
businesses may have a cabinet (perhaps to hold other equipment as well), in which case a rackmount version
may be a better choice.
Number of Hard Drives – TerraMaster NAS units can hold between 2 and 12 hard drives, depending on
the model. Having more drives allows more storage capacity and permits the use of RAID (discussed
shortly) to improve both resilience and throughput.
Performance - Some TNAS models have more powerful processors, more memory (RAM) and are
equipped with multiple network adaptors. These are typically aimed at business users or home users with
more demanding requirements. Some advanced features, mainly of interest to enterprise rather than home
or small business users, require more powerful TNAS systems (examples include virtualization and use of
the Btrfs filing system).
Choosing the right model can be confusing as there is some overlap between them, but in general you want
to buy the most capable one you can afford. If you have or are planning to have large amounts of data,
consider buying a model with more than two drive bays.
1.2 Hard Drives
TNAS systems are not supplied by TerraMaster with hard drives already installed in them. Rather, the idea
is that the customer buys the drives separately and installs them - which is very easy to do - else buys a
ready-populated unit from a reseller. This approach is generally better because it offers more choice.
TerraMaster NAS units are very flexible in terms of the brand and type of hard drives that can be used in
them. It is not necessarily the case that any drive or combination of drives can be installed, although all
popular ones can and there is a list of supported drives that can be found on the TerraMaster website.
Hard drives are manufactured in 3.5” (‘desktop’) and 2.5” (‘laptop’) form factors and either can be used.
3.5” drives offer higher capacities and better price performance, but 2.5” drives use less power, generate
less vibration, are generally quieter in operation and are increasingly becoming a popular choice. It is
recommended to buy drives that have been designed for use in NAS such as the Western Digital Red series,
Toshiba N300 or Seagate IronWolf. These NAS drives are typically rated for use in systems with up to 8
bays; for larger models, ‘Pro’ or ‘Enterprise’ versions are available and recommended. For systems with
more than one drive, it is preferable that all the drives are the same model and capacity.
Although most of today’s hard drives are mechanical, solid state drives based around flash memory (known
as SSDs) are widely being seen in laptop computers and elsewhere and will probably become the norm in
all computing devices. At present, they are considerably more expensive than their mechanical counterparts
for the high-capacity ones that would be of most use in NAS. The popular brands are supported by
TerraMaster; however, the main benefits are reduced power consumption and the absence of noise, rather
than any performance improvements in typical usage. However, on some high-end TNAS boxes, SSDs can
be configured for caching, which does boost overall system performance. So called hybrid or SSHD drives,
which combine a conventional mechanical platter with some solid state memory, do not offer any particular
benefits in a NAS system.
Figure 2: Hard drives being mounted inside a TNAS
1.3 RAID
RAID is short for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. There are various types of RAID,
referred to using a numbering system i.e. RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and so on. The basic idea is to improve
reliability and performance by using multiple disks to provide redundancy and share the workload.
TerraMaster support many different RAID levels; depending on the model and the physical drives installed,
the following RAID levels might be available: RAID 0; RAID 1; RAID 5; RAID 6; RAID 10; JBOD.
RAID 0 consists of two identical drives. When data is written, some goes on one drive and some goes on
the other. As both drives are being written to or read simultaneously, throughput is maximised. However,
as bits of files are scattered across the two drives, if one drive fails then everything is lost. Also, the speed
of disk drives may not be a bottleneck in some NAS systems. For these reasons, RAID 0 is not
recommended.
Disallowing a Platform
This is not a common requirement, but can be done if required. Click on the appropriate tab – Windows File
Service, Mac File Server or NFS File Service – and remove the tick from the box that enables it. Click
Apply to effect the change.
Note 1: Historically, Apple computers used a network protocol called AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) whilst
Windows computers used SMB (Server Message Block). However, beginning with OS X 10.9
(‘Mavericks’), Macs switched to SMB as their default network protocol. The Mac File Service tab enables
you to disable AFP, but is recommended that you keep the AFP service enabled. You will certainly need it
if you are using older versions of OS X.
Note 2: Most Linux distributions include the ability to connect to SMB-supporting systems, such as TOS.
Unless you have a specific need, you may find it easier to use SMB, in which case you do not need to do
anything additional. However, if you use Linux or other Unix-type variant computers in an ‘advanced’
manner – defined here as specific use of the NFS protocol – you will need to have NFS enabled.
FTP File Service
FTP or File Transfer Protocol is a method of transferring large files between computer systems. If you need
to use it, click on the FTP File Service tab and tick the Enable FTP File service box, followed by Apply.
It is not usually necessary to change any of the Advanced parameters, unless you have specific
requirements.
3 SHARED FOLDERS
The main purpose of most networks is to provide an environment for users to store and share information.
This is done by creating folders on the server, some shared and some private, then defining access rights to
control who sees what. The structure of these folders will depend upon the requirements of the household
or organization, but a typical starting arrangement might be:
• A shared folder that everyone has access to
• Folders for music, photos and videos (particularly so for a home system)
• A location to store master copies of programs, drivers, utilities and so on
• Individual private home folders for each user
The file should be placed on the Desktop of the computer. After the computer starts up, the user should run
it by double-clicking its icon. A window is displayed prompting for the user name, followed by a prompt
for the password:
Figure 44: Enter user details
After the user has successfully entered their details, the mapped drives will be available until the computer
is shutdown or they logoff using the Start menu. The drive mappings can be verified by launching Windows
Explorer/File Explorer, which appears by default on the Taskbar in Windows 7 and later versions.
If the TNAS is not available, then rather than mapping the drives a warning message is displayed:
The Public Desktop folder is a hidden folder on Windows 10, 8, 7 and Vista and will therefore first need to
be made visible before it can be accessed. To do this, go to Control Panel on the computer and choose
Folder Options or File Explorer Options depending on your version of Windows. Click on the View tab,
enable Show hidden files, folders and drives and click OK:
To download and install a package, click on its Install button. Upon completion, a new icon may appear
on the desktop. If it does not, an option will have appeared against the package, giving the option to ‘Send
to desktop’. There will also be an option to uninstall it should this be necessary for any reason. Note that
simply removing an icon from the desktop does not delete the underlying application.
Begin by going into Applications and downloading and installing the Dropbox Sync client. Double-clicking
its icon on the desktop will display the following screen:
The synchronization process is instantaneous i.e. as soon as files are placed in admin’s /home/Dropbox
folder they will be uploaded to Dropbox. However, there is no method of monitoring the process, other than
by logging in to the Dropbox website and checking what has happened.
To gain external access, users should have the Dropbox client installed on the devices they use outside of
the premises, downloadable from www.dropbox.com. In a business setting, it is suggested that the users are
not given the password and allowed to install it themselves, so as to reduce the risk of errors or abuse, but
rather it should be done for them. At the time of writing, Dropbox is available for Windows, Mac, iPad &
iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and selected Linux distributions.
One thing to consider is what happens when people leave the organization, as if they have Dropbox installed
on a home computer they will continue to have access to whatever is stored on the server’s Dropbox folder.
In such circumstances, it will be necessary for the administrator to change the password of the Dropbox
account and advise remaining staff of the new password. Dropbox Professional and Dropbox for Business
both have the capability to ‘remote wipe’ devices and this can be used to remove the organization’s data
from the former user’s computer.
An alternative to Dropbox, which is available from Applications, is Elephant Drive.
11.3 Date and Time Settings
The TNAS should pick up the correct date and time automatically from the internet. If it is incorrect or
needs to be adjusted, or you need to change the time zone for some reason e.g. it has defaulted to Chinese
time but you are not located in that part of the world, you can do this from the Control Panel. Click Control
Panel > Region & Language > Time, which will display the following screen:
Connecting a client
Having set up the iSCSI LUN(s) on the server, the client computer(s) can now be connected. This section
describes how to do so with a modern version of Windows (i.e. Windows 7 onwards). There is no built-in
capability on the Mac OS, although third party solutions may be available.
Go into the Control Panel on the Windows PC, choose Administrative Tools and within it launch iSCSI
Initiator (for recent versions of Windows 10, go into Settings and type iSCSI in the Find a setting search
box). The first time you do this you may receive a message stating that the Microsoft iSCSI service is not
running – click Yes to start the service and it will start up automatically on subsequent occasions. In the
Target field on the Target tab, enter the IP address of the server and click Quick Connect. The target should
be quickly found and a status of Connected shown:
Figure 110: Connecting to the Target
Click Done and then Okay.
Go into Administrative Tools and this time choose Computer Management; within it click on Disk
Management. You will receive a message about having to initialize the new disk. If the disk is less than
2TB in size choose MBR, if greater than 2TB you need to choose GPT. Click OK.
Figure 111: Disk initialization
The new disk will then be visible within Disk Management. Right-click it and choose New Simple Volume.
Run through the Wizard to assign a drive letter to it and format the volume; thereafter it can be used as
though it was a normal disk drive.
11.8 Alternative Operating Systems
TerraMaster NAS devices run TOS, of course. But in reality, the underlying hardware is largely identical
to that of a standard computer and, on some models at least, TOS is stored on a small memory stick/thumb
drive plugged into an internal USB socket on the TNAS motherboard. Additionally, the motherboard
contains built-in display circuitry and if the correct cable is obtained, it can be connected to a standard VGA
monitor. All of this raises an intriguing possibility, as it opens the possibility of replacing that memory stick
with one containing another operating system altogether. Whilst this is a highly specialized project and one
that will only appeal to enthusiasts, it is possible. For an example of what can be done, go to YouTube and
search on ‘TerraMaster server 2016’.
Once installation has been completed, check that you can login as admin.
We hope that you have found this guide helpful and interesting.
We pride ourselves on the accuracy of our guides and they are reviewed and updated several times a year.
However, as the TOS software and utilities are regularly updated it is possible that very recent changes may
not be reflected. If you have any suggestions or have found errors or areas for improvement, please let us
know at [email protected]. Please quote the date that is stated at the beginning of page 2 so we know
what edition you have. Thank you.