I Upgraded To A High-End NAS In My Home For A Month, Here’s What I Learned

As a NAS reviewer, I poke and prod at different NAS units to find the good and bad of each. I’ve set them up to take over crucial functions to see if they live up to expectations, and where they might disappoint. Most have been two-bay and four-bay models, with a couple boasting slightly more. All have been consumer models, generally equipped with moderate processors, less RAM, and other cost-saving compromises.

However, I just spent several weeks with a NAS on the other end of the spectrum, the T12-500 Pro from TerraMaster. It isn’t a giant rack-mount server like large corporations use, but with twelve drive bays and a Core i7 processor, it’s more capable than most small businesses need. I’ve used NAS units and servers of this caliber and larger in software engineering jobs, but now I’m trying a NAS for home use. Here are my observations about the experience.

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Seemingly limitless storage

More space than I could fill, for now

I deal with large amounts of data, both for work and personal life. It’s common to have large databases and virtual machines set up for testing. At the same time, I have a fairly unkempt collection of photos and video footage, usually in RAW and high bitrate codecs, respectively. Plus, I create full backups before installing major OS updates that never get deleted.

When free space runs low on a two-bay or four-bay NAS, my only options are to spend money upgrading to larger drives or spend hours cleaning up and moving files to external USB drives.

However, a 12-bay NAS gives me another option. Storage limits don’t feel as real with this thing, and I know that instead of replacing perfectly good drives, I can buy a new drive and add it to a RAID volume. The system will expand the volume and reallocate data, and I don’t have to sweat the details or carefully pack files onto externals.

I recognize this doesn’t solve the problem. I’m still a data hoarder. However, having all that storage available and in one place makes it easier to clean.

For example, with all the files in one place, I can run a scan for duplicate files, which often finds extra copies of software installers, photos, videos, and other things spread among backups and projects. Also, organizing files within a single large space is easier than moving them back and forth between external drives.

Dedicating drives to specific tasks

Some drives work while the others sleep

Like most people, my first instinct with a larger NAS was to set up a single volume spanning every drive. That’s how most two-bay units must be set up, and most people may do the same with four-bay models. However, I realized this may not be the best strategy when I set up the Ugreen NASync6800 Pro.

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There are advantages to a single giant volume, chief among them being that some popular RAID configurations become more space-efficient as the number of drives increases. Still, there are interesting advantages that come from splitting up your volumes to cover select tasks.

Let me give an example. I frequently seed torrents for popular open source software projects, aiming to lower their hosting expenses. While those files are being served, the drives they’re sitting on are continuously active, and the system doesn’t let them sleep.

There are two side effects to this. First, each active drive consumes more power than a sleeping drive. Second, active drives wear out faster than those allowed to stay asleep.

Considering these effects, sometimes it makes sense to split up volumes, setting one aside for backups or other data that will be accessed infrequently, allowing all the drives in that volume to sleep for long periods, while another volume is filled with data that will be accessed continuously.

These continuously active volumes are also a good place to recycle older or smaller “throwaway” drives, because wearing them out quickly is less of a sacrifice and allows you to preserve your more valuable drives, at least until those are replaced.

Power comes at a cost

Yeah, we all know the quote… it comes with great responsibility

While I may push a lot of data onto each NAS I review, I keep a “personal” NAS running on the side. This lets me keep working during down times, such as when a review unit is being set up or torn down. I can also turn to it when I run benchmarks or tests on a review unit. This avoids skewing the results.

For the last two years, the Synology DiskStation DS1522+ has filled this role. It has five drive bays and two rear fans, and is powered by an AMD Ryzen R1600, which was intended to be moderately power-efficient for laptops and custom portable hardware. It idles at about 46W while seeding some torrents and running a few low-demand services.

When I first looked at the specs of the TerraMaster T12-500 Pro, I was certain the power consumption would blow past the DS1522+ and most of the other units I reviewed in the past. The Core i7-1255U may technically idle at as low as 15W, but when you factor in five fans (counting the tiny built-in PSU fan), more drive controllers, and the same number of drives, it clocks in at about 47W.

They’re practically identical, hovering between 45W and 50W with fluctuations. The DS1522+ supports fewer than half the drives, has half the fans, and the CPU benchmarks at a quarter of the processing power. I was surprised to think my electric bill wouldn’t change if I replaced my personal NAS with the T12-500 Pro.

These aren’t perfect one-to-one comparisons, or even fair comparisons, given the different markets these two units were intended for, but I expected a 10% gap, at least. Running a demanding task like virtual machines or hefty database queries ramps up the T12-500 Pro to a higher wattage, but it runs those operations faster, making the work more efficient.

For something I run 24/7, I’d like a NAS that runs leaner. Some models average around 30W to 35W with Intel’s more power-efficient N-series CPUs, and some with ARM-based chips like the Realtek 1619B in TerraMaster’s F2-212. However, these are almost always two-bay models, which don’t fit my needs well. I’ve also looked into building my own Raspberry Pi NAS, but that has other compromises that I want to avoid.

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I’m not set on running a Core i7, but I like the prospect of running a more powerful system without an appreciable change in power consumption.

Would I recommend a high-end NAS for your home?

Of course not

It’s rare to find a NAS set up in a home, and among the households that have one, most use it to run media servers and automated backups like Time Machine. A budget NAS is usually enough to fit the ticket for most of these users, and a moderate upgrade can cover the needs of average enthusiasts and professionals.

I might prefer this NAS to the others I’ve tried, but I’d have a hard time justifying $1,800 to buy it, and I expect that’s true for most households. If money were no object, I’d say go for it. While it’s a luxury most people won’t need or use, I don’t want to compromise if I don’t have to. It’s always possible some aspect of a high-end NAS could become vital, and I would rather be prepared if that situation arises.