Review of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS Drive
Remember when desktop 9-Bay NAS systems were not a thing? Yeah. It doesn’t seem to long ago that the paradigm of 2/4/8-Bay tower chassis was the status quo, yet over the last few years we have seen 5-Bay systems launch, 6-Bay systems flourish from all the established NAS brands and Terramaster continues to push forward with it’s growing range of 9-Bay tower devices. The new T9-450 is technically their 4th (really, their 3rd) and in the short time they have been in production, they have been very popular. Bringing a rackmount aesthetic and build quality to the humble desktop design we are used to, these were part of an arguably long-overdue chassis redesign by the brand! The T9-450 is possibly the most business/enterprise targetted entry into their tower NAS portfolio, arriving with a very different CPU than usual by the brand, tremendous network connectivity out the box, yet still attempting to hit a price point that flys way, way under the benchmark of their competitors at Synology and QNAP. This and the T9-450 arriving as an all in one hardware-software solution with TOS 5.1 included will definitely give businesses looking to store alot of data, but access it as quickly as possible, pause for thought! But is the Terramster T9-450 all hardware and no utility? Is it all sizzle and no sausage? Let’s review the T9-450 NAS and see if it deserves your data.
Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Quick Conclusion
Terramaster has really changed the playing field with the T9-450 NAS. I was already a big fan of their latest generation of 6-Bay, 9-Bay and 12-Bay desktop chassis – providing a pretty substantial amount of storage in a tower design that borrows ventilation methodology traditionally found in rackmounts, but the T9-450 takes this logic and doubles down on it hard. The dual 10GbE on the system means that, despite it’s comparatively modest price point (when comparing against similar scale solutions from Synology and QNAP) you genuinely have a solution with the potential to allow you to enjoy every single MB/s or GB/s of your RAID externally. This is further bolstered with additional 2.5GbE ports, m.2 NVMe bays, uncomplicated support of HDDs/SSDs and just generally a very sensible system that shows how much Terramaster has matured as a brand. The TOS software is still not quite up there with Synology’s DSM or QNAP’s QTS in terms of ease of use and AAA+ features, but it is definitely a great entry point OS that has tighted it’s security since the brand was targetted by a ransomware group (along with other brands, they were affected by Deadbolt attacks) – it certainly lacks some of the background optimization of it’s competitors, but then this is reflected in the budget of the system too. The internal PCIe slot that has been largely ignored is a bit of a missed opportunity and I am not a big fan of how they have addressed memory compatibility, but overall it is very, very tough to criticise the T9-450 NAS when you factor in the value of the package here. Factor in that you can very easily swap out the OS for many others, and it largely silences alot of the negatives here too. Overall, the T9-450 could potentially be the best NAS that Terramster has ever released and if they continue to address later releases with the same level of hardware value, this could definitely give the bigger names in the industry something of a headache down the road. I highly recommend this system for its value and performance potential!
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Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Unboxing, Packaging & Presentation
Although the TS-9-423 NAS is a new device and there have been tweaks in its presentation, things have remained largely the same as with the packaging and protection in older units – only more so! As this is a more affordable solution, it is understandable that some areas of the retail package are going to be a little understated. Additionally, NAS systems like the T9-450 NAS are going to 99% of the time be purchased online (not in your local I.T shop or generally in line of sight at the point of sale), so the need for flashy packaging is less important. That said, many brands still put a little effort into this and present their solutions as a means to promote a brand, lifestyle or general vibe or excellence in their product (i.e. “the first bite is with the eye” etc). The Terramaster T9-450 arrives in a very plain brown box and just has the model ID with a sticker and the brand logos.
Remarks of presentation aside, the packaging of the Terramaster T9-450 is pretty good in terms of protection. The unit is well held in foam (much thicker than normal and completely encasing the T9-450) and the accessories are neatly and securely contained. There is practically no room for the system to move in transit and ultimately, that is all that matters (silent shock/motion damage to the components).
The accessories box contains lots of accessories and although most are pretty standard (setup instructions, power supplier, warranty information, screws, etc), there are a couple of unusual additional that I have never received in other brand’s products, namely the inclusion of additional HDD tray clip/screw washers and additional rubber feet for the NAS. This isn’t really a good/bad thing and for those that need them, it’s a handy addition. It just seemed an unusual addition.
One small but positive area of note is the LAN cable included. As mentioned earlier, in more affordable NAS solutions (like more tech), the way savings can be made is by cutting corners. Therefore I was surprised that the Terramaster T9-450 arrived with a surprisingly high-quality LAN cable. Thick, Cat 6 and very high quality at the connector. Again, this is a small point, but companies such as QNAP and Terramaster HAVE provided Cat 5e cables of a shorter length, thinner material and nowhere near the quality of this one with their 1/2.5GbE solutions. It’s a VERY minor point, but this is the sort of area I would have assumed Terramaster would have saved a few £/$ on and I am impressed. That said, I am a little surprised at the note that was also included with the retail kit:
Now, it is NOT unusual for a NAS hardware solution provider to recommend that end users choose to use their own first-party upgrades – practically all the brands do this. However, currently only Synology make a big noise about only using their own first-party memory upgrades as opposed to 3rd party memory from Kingston, ADATA, Crucial, Kingston, etc (arguably to divisive results with their Home/SOHO/SMB user base). Therefore I am a little surprised that Terrmaster include this note. It’s worth highlighting that they are not stating it as a ‘make or break’ position on warranty and/or support by them, but still – not a big fan of these kinds of warnings, as none of the NAS brands (Terramaster included) actually produce the memory inside their systems. The Terramaster T9-450 arrives with an internal 250W PSU, so no external power brick for this particular desktop NAS drive. Overall, there is quite a good range of accessories included with the Terramaster T9-450. Nothing spectacular, but pretty much everything you are going to need (aside from storage media) to set up your NAS quickly and easily. Let’s discuss the design of the T9-450.
Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Design
The design of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS is largely identical to that of the T9-423 released a few months ago, which I reviewed here and was already kind of keen on for its compact, yet rugged structure. For quite a long time, full high PC-Case style chassis were considered a little dated, but the T9-450 is more more stylied on a rackmount chassis, but in a vertical deployment. What I mean by that is that the horizontal ventilation design of a rackmount is implemented here in a desktop chassis, but the actual physical desk/table space being occupied by the 9 bays of storage is actually only 13.5cm x 29.5cm – smaller in desk space footprint than a standard USB keyboard. You of course have to factor in the height, but compare this to most 6-8 bay devices in the market in desktop form, and in many ways, it makes the T9-450 easier to deploy.
The complete chassis measures 334 x 135 x 295mm and around 70% of the available space is occupied by those 9 bays of storage. Although the pictures make this system look about the size of a normal PC case, it is actually a bit smaller and I was a little surprised by the scale of the system when I had my hands on it. Only one side panel can be removed (the right side, which allows access to the main motherboard for M.2 NVMe SSD access and Memory upgrades) and the overall build quality is quite high.
Of course, an important factor when it comes to the smooth running of this scale of storage is the cooling and ventilation afforded to the system when in use. I am pleased to confirm that the Terramaster T9-450 NAS features a tonne of ventilation throughout. Each of the bays has a metal vented panel on the front, the area above the storage with the CPU+Memory etc has its own ventilation strip, the side of the casing that is closest to the storage media has a HUGE area of ventilation and all these are being utilized passively with the three active rear cooling fans.
Storage media is easy to install and the system takes advantage of the popular RAID configurations (RAID 1, 5, 6, 10, etc) that the user might want to opt for. Additionally, the system can be operated with as little as a single storage drive if you want, then add drives to the storage pool gradually if you prefer. This is particularly advantageous when you note that Terramaster TOS 5 now includes TRAID – a flexible and less rigid RAID system that allows you to use mixed drive capacities in a single RAID pool, as well as making expanding storage in general much easier. The trays of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS themselves are metal, springloaded, but not lockable. They are not click-and-load screwless drive trays, but that’s hardly the end of the world and Terramaster include all the screws you will need.
Each of the bays are SATA connected (combined data+power) and are hot-swap enabled, so no need to power down the system when connecting a new drive to a RAID for expansion or RAID repair on the fly. Each row of three drives feeds into a multi-lane cable and then directly into the motherboard (as opposed to the NAS having a separate storage board that is connected to the motherboard with a PCIe slot/angle connector as in smaller NAS systems. This is a clean and intelligent piece of design here and, again, not something we see alot of on desktop NAS devices (it is much more popular in larger rackmount design)>
One thing about the design that we DO have to discuss a little more is the actual deployment. Opting for the vertical 3×3 arrangement of drives does mean that this device is going to be very tall and many users might have wanted something shorter but wider (i.e like most 8-Bay NAS systems). The base of the system has 4 large rubberized feet that lift the system up for whichever desktop surface it is placed on by around a 0.9cm. This is fairly normal BUT is it possible to deploy the Terramaster T9-450 NAS horizontally – i.e on it’s side, so it looks a little more like a compact rackmount that you deploy on your table top?
Well, yes, sort of. Inside the accessories kit you find a pack of additional rubber feet and although there is ZERO mention of this being so you can deploy the Terramaster T9-450 NAS in a horizontal fashion, it is not particularly hard to do so and these will ensure that the side of the chassis with all those HDD ventilation is raised up from the desk (much like it is with most other desktop NAS).
When it is on its side, it looks surprisingly neat. Again, very much like a compact rackmount chassis and I can DEFINITELY see some users opting for this style of deployment of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS. The only issue I can foresee here is that the network ports will be at a 90-degree angle (hardly the end of the world).
Overall, I have to say that the design and build quality of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS was considerably higher than I thought it would be and I very quickly grew accustomed to the unusual design and saw its merits. Additionally, the build quality here is considerably higher than other smaller Terramaster desktop NAS chassis. Let’s discuss the ports and connections of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS to see if this NAS continues to impress.
Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Ports and Connections
The connectivity of the Terramaster T9-450 NAS is probably one of the strongest points of its appeal to those looking to make the most of those 9 SATA bays. It lacks any real graphical output (largely down to the lack of an integrated gfx processor), but unlike the T9-423, the T9-450 is clearly designed to be more of a throughput workhorse! Despite it being a compact desktop NAS, the system still uses an internal PSU – A 250W removable block (not bare power board and transistors). It is a very clean install and is surprisingly well spaced from the rest of the system hardware.
Of course, the first big improvement of the Terramaster T9-450 and x423 series has over its predecessors in the brand’s desktop portfolio in recent years (F4-422 and F5-422) is the inclusion of 2.5-gigabit ethernet (2.5GbE). The NAS arrives with two ethernet ports that can provide around 250-279MB/s throughout each, as well as allowing link aggregation (aka Port Trunking) to combine their bandwidth and provide 5GbE (around 500-550MB/s throughput) with the use of a smart switch. In the last few years, we have seen several brands provide 2.5GbE connections at the same cost as 1GbE ports and with internet service providers and affordable switch manufacturers providing 2.5GbE solutions, it was only natural that NAS brands would make the jump towards it. Hypothetically, if you had a faster than Gb internet connection (fiber etc) and a google drive account, that means that you would be able to connect with your cloud drive FASTER than a NAS system in your home if you only have 1GbE. This is why NAS systems need to arrive with 2.5/5/10GbE in 2022, for the sake of futureproofing and to keep up with the growing demands for data access. Additionally, 9x SATA storage bays (as well as the internal SSD bay that I will touch on later) will easily saturate a 2.5GbE and even LAG-supported 5GbE connection, so these ports allow you to maximize your storage potential and share that bandwidth with multiple connected users. However, it does NOT stop there.
That’s right, the Terramaster T9-450 arrives with two.. TWO 10Gb ports! That brings the total potential external bandwidth potential connectivity of the T9-450 to 25GbE when appropriately connected to the right switches/network adapters locally. That is INSANE for this price point and even if you fully populate the device with SATA SSDs, I still am not sure you could fully saturate that bandwidth without also including a couple of expansion devices! Now, they are Fiber/SFP+ based 10Gb, so you are going to need transceiver adapters, DAC pre-attached cables and/or RJ45-to-SFP+ adapters in order to capitalize on this bandwidth, but alongside the CPU, this is one of the things about the T9-450 that clearly marks its focus towards businesses who want serious storage and throughput concerns to be eliminated.
Whether you are considering the T9-450 NAS for your data so you can go ‘balls to the wall’ with those connections out the gate using a smart 10GbE switch and/or SMB-Multichannel, OR are going to scale towards it at a later date and just use a handful of the SATA bays at the start in a flexible TRAID over 1/2x 2.5GbE at the start, there is a huge element of scalability available in the T9-450 that needs to be applauded.
One area I am a little underwhelmed by is the USB connectivity of the T9-450. I appreciate that this might be a limitation of the Intel CPU used inside, but the two USB 3.2 Gen 1 5Gb/s ports are a bit of a bummer. We are talking here about a huge degree of storage that can comfortably push transfer rates in 1,000MB/s+ without breaking much of a sweat. But if you connect an external local USB DAS RAID box for a local backup, you are going to be throttled to 500-550MB/s max. Yes, these still support lots of USB appliances (including 2.5/5G-to-USB adapters), but it’s a slightly annoying bottleneck. This is further complicated when you factor in that the T9-450 supports expansion chassis, but they too use USB connectivity – which will also be bottlenecked to 5Gb/s. Less of an issue in external drives under 4-5 bays, but if larger expansion chassis arrive, this will be a bit of a pain. Still, it is almost certainly a result fo the CPU choice and trying to judge the balancing act of performance vs ability vs pricepoint.
The ports and connections of the Terramaster T9-450 are few in number but still are nonetheless significant upgrades over everything else in the brand’s portfolio. Terramaster could have EASILY cut a few corners here (such as just a single 10GbE or ditched the 2.5GbEs altogether) and most users would not have batted an eye (as it is still lower in the price for its hardware scale than its competitors), but you really are getting a great degree of hardware connectivity here that allows you to capitalize on those 9 bays of storage. Let’s get our screwdriver and take a look inside this NAS to see how Terramster have approached the internal specifications of the T9-450.
Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Internal Hardware
The side panel of the T9-450 NAS is clearly designed to be something most users are invited to do – as the panel uses a hinge mechanic – as opposed to 95% of NAS that use wrap-around chassis design that can be a chuffing nightmare to reattach without getting at least 1 of the key/hooks out of alignment! What you find inside is a very spacious board area, a single controller board and the main bays are on a sister board connected via 90 degree located PCIe connector, with additional multilane cables that host 3x drives each. It’s a very clear setup.
The CPU heatsink that covers the Intel Atom C3558R processor inside is pretty large, occupying almost half the physical space of the controller board! It’s quite a snug fit in between the dual memory slots, the m.2 NVMe SSD slots and the 10Gb SFP+ connectors. I would be interested to see how this affects system temps in the long term, as the three rear cooling fans are directly channelled into the HDD cage array, with these components catching the air flowing around the case. 10GbE (especially dual ports) are going to clock up some high temps! That said, this is also going to be a processor that is going to be a pinch power hungrier than other ones used i nthe Terramaster portfolio. It has a 2.4Ghz clock speed, 4 cores and 4 thread architecture with a TDP of 17W – which is coming close to double the 10W TDP of the Celerons that Terraamster normally use. This is inevitable if you are going to try to hit saturation on those 10GbE ports.
As mentioned at the start, the T9-450 is not the only 9-Bay from Terramaster this year. Prior to this, there was the T9-423 earlier in 2023, which runs on an Intel N5105 Celeron processor. Despite its lack of 10GbE, it does have the same 2.5GbE connections, USB 10Gb/s and embedded graphics allow improved performance on things like transcode/decode/encoding multimedia and graphically targetted data processes. The Intel Atom in the T9-450 counters this with a higher clock speed, being file processing capabilities and trades efficiency for raw power. The graphs below demonstrate the difference between Intel Mobile Celeron N5105 and C3558R most important characteristics. These features, along with an IPC (instructions per cycle) number, determine how well a CPU performs. The “Operating frequency” chart uses dark color to represent base frequency, while lighter area is for extra frequency, provided by Turbo feature. Darker area on the “On-chip cache” graph is for the On-chip L2 cache. Lighter area is for the L3 cache cache. Although the L3 cache is usually larger than the On-chip L2 cache, it is always slower.
Alongside that CPU, the Terramaster T9-450 NAS also arrives with 8GB of DDR4 Memory (twice the amount of most other systems of this scale and others in the x423 series). Closer inspection of the T9-450 architecture does raise a small question. Firstly, the 8GB of memory the system arrives with is a single 8GB SODIMM module, which is great as this is double what most other brands would include in this storage tier + price point – but it is not ECC. I get the logic behind this, as this is designed to be powerful yet affordable, but there are definitely going to be users who plan on sending through ALOT of data in this system for warm/cold storage, so long term data integrity is going to be paramount! Yes, there is redundancy options in place such as RAID 6 and the syem does support BTRFS, but given the CPU used in the T9-450 DOES support ECC memory, perhaps opting for 4GB of DDR4 ECC memory by default (and then also supporting the use of non-ECC memory by users as a matter of choice) might have been a better middle ground. Also, I am still not completely in love with their slightly stern approach to users opting for 3rd party memory. again, it’s not as black/white as Synology, but still a little more stringent than I would have expected. Overall though, I think most users will see 8GB of memory in a 10GbE ready system like this as a plus overall!
The Terramaster T9-450 also features two M.2 NVMe SSD bay that allows you to install significantly faster SSDs into the system alongside SATA HDDs, meaning that you have another option for your storage. Now, there is good and bad news here regarding this port. On the plus side, it can be used for either caching alongside the larger HDD RAID configuration (to allow read-only caching and improve their performance in key areas) or as its own storage pool. This is something that popular NAS competitor Synology has never implemented to their NVMe bays, despite it being a highly requested feature. On a slight downside, as the Intel CPU inside the Terramaster T9-450 is already being stretched a little thing in it’s architecture, the M.2 NVMe SSD bay are PCIe Gen 3 x2 speed. This means that NVMe SSDs such as the Seagate Ironwolf 510/525 or WD Red SN700 at PCIe Gen 3/4 x4 will be limited down to a maximum 2,000MB/s transfer speeds. This is still something you can incorporate into a solid RAID for improved performance and its better to have them, than not at all though.
The system also seemingly features an available PCIe 3×4 upgrade slot too (without a guide clip/stopper, meaning the potential for an x8 length card being physically possible. The rear of the T9-450 casing does not feature any kind of backplane/spacing for this PCIe card slot to be evolved into additional external network connectivity, so that is largely off the cards. This hardware detail was picked up AFTER the initial review of the T9-450 was completed and photography was made, so I have yet to test if this slot is current active (and if/what it supports). But as soon as it is, expect it to be updated here in the review!
Finally, we have the internal USB Slot that contains a pre-installed drive which contains the TOS 5/5.1 bootloader to initialize the OS of the system. We have already covered in length over on the YouTube channel in multiple video guides (click on each, they will open in a new tab) on how to install server OS’ such as TrueNAS, UnRAID and Proxmox on a Terramaster NAS, which means these system are actually quite useful for users looking for a prebuilt NAS server solution to buy off the shelf but then choose to use their own OpenSource/Paid server software instead! Hosting the OS Installer on an internal USB instead of a pre-installed flash drive (such as found on other brands) is not new and indeed, many popular OS’ actually RUN this way (again, UnRAID is a great example). This USB only hosts the installer, with the NAS needing the actual OS to be installed on an area of the available drive storage.
The internal hardware inside the Terramaster T9-450 is still good for the money and certainly gives you a solid base level of hardware to work with to maximize those 10GbE network ports! The means to access and upgrade the system hardware is less conventional than most/all other commercial NAS brands, but once you have jumped these odd hurdles, you have some great kit here to use in conjunction with 1st and 3rd-party applications. One nagging point for me is that the system COULD have used the onboard lanes that they used on the M.2 NVMe bays in a better-leveraged way instead towards a proper and accessible PCIe upgrade slot (ther e is clearly a slot there and it’s kinda overlooked). Then users could have made their own choice between an SSD caching upgrade card OR opting for further network connectivity. Let’s move into the subject of software and TOS on the T9-450.
Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Software
If you are an existing Terramaster NAS owner, or are someone that has been considering their NAS brand for your private server purchase, then you might have heard that they recently released their latest BIG software update. Upgrading from TOS 4 to TOS 5, this new update brings a huge range of improvements in the GUI, available applications, supported services, security and user controls to their NAS systems. It is important to note that even though TOS 5 is now fully released and in its non-beater version, some applications are still in beta within this software platform and although I will touch on them throughout this review, I will make a point of highlighting when some applications in full release or are still in Beta. These include Terra Photos, Terrasync tools, Centralized Backup, and elements of Terra Search and Surveillance Manager. Although all of these applications are still available in the app center, the experiences I had with them still demonstrate that they are not in their final form and suffered weak resource sharing with the rest of TOS5. Otherwise, all other elements discussed in this review are in their full-release candidate form. Additionally, at the time of writing, TOS5 is not available for ARM processor NAS devices. I made a MASSIVE review of TOS 5 in it’s own dedicated article below, which I recommend you read if you want to know the FULL scope of what TOS 5 can and cannot do:
Click Below to read the FULL Review of TOS 5 for Terramaster NAS
What I liked in TOS 5
- The GUI is considerably clearer and much more vibrant.
- The options and icons in the GUI are much more responsive and clear against other background activities.
- There are considerably more backup and synchronization tools in TOS5.
- There are a vastly improved number of storage configurations and services available at your disposal.
- The mixed drive TRAID Is going to win serious points with ex-synology owners.
- The system includes direct tech support and remote access terminal for official support and difficulties
- The network isolation mode in TOS5 is both unique to the brand and particularly helpful.
- The resource monitor is 10 times better than in previous versions of TOS 5 and genuinely useful.
- The upgrade path between TOS4 and TOS5 is not as smooth as it should be. And will confuse some and concern others.
- Multimedia tools are a little lacking and although there is a general DLNA media server application and the photo app in beta, there is no dedicated video or music tool available.
- The Surveillance tool has kinda gone dark/disappeared!
New Features & Improvements in Existing Services in TOS
In TOS 5, not only have the storage structure and data interaction mode been reconstructed but also, compared with the previous generation, it adds more than 50 features and 600 improvements. The new features meet more business requirements, as well as significantly improve response speed, security, and ease of use.
Browser Access to TOS is Now 3x Times Faster
TOS 5 adopts progressive JavaScript language and a lightweight framework with a faster loading speed. TOS 5 features bidirectional data binding, easier data manipulation, and automatic synchronous response to data changes in the page; UI, data, and structure separation make it easier to change data without the need to modify logic codes. Using progressive JavaScript language, TOS 5 has a more lightweight framework. In addition, through two-way binding of data, the view, data and structure are separated. When the page is operated, it automatically responds to changes in data, which makes the system “lighter” and achieves a faster loading speed.
New caching technology avoids network round trips between the server and the database, bypasses the calculation that occupies resources, saves server resources, and improves response time and waiting time, so TOS 5 has the fastest response time in the current TOS family. Compared with the last generation, the TOS 5 response speed has increased by 300%! Use WASM to optimize the calculation method and execute the back-end complex calculations on the front-end, thereby reducing the calculation pressure on the server. In addition, TOS 5 uses the most popular back-end language at the moment, which can support high concurrent requests. Compared with traditional interpreted languages, the compilation speed is faster.
Improved Resource Monitor in TOS 5
The new iconic resource monitor board allows you to grasp the operating status of your TNAS comprehensively and intuitively in real-time; at-a-glance visibility of system load, CPU and memory usage, network traffic, disk I/O, device temperature, storage, processes, online users, listening ports, and system resource occupancy. Historical records of up to 30 days can be easily traced back.
Full One Button System Isolation Mode Available in TOS 5
TerraMaster’s unique security isolation mode completely isolates your TNAS device from the external network through network isolation, digital signature, and file format restriction, providing a safer operating environment and effective protection against virus and ransomware attacks.
Support of the WORM File System in TOS5
Data can be written at one time within the customized protection period and cannot be deleted or modified. This effectively protects your data from malicious damage, deletion, or tampering and provides data protection for up to 70 years; essential for the financial, judicial, medical, and scientific research sectors, as well as other business users.
Improved Storage, Backup & Sync Features in Terramaster TOS 5
TOS 5 features optimized storage architecture to reduce the system space occupation. The file deduplication system, file system compression, TRAID elastic array, and other functions also save you up to 40% of storage space
Single Portal Folder Level Backup for Home and SMB Users
Reduce complexity and embrace simplicity. All backup needs can be completed through a single portal, providing one-stop backup solutions including Central Backup, TerraSync, Duple Backup, Snapshot, USB Copy, CloudSync, and other comprehensive backup tools. This meets your clients’ disaster recovery and restoration requirements, as well as backup policies and destinations.
Business Focused ProActive Backups for Larger Business
To improve management efficiency, medium and larger-sized businesses need a centralized and active backup solution for multiple users, PCs, and servers. Centralized Backup is a business-oriented backup solution that supports backup and restoration for multiple device types. You can centrally backup data of dozens or even hundreds of PCs, servers, or virtual machines with only one TNAS.
New Flexible RAID Support in TRAID in TOS 5
By optimizing the traditional RAID mode, TerraMaster RAID (TRAID) gives you flexible disk array configuration, flexible online migration, capacity expansion, and redundancy policies. As well as improving disk space utilization, it also provides solutions and security protection for storage space changes caused by new business requirements. Much like Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) in that you can mix drive capacities for improved storage after the RAID redundancy calculation. I reached out to Terramaster directly on this and they confirm that this function is supported in TOS 5.
Multiple Client Sync with TerraSync in TOS 5
TerraSync, a TerraMaster self-developed synchronization tool, realizes data synchronization between multiple users and multiple devices. It efficiently implements data sharing among branch offices and data synchronization between individuals on multiple devices and platforms, which assists employees in collaborative work and improves work efficiency.
New CloudSync Application for Bare Metal-to-Cloud Live Sync in TOS 5
The new CloudSync app integrates multiple cloud drives and syncs them into one application, including Google Drive, One Drive, Amazon S3, Backblaze, Box, Dropbox, Koofr, OpenDrive, pCloud, Yandex disk, and Aliyun. This allows users to centralize the management of multiple synchronization tasks and add a variety of cloud disk synchronization options including Aliyun and Rackspace. A more flexible, stable, and efficient solution for data synchronization between your TNAS and cloud drives is facilitated by your choice of customized synchronization strategies, such as traffic control, scheduled tasks, and encryption.
CCTV Surveillance in Terramaster TOS 5
TNAS is an ideal video recording storage device. The new Surveillance Manager makes full use of TNAS storage resources to realize camera management, real-time monitoring, video storage, playback, query, event and activity monitoring and recording, providing you with economic and flexible video monitoring management tools to safeguard your personal and property safety.
AI Photo Recognition Now Available in TOS 5 with Terra Photo
Terra Photos is TerraMaster’s brand-new AI photo management application that provides smart solutions for your photo management and sharing; it uses intelligent AI algorithms to identify and classify faces, pets, locations, and other objects in your photos.
Docker Added to Existing Container Tools in TOS 5
Combined with docker-compose and portainer, the new Docker Manager features an optimized operation interface, with multiple new features which provide visual management that meets all your requirements for container customization and flexible configuration.
New Update to Terramaster’s Mobile App, TNAS Mobile 5
To adapt to TOS 5, TNAS mobile has also ushered in a comprehensive update, TNAS mobile 5. Featuring an optimized user interface and interaction, it has also added mobile phone backup, photo management, personal folders, team folders, data safebox, TerraSync, remote administrator, and other functions, which provide more convenience for remote access, mobile office, and remote management of your TNAS. Once again, I need to highlight that the T6-423 NAS needs to be viewed with its price tag always in mind. With software and hardware that is available on other NAS brand devices, it is easy to imagine that this device is a much, more affordable alternative to QNAP or Synology NAS. However, you should always remember that this device is still aimed at those looking for a first dip into NAS and if should be compared with WD NAS and D-Link when making your choice of NAS. it is DEFINITELY better than those and arrives at a better price, but it may still be a year or more before the Terramaster TOS Software platform can compete with DSM and QTS. That said, the Beta is really showing that TOS is going to evolve even further and for more information about the TerraMaster TOS operating System, I recommend visiting my software review here from a couple of years ago.
Key Software and NAS tasks that are supported are:
- RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD – as well as TRAID, the Flexible RAID configuration
- Apple Time Machine Backup
- Cloud Migration and Synchronization
- NAS to NAS Rsync Support
- Plex Media Server
- Docker
- Mail Server
- Web Server
- DLNA Media Server
- WordPress Server
- Download Server
- Snapshot Support
With a good range of applications to choose from, as well as the support of modern NAS applications in the mix, the TerraMaster T9-450 does give you a good base with which to start your NAS journey, though it may feel a little streamlined for those with greater NAS experience. It is also worth mentioning that TOS 5.1 is currently available in Beta (as of Jan 2023 to now) and includes numerous improvements that include:
1. Upgraded kernel – The TOS 5.1 kernel has been updated from 4.19 to 5.15. Compared to the previous generation kernel, TOS 5.1 Beta optimized EXT4/Btrfs/NTFs file systems and SMB3 file server, used ext4/f2fs/ubifs file system encryption in the encryption API, enabled Apple M1 SoC functionality under Linux and added USB 4 interface support, which greatly improved the performance and security of file system.
2. 4K hardware decoding – The new hardware decoding driver for Intel Jasper Lake GPU is added, which will significantly improve 4K video hardware decoding capability for TerraMaster NAS.
3. Storage pool expansion via USB – By connecting TerraMaster USB disk array, users can easily expand the storage space of the storage pool for TNAS. It supports TRAID/RAID 0/RAID 1/RAID 5/RAID 6 array mode and provide 10Gb storage bandwidth. Compared with eSATA or mini SAS expansion enclosures, TerraMaster USB expansion enclosures are more economical and more convenient.
4. Hyper Cache – TerraMaster Hyper Cache is TerraMaster unique SSD cache acceleration tool. Hyper Cache can provide up to 3 cache modes to choose from to suit different usage needs, and can also create disk arrays for SSDs to increase cache speed and security. Such configuration delivers high-speed storage that’s ideal for video editing.
5. Categorized notifications – TOS 5.1 Beta optimizes system messages and divides message notifications into four levels: information, success, error, and warning. Each level of messages is marked with a more eye-catching symbol of different colors. User can always keep track of any abnormalities in the system and ensure the security of the system and data.
6. USB storage management – TOS 5.1 fully optimizes the mounting of USB partitions. The system will record the path of the last mounted USB partition. When re-mounting next time, the original path will be allocated first to provide more storage space for the use and backup of USB.
7. Optimized Docker Manager – TerraMaster launches updated version of Docker Manager and updates the Docker engine to 20.10.17 version. The optimized interface brings it in line with users’ aesthetics and usage habits. Container deployment is more flexible and TerraMaster NAS utilization is optimized.
8. Better AI computing performance – TOS 5.1 replaced the more powerful Intel OpenVINO AI computing engine, combined with the new Terra Photos application, the intelligent photo recognition efficiency increased by 30%. Terra Photo is designed for home users and photography enthusiasts to manage photo storage, share and access photos from anywhere.
We will likely see TODS 5.1 roll out as a full release candidate and full availability in Q2 of 2023.
Terramaster T9-450 NAS Review – Conclusion
Terramaster has really changed the playing field with the T9-450 NAS. I was already a big fan of their latest generation of 6-Bay, 9-Bay and 12-Bay desktop chassis – providing a pretty substantial amount of storage in a tower design that borrows ventilation methodology traditionally found in rackmounts, but the T9-450 takes this logic and doubles down on it hard. The dual 10GbE on the system means that, despite it’s comparatively modest price point (when comparing against similar scale solutions from Synology and QNAP) you genuinely have a solution with the potential to allow you to enjoy every single MB/s or GB/s of your RAID externally. This is further bolstered with additional 2.5GbE ports, m.2 NVMe bays, uncomplicated support of HDDs/SSDs and just generally a very sensible system that shows how much Terramaster has matured as a brand. The TOS software is still not quite up there with Synology’s DSM or QNAP’s QTS in terms of ease of use and AAA+ features, but it is definitely a great entry point OS that has tighted it’s security since the brand was targetted by a ransomware group (along with other brands, they were affected by Deadbolt attacks) – it certainly lacks some of the background optimization of it’s competitors, but then this is reflected in the budget of the system too. The internal PCIe slot that has been largely ignored is a bit of a missed opportunity and I am not a big fan of how they have addressed memory compatibility, but overall it is very, very tough to criticise the T9-450 NAS when you factor in the value of the package here. Factor in that you can very easily swap out the OS for many others, and it largely silences alot of the negatives here too. Overall, the T9-450 could potentially be the best NAS that Terramster has ever released and if they continue to address later releases with the same level of hardware value, this could definitely give the bigger names in the industry something of a headache down the road. I highly recommend this system for its value and performance potential!
| PROS of the Terramaster T9-450 | CONS of the Terramaster T9-450 |
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