The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/harperthomas on 2024-12-11 08:40:35.

I recently bought the Terramaster F4-212 4 bay NAS and it has been a nice plastic paper weight. It took 4 days to build the initial RAID with 3x 8TB drives, then another 4 days after adding the 4th 8TB drive to reconfigure. Then when I finally tried to expand the storage pool for the new drive the system crashed and I had to reinstall the OS. Since then ive been going around in a circle with the system crashing, reporting raid degradation errors, but all drives showing as healthy and now I cant even access it once again. Probably another fresh OS install.

Rant Over.

I setup the drives in ext4 RAID 5. Im still in the return window for the Terramaster so if I buy a new NAS from another brand, will I be able to slot my drives in and get everything running without reformatting the drives / losing data? I dont really have a backup option here.

I am looking on Amazon and the next cheapest option is the Asustor Drivestor 4 AS1104T. Is this going to be a better experience than the Terramaster? I dont have much money so please dont suggest I get the latest $1000 synology as its simply not an option. The QNAP TS-433-4G is the next cheapest ive found but I dont know if i can afford the price increase over the Asus.