Terra-Master D5 Thunderbolt 3 - Great 5 Bay Direct Attached Storage (DAS) for Creative Pros!
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- čas přidán 11. 09. 2022
- Terra-Master D5 Thunderbolt 3 - Great 5 Bay Direct Attached Storage (DAS) for Creative Pros! This is an in depth look and review of Terra-Master D5 Thunderbolt 3 - 5 Bay DAS system. Starting with a quick fundamental of what does this enclosure do, who it is for, how does this differ from a NAS (Network Attached Storage), things to be aware of getting a DAS vs a NAS, workflow needs and considerations, along with the Pros and Cons of this specific DAS. I also tested this DAS with various drives capacity in multiple different configurations to see what may be the optimal configuration to set up this DAS and this is information that can benefit you as well. Find out this and much more in this review.
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#TerramasterD5 #Thunderbolt3DAS #DAS - Věda a technologie
Very well made video. It deserves more views!
Much appreciated!
Great content. I am on the fence between Nas and Das. This answers a lot of my questions. Great job. Thank you!!
:)
Both are a great way to ensure safety through redundancy and allows you to write fast to a das then sit back and unplug while you slowly write to the nas from the das without having to worry about keeping ur laptop on the same wifi
Always a thoroughly enjoyable video
Glad you enjoyed it
Great review
Thank you
Thanks for the review.
How do you go about chosing Blocksize. Then what about chosing APFS and the Scheme?
As said in the video APFS for SSD, HFS+ for HDD. As far as block size I would refer you to my test in this part and part 2. It will give you insight into what block size to use based on the type of files that you work with.
Thank you for your reviews. I appreciate the balance of detail and practical application. I just bought the D5 T3 after testing a D2 T3 which will become my backup drive. I have 5 x 4TB Seagate SeawolfPro NAS drives in the D5 in RAID 5 and find the performance to be just as you described with cache policy of write back. I initially chose write through as theoretically its a little safer for data protection. In write through the write speed drops to 40MB/s which was very surprising. I expected some penalty but this seems disproportionate. Have you tested with write through and / or any experience between the 2 caching policies? I reached out to TerraMaster support but have not heard back yet as they are in Asia and offline at the moment. TerraMaster support has been pretty good with prior questions on the D2. I also searched TerrraMaster support forum and did not find any similar questions or comments. Thanks again.
I have not tested these in capacity that you mention. That is the one thing about DAS and dedicated RAID chip, sometime these happens and it does not really tell you what is going on the background. Unlike a NAS with a full OS running on it.
You are a great presenter.
I appreciate that!
Great review - thanks! I have been considering this as Drobo may not work with Ventura.
For the life of me, I would not recommend a Drobo to anyone. I have used that in the past when it was a big deal with all of the hype, however, Drobo OS is really flawed compared to this RAID controller or other NAS or DAS OS. Things happen in the background but it does not tell you what is going on with Drobo OS, not good for data management.
@@ArtIsRight thanks. I have three and they’ve been amazing for 7 years plus! But with the company going under I’m sadly looking for a replacement (I have a Synology already.)
I'm glad that you have a great experience with them, I can't say the same. Either way I think this is a simpler RAID set up of Drobo.
maybe I miss a part of the video, but I cannot find a description of the Hardware RAID vs Software RAID, and if this RAID system provides the hardware RAID configuration. Answering to myself, the 2-bay configuration has a real hardware RAID, with a switch, and the 5 bay version needs to be configured via a third part. Still I am missing the difference between the hardware-with-help-of-computer, and the software configuration for the RAID
Yes I covered this in the video. This unit does have Hardware (HW) RAID and it is done using HighPoint Controller, which is a good controller manufacture. I also showed the test results for both HW and Software (SW) raid. The point of a HW Raid is to off load to data writing, parity, calculation etc to the dedicated HW chip, and it is generally faster as well, as I have shown in the various test. SW Raid is done via the OS and normally takes a toll on the performance because it is using software runs on the OS to do the computation.
Thanks Art! What I missed in the review - how does it perform with SSDs loded up, how loud are the fans, how hot does it get? What is the maximum capacity of SSD you can put there? Would it work over USB-C in JBOD without the kernel extension? What is the idle power draw with SSDs loded up?
Don't have all of the SSD necessary to run the test in the studio, so we shall see if this test is done. But I would venture that the speed won't change much because we are still talking about the theoretical limit of TB3 read and write speed. And that is going to be the bottle neck. Fans are not loud at all, much quieter than the Mac Studio. Does not get that hot at all even with long read and write, mostly the heat would come from the drives and it would depend largely on the drives that you use. Max SSD capacity, you can see the support list here www.terra-master.com/global/compatibility/ They are rather a small list but untested drive can always be used as well. So there are 4TB SSD that you can use, but some other consideration would come in such as the NAND tech, for instance SLC, MLC, TLC are simple enough tech and good to use in these, QLC can run into some endurance issue due to the quad bit cell and 3D NAND are newer and might end up being the next best thing to use in these. I would also over provision the SSD when using them as well this way there's always empty space for controller clean up.
@@ArtIsRight Thanks for the reply. 4TB doesn't seem much. I do not care about maximum speed as much. 500-600MB/s would be enough for my needs if it could handle various SSD drives that I would add up. JBOD seems like a perfect mode for simple archival storage that needs to be always available and silent. From my understanding JBOD should not require a RAID driver.
I'll get this a test and let you know. Will probably do another video, I had SSD on my mind before I released this video.
A great and thorough review - as ever - thanks a lot. I have a JBOD as I've gradually created more and more files over the years (essentially photographs but a ton of code and web dev too). I absolutely hate the slow RW speeds this gives me, but until I can upgrade to Thunderbolt 3/4 (and 5 soon!) and make all pf my discs the max 20Tb size, I'm just stuck fast in 'drive molasses'!
No, you can use RAID which will give you redundancy depending on the type and speed as well. TB 3/4 and even 5 there's going to be an adoption period and a cap on transfer speed still. Tb5 might improved it but tbh TB3/4 at full speed is more than plenty already.
@@ArtIsRight Thank you - my problem is every disk in my 4 JBOD is differently sized (6Tb, 8tb, 18tb and 20Tb) so I must upgrade them all to the same size (20tb) and likely add 1 or more drives to effectively use RAID. I plan to do this when I upgrade my Mac Pro (Trashcan) to a Mac Studio M2 with TB3/4 by year end. Fingers crossed.
Thank you for your thorough review. As I am a video/aduio creator working alone at home, I think that the DAS is more efficient than the NAS. Apparently RAID5 is not safe and does not work with a failure, particularly with HD sizes >4TB. In general, redundancy does not seem to be as safe as one would wish, and I have not heard of people recovering data and functioning back when a failure happens. As I have 8x14TB HardDrives, I was considering to have two raids 0 in two different enclosures with 4 drives, and have a simple carbon copy at night from one RAID to the other. If something fails, I would loose the work of the day .... but that is not that important for me. I have heard not so good reviews for Terra Master, being quite noisy and not the most reliable, but you say that the fans are silent. Also there is the limitation in cable length for the thunderbolt 3 cable, as I wanted to put the DAS in a cabinet and I would need a bit more than the limit of 2m cable to be safe. From your test I see that in RAID 0 you reach a 979 MB/s read speed, id est 7,8Gb/s, which would be sufficient for the 20Gb/s capacity of Thunderbolt 3. I need to make a decision because I am not using these drives for a while now and I need large data capacities.
I have used a form of RAID 5 or RAID 6 for the past 2 decades without any issues. I am always able to get to data. So with RAID 5 if one drives fail, you can still mount the storage pool and get to your data. This is can also happens while the array is rebuilding, although at the expense of the overall performance. I have done successful drive rebuild for various types of RAID for years now and not had any issue, though it was not on a Terra Master. I know longterm this works. And for my array I used 6, 8, 12, 14 and 16 TB without issue. So large drives still works, it just that rebuild takes much longer for larger drives compared to smaller ones. But if you do 2 array at RAID 0, that works a well. All of this data redundancy is a just a peace of mind really. It is what you feel comfortable with. As far as noise goes it is not more than other NAS that I have used. Although you don't have fan control function in their DAS. For me I always set fan to full blast, I don't care so much about the noise I want my HDD to be cooled. Fan is much cheaper to replaced than drives. Also part 2 of my review is coming out, that will talk a bit more about noise. In short when I run on SSD I can hear the fan, but again it isa price to pay, It is not a high pitch noise, just rather a low hum. Reliability wise, in the short time that I have to test and simulate failure, there's really not a lot of way to test this but so far so good. Although I have found a glitch in the software that I'll cover in part 2 of the review. TB3 cables length does have limitation but these are copper. The one made from Fiber Optics are expensive but you can go longer length with those. For instance a 5m cable will cost $360 as of this writing. Based on what you told me, you might be better served with a NAS and 10 GbE less of a limitation for cable and they are relatively much cheater cable as well. And depending on the computer that you have you can either do direct connection or just get a card or adapter to get direct connection to the NAS.
Thank you for the very informative video! One very basic question I have: is it possible to do a RAID5 with 3 HDDs while leaving the remaining 3 slots for single HDD use?
Yes you can custom configure this and choose which disk you want to have have in RAID or not.
@@ArtIsRight I meant the remaining 2 slots... But yeah, so in the same enclosure, is it possible to configure a RAID and in parallel keep a couple of drives as single non-RAID units, everything through the same thunderbolt cable, correct? Sorry for double checking...
Hi, Great video. I am wanting to connect this to a Media Player (zidoo like a zappati). Could i connect this to TWO media player devices as the same time?
Because this is a DAS, probably not. It is meant to be used with a single machine. You probably should look at a NAS not a DAS
I have been running a Terramaster D5-330 with an old iMac for a couple of months with no issues.
Then I replaced the iMac with a new Mac Studio and I've had issues. Every 2 weeks the drive will disappear from the desktop and won't reappear unless I reinstall the driver (which is already there and approved in settings). Until I do that, RAID manager pro won't see it and it won't show up.
I know there are some drivers issues, some that I have run into in my testing as well. I would reach out to Terra master and see if they and by extension the RAID chip manufacture has an update for Apple
With all drives removed is it possible to get access inside to the handle holding screws and remove it?
You would have to take the enclosure apart to do this. Because even with the drives out, you still have the metal guides for the drive. You can see the screw closest to the front but the back one, like I said, you have to take the enclosure out to access it.
Im curious how this looks with unRAID or other RAID OS's. Do you have any videos that show that with a DAS?
I don't
What is best for say an Apple Home sharing for movies and shows. I have always just had an external hard drive but the movies are getting bigger and I always have to have the computer on. Can a NAS connect to Apple Home share without having the computer turned on all the time ?
Yes, this is a good solution for this. you can also install Plex or Ember to serve up medias and contents as well
Default has button in the back for raid 1 on hard drive 1&2, how would I create another raid 1 for hard drive 3&4?
No button on this model, software RAID control the hardware RAID chipset inside the device. You can choose to configure the drive in anyway that you like using the software.
I used software as opposed to hardware RAID due to the problems associated with hardware failure and subsequently not being able to get data off the disks without the specific hardware used to create the RAID. If this device dies can you still get the data off. With WD Duo enclosures for example, even mirrored RAID drives cannot be read in any other enclosure [not even same model WD enclosure IIRC ] or in on computer.
Obviously data on enclosure will be backed up, but the more redundancy the better.
That is a good point, it comes down to weighting pros and cons of each setup and most importantly what works and fits best with your workflow. If the enclosure dies, you can still get the data off but not easy, but this is why a backup is always recommended. These RAID are not the end all be all of storage, and everything come with risks. About getting the data off, you might have to send the drives to a recovery place. Although I do think that if you moves the drives into another identical enclosure it should work. I can't test this because I don't have another one in the studio, but I don't see why not. WD uses a lot of proprietary tech and many of those are done on the HDD circuit board, which causes a lot of issues. I even have issues with single WD portable HDD drives using custom circuit board, so when the interface on the board dies, you are for the most part of out luck, you can't just pull the drive out and put it into a SATA enclosure or adapter to get the data. And this may be the reason why you can't just transfer them into the similar enclosure. I steer clear of WD solutions other than single stand alone bare drives for more than a decade now. And if you have a back up, I would just start a new array and restore it.
Great video! You explanation is really clear and very easy to understand. Thank you! I have a question for you. Would it be possible to have two of these as RAID 5 and someway connect both as RAID 1, that way we would have a RAID 1 with 24TB? Software connection maybe?
You can, but there's really no point, You are not going to get much speed improvements. In fact you are going to get a lot latency.
Does JBOD mode expose the disks properly to something like windows storage spaces?
It will show as a large storage pool (combined all RAW storage space) or you can set it up as individual disks
@@ArtIsRight thanks for the reply. When configured as individual disks does the operating system see the hardware IDs, smart status and low level commands like trim and power states?
Is there any problem to mix drives? I.e. I have 2x20TB Seagate Exos + 2x18TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro + 16TB ironwolf. Is it posible to mix drives in the Terramaster D5 Thunderbolt or D8? Thanks
You can, however, if you use any type RAID will treat all of the larger capacity drives as the lowest one. So in your scenario, the 20 and 18TB will get set to 16TB to match the smallest drive. Otherwise you can use JBOD but I don't recommend it. You don't get the speed and redundancy. There are 2 ways to setup JBOD, you can set all 5 drives as a pool to which you will get the total capacity but without redundancy and slower speed. Or You can have each of the drives run as individual drives inside this enclosure and the OS will see these drives as individual. For this you won't get the large storage pool, no redundancy and speed will be based on the individual drive. If you are thinking JBOD I would recommend the latter.
@@ArtIsRight I see! Many thanks for the explanation. Your channel is very useful, thank you.
Is there any DAS (or maybe a NAS) that allow such “hybrid” (?!) mixture?
Synology using SHR - Synology Hybrid Raid this is the playlist on Synology that you should give a watch czcams.com/play/PLjlr8rlxl_q6Mhm4k0SpQ01eeJb4khZP1.html
With these speeds, is there any point in paying 2 or 3 times the price for this Thunderbolt device over USB 3 Gen 2 10Gbps devices?
Not so much and not for most workflow :) only the most demanding one such as 8K60P editors.
@4:39 Small mistake: the drives are three and a half inch, not three and a quarter inch. You are thinking about the old 5.25” floppy disks :-)
That handle sucks, you can’t stack multiple enclosures.
Thanks for that, I am aware of the size just said it wrong. :D
Can you attach the DAS to a NAS so the NAS can use the DAS as a backup automatically?
possibly
what if i want to expand an already raid? what should i do
Depending on the RAID, in a QNAP or Synology, you can upgrade each drive at a time, have it rebuild and when all of them are down with the rebuild you can expand the storage pool in the software. WIth a DAS, I am not sure, I know some are more limited than other. if you want to know more be as specific as you can with the question, your current setup, etc and what you want to achieve.
@@ArtIsRight thanks 4 your answer. well what i need is basically a DAS / or NAS to use as a archive of my video files. i got 3x 18TB HDDS i want to start with this 3. later on if i see that they get full over time, i wantt to expand the nas / DAS (i preffer a DAS to be honest bcause i dont need necesserely NAS functionality.
Yeah that is going to be a tough one, DAS usually use software management that controls a hardware chip, which are usually much more limited in nature. I'm not even sure if these terra master can do the task of expanding and etc.
If you connect this Terramaster DAS to an M1 Mac, the harddrives are not recognized. You have to install the drivers for which you need to switch off system security. And those drivers are not compatible with macOS Ventura anymore. And no update from terramaster in sight. 😓 Did I overlook something? Any help appreciated.
So for M1 Mac this is not an issue really, however, yearly OS updates can become an issue. And Ventura didn't just break terra master, it also broke many other software or slow it down as well. Yearly update is not necessary the most ideal for major OS. I'm sure they are working on an update but not right away. And yes I mentioned in this video and another follow up one as well that you need driver and lower system security. Hopefully an update will come soon. Things just takes time, Ventura was just out and between the beta and final, there were still lots of changes.
@@ArtIsRight Thanks for your answer! In the meantime, I tested the set-up on my second Mac and could get the drivers to work on macOS Ventura. I updated my main-Mac now and everything is running. With lowered system security though. That's the main culprit of the Terramaster/Highpoint drivers … 😕
I hear you, that is the only way to run KNXT Kernel extension that launch at OS preboot level. It is from terra master so you are ok. Just be really careful installing other things that have KNXT
@@ArtIsRight Thats why I won't buy this enclosure. I have their two bay unit which is fine, no drivers or software needed on a mac, but for the price. these likely ongoing issues and the slow speeds after spending a lot on ssd's, I'll look for alternatives...
Hey can I use this on two iMacs separately and the data will still show up? Or I need to reconfigure via a software install on the 2nd one?
Does this have hardware raid card inside? Once its setup on 1 mac and its disconnected & if plugged into another it will still show up on 2nd?
You don't need to configure RAID but you do need to install the Kernel extension for it to work on the second Mac. Yes it does have a RAID chip inside, not a card per se, but rather a controller. If you don't have the kernel extension on the second computer, it won't work aka macOS won't see the drives/RAID array
@@ArtIsRight so basically I need to install drivers on my iMac intel and MacBook Pro 16” with the settings then it would be seen ?
yes
@@ArtIsRight got it thank you...which form of nvme ssd do you suggest for faster storage? was thinking about sandisk professional pro blade station and blades and terramaster d5 for mass storage
If you were looking at drive that are in an enclosure that can be easily swapped around then Sandisk professional blade is the way to go. However, if you're OK with just buying drives and putting them in your own enclosure that can be a really great way to save a lot of money. You'll still have fast drive but you might need to have more of those laying around. I think the D5 would be good for mass storage either that or looking other solutions like a NAS
@ArtisRight You said "if you just want reliability on a spinning hard disk...the best thing to do is HFS+"...so you are saying APFS isn't superior to HFS+ on a DAS when it comes to reliablity? I wished you elaborated on that point with some more detail why. Should I format in APFS or HFS+?
Spinning drive HFS+ because it is a more optimized file system for traditional HDD. APFS is designed as a ground-up for SSD, so the management of the file system in the background is different. This has to do with moving files around, where to store them, clean up, etc.
@@ArtIsRight that is a super helpful answer.
@@ArtIsRight thank you!
Can i set it up and switch it between both MAC and PC with raid 5 configed?
Provided that the drives are installed on both and that you are using FAT32 file system or EXFAT sure. You can use HFS+ as well, which is Mac native file system but you will need a plug in on windows to read or write. Same thing can be said for NTFS.
@@ArtIsRight thanks so much for the reply,
Would I be better off going a set up that had a physical raid 5 switch on the device?
Otherwise are you saying if I stick with the Terra Master, if I just format them for fat32 I can plug in and out between pc and mac with out any issues whilst keeping raid 5 configuration?
The terra master has a RAID controller chip, it is software controlled and it does need drives and kernel boot up for it to work. This said, for what you want to do, you have to use the build in chipset raid. Software raid through Mac or windows the other OS won't understand what you have. So of your use, your options of setting it up are limited. Also I would advise ExFAT rather than FAT32, the former does not have 4GB file size limitation. FAT32 is an antiquated file system.
If your hard drive survive but your hardware dies, your data is lost. The tech behind this gig will never be repeatable.
Not quite, if you have another rig you can transfer the drives to another rig. The drives data are not hardware encoded to the rig. Also, this is not a back up, it is a redundancy to minimize down time for data failure, these 2 concepts and ideas should not be conflated with each other.
Can you test this with ssds?
I need to find 5 of the same SSD, I thought about this, but here's the thing, the overall speed won't change much because we are talking about TB3 bus speed being the limitation. But let me see what I can do.
SSD test coming soon....
@@ArtIsRight i second this request 😊 i need an external storage for my mac studio and i want to go for a full ssd DAS enclosure. Thinking about OWC thunderbay 4 mini … or something similar
1st comment
yay! 🎉
For how expensive that is the cheap plastic caddys are terrible looking.
All of the other brands are plastic caddy as well, most, if not all of the quick mounts are. Metal don't work well for this.
@@ArtIsRight I have a g raid and hd a caldigt and a Owc and none of them use plastic like that
got cha, well you now know what brand to buy for yourself then. either way this save you the time buying one of these just to find out about the tray and return it. Each to their own, I use both metal and plastic and they are both fine, not something that I am concerned about.
Building a NAS will be better in every way and cheaper. But probably not for non-technical people.
This is a DAS and not a NAS. I am aware of your perspective. However, self build NAS is not in every way better than pre build one, technical or not, ease of use and maintenance has to be seen as a feature and many self build NAS can lack this, or requirer the know how, which is fine, but it should be seen as another featuring lacking.
is really ugly, I wish Synology release DAS units.
ok and not their market plan