Experience with the QNAP TS-451D Home Server: A Semi-Professional Solution

The TS-451D adopts the traditional rectangular design of network storage devices, but the designer has made some design tweaks in the details of the TS-451D, such as the blue coating on the button area on the left side of the front panel, which makes the TS-451D look less cold like digital products and adds a touch of life.

The blue-coated area on the front of the device is divided into two parts. The upper part is the working status display area, which sequentially shows the power status light, network status light, and hard drive working indicator lights from 1 to 4, providing a very intuitive reflection of the general operating status of the TS-451D. The lower part is the control key area, with the power button on top, the “one-click backup” button below, and at the bottom, a USB 3.0 interface.

Here, I need to explain a bit about this very practical “one-click backup” button. Many friends think that just plugging in a USB drive can achieve one-click backup, but this is a misconception. To achieve this function, you first need to set it up in the QNAP NAS system’s HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync program. The “one-click backup” can achieve two-way backup between the USB drive and NAS, but after each setup, it can only achieve one-way transfer backup; to change it, you must reset it. Additionally, you need to predefine the backup directory.

Returning to the design of the TS-451D, the right side of the front panel is the hard drive bay area, which can accommodate four SATA hard drives. The installation of hard drives is very user-friendly and easy to use. The first step is to gently pry up the bay cover to open each hard drive bay, and simply pull to slide out the hard drive box. Since the hard drive installation supports tool-less installation, the second step is to place the hard drive in the bay and easily secure it with the provided clip. The third step is to gently slide the hard drive bay back into the storage position and push it slightly harder. Here, I want to remind everyone that from left to right are hard drives 1 to 4, and after the NAS system is installed, the order of these four hard drives must not be mixed up, so I suggest marking the corresponding positions on each hard drive before installation, so that if you need to remove a hard drive later, there won’t be a problem putting it back in the wrong spot.

The back of the TS-451D is naturally the interface area. Arranged from top to bottom are an HDMI 2.0 interface, two RJ45 gigabit network interfaces, three USB 3.0 interfaces, and a power interface. It is worth mentioning that the topmost is the Reset button; pressing and holding it for 3 seconds can restore the administrator password and system settings to factory defaults, but the disk data will be retained. If you need to clear the previously created users, user groups, shared document folders, etc., you need to press and hold the Reset button for 10 seconds continuously.

The system installation of the TS-451D is relatively simple overall. Before the installation, you need to download the Qfinder software from the QNAP official website, then make some simple selections according to your actual situation, and click “Next” to proceed with the system installation. Unlike Windows system installations, the QNAP system installation does not require you to set up the hard drives; you need to enter the system’s “Storage and Snapshot Manager” application after the system installation to set up the hard drives. The hard drive setup is a very critical and important step for NAS, which requires a certain level of professional knowledge to achieve the best setup.

The hard drive setup first requires establishing a “storage pool.” The concept of a “storage pool” is relatively professional because NAS systems differ from the familiar Windows systems; NAS systems need data backup, data protection, and other measures. Therefore, a “storage pool” is used to place all data files. You can simply understand that NAS systems need to divide the storage space into several “ponds,” each with its own independent data backup. For ordinary users, it is sufficient to allocate all storage space as one “storage pool.”

After establishing the “storage pool,” you choose the RAID array method. I won’t explain RAID arrays in detail here; those interested can search online. For this experience with the TS-451D, we used two Seagate IronWolf 6TB hard drives, so we chose the RAID 1 method focused on data backup.

After selecting the RAID array method, the next step is to establish a storage volume. A storage volume is equivalent to a disk partition on a computer, with types including static volumes, thick volumes, and thin volumes. My suggestion is to create all space as a thick volume and establish different directories under one thick volume, while different users can limit access rights to different directories. It is worth mentioning that QNAP’s unique snapshot feature is like an operation archive, which can record the status of thick volumes, thin volumes, or block iSCSI LUN at specific points in time. When users accidentally delete or modify data in the snapshot, it can be quickly restored to that state. However, it should be noted that after creating a snapshot, the read and write performance of the volume or LUN may decrease by 5% to 30%. Additionally, only thick volumes and thin volumes support the snapshot feature.

Once the hard drives are set up, the next step is to establish shared folders and create access users and permissions, which I won’t detail here. Next, I will address a few common NAS-related concerns that ordinary consumers might have.

What do home users mainly use a network storage device for? NAS has many functions, but from my experience, ordinary consumers mainly use it for two purposes: first, to store important images and video resources; second, to access and retrieve stored multimedia materials conveniently, quickly, and securely.

Let’s first look at storage. Since we upload important data to the NAS, such as work documents, family travel photos, videos, etc., I strongly recommend that everyone install more than two hard drives and set up a RAID 1 mirrored array to ensure that important data is not lost. There are two ways to upload data to the NAS: via PC or via a mobile app.

If there is a large amount of data to upload, such as after the initial installation of the TS-451D or after returning from a trip, I recommend using the first method, which is uploading via PC, because the TS-451D supports dual gigabit networks, making large data uploads more efficient.

For example, with our two Seagate IronWolf 6TB hard drives (RAID 1), whether uploading a single 4K HDR original ISO file (67GB), a Blu-ray original folder (47GB), or a single video file (10GB), the speed remains around 113MB/s. When uploading a single video file (2GB) or a mixed folder containing images, music, and documents (6GB), the speed stays between 60MB/s and 80MB/s.

There is also a method for backing up data from the PC to the TS-451D, which is to install the QNAP NetBak Replicator software on the PC for automated backups. Those interested can download and try it; I won’t elaborate further.

As for accessing the NAS quickly and securely, several mobile apps must be mentioned. QNAP provides many mobile apps for different needs, but due to space limitations, I will only briefly discuss a few of the most commonly used ones, such as Qfile, QVideo, QuMagie, Qphoto, and Qmanager. However, before using these mobile apps, the corresponding server-side software must be installed in the TS-451D system.

It’s commendable that since there are so many software options in the NAS system software store, QNAP considers that some users may not know which corresponding software to install. Therefore, when you log into the NAS system remotely using a mobile app, the system will automatically check if the corresponding software is installed, and if not, it will automatically install the necessary server-side software.

You may have noticed that we mentioned remote login here. Yes, the TS-451D supports remote login via the local area network or the internet. If the mobile device and TS-451D are on the same local network, logging in is simple; just enter the username and password. For internet remote login, the TS-451D provides various remote login methods, and I recommend using the simplest and most convenient method, which is the “myQNAPPcloud” service in the NAS system. The usage is also straightforward: register a “QNAP ID” in the “myQNAPPcloud” software in the NAS system, and complete the registration using your mobile phone. Once set up, all settings for the NAS can be automatically completed, making it very convenient. After successful setup, even if you are far away, you can easily access your home TS-451D through various QNAP mobile apps via the internet.

Next, I will introduce a few commonly used QNAP mobile apps through some simple scenario applications. Working overtime at home is a common application scenario for modern urban workers. Typically, we copy the documents processed at home onto a USB drive and take the USB drive to the office to copy them to the work computer. However, forgetting or losing the USB drive is a situation many people encounter. If you have a TS-451D at home, you won’t have to worry about this anymore. Because you can simply copy the documents to the TS-451D, and once you get to the office, you can use Qfile to remotely download the documents to your phone and then transfer them to the work computer.

Qphoto Interface

In the past, when traveling and taking many photos, I could only upload them to the computer after returning home. Now, with Qphoto, I can upload photos to the TS-451D right after taking them, provided I have enough data. Besides instant uploading of photos back home, Qphoto also allows us to access and share the stored photos with others while not at home.

In addition to Qphoto, QNAP also provides an app called QuMagie. QuMagie offers smarter photo management compared to Qphoto. For example, it can automatically categorize photos stored in the NAS based on facial and object recognition through the QNAP AI image recognition engine, allowing us to quickly find the photos we want in “People Albums,” “Event Albums,” “Location Albums,” and “Activity Albums.”

This AI engine relies on the powerful hardware performance of the NAS, indexing and organizing each photo uploaded to the NAS system. The TS-451D, equipped with an Intel Celeron J4025 dual-core processor and 4GB of memory, perfectly supports this massive indexing calculation. Overall, between QuMagie and Qphoto, I personally recommend using QuMagie.

Additionally, Qmusic and Qvideo provide remote access to music and videos, but from my personal experience, their usage is not very high, and their usage methods are not much different from Qphoto, so I won’t detail them. It’s worth mentioning that earlier we noted that the TS-451D provides an HDMI interface, which allows it to connect directly to display devices to play high-definition sources. The built-in processor of the TS-451D also provides excellent audio and video decoding capabilities. However, I find this feature somewhat redundant because the actual usage scenario is rare. Based on my experience with NAS, it is generally used with a high-definition player connected to the NAS over the network to play stored movies, with audio and video decoding handled by the more professional high-definition player.

Another noteworthy mobile app is Qmanager, which is a must-have app when using QNAP. In practical use, using the PC to set up the TS-451D is certainly the most comprehensive method. However, in most cases, once we set it up, we won’t make comprehensive changes to the NAS system settings; we only need to make some minor adjustments. Therefore, the mobile Qmanager becomes very necessary. Qmanager can basically perform most of the management, monitoring, and settings of the TS-451D. For example, you can remotely check the working status of your home TS-451D, and when you receive a power outage notification, you can immediately shut it down remotely to avoid sudden power loss damaging the hard drives.

Honestly, while I have talked a lot about the TS-451D, this is still not enough; I probably only covered a small part of its functionalities. However, due to space limitations, I can only share the aspects most concerning to ordinary users. If you are interested in other features of the TS-451D, feel free to leave us a message, and if we get the chance, we can discuss the most pressing questions next time. In conclusion, the TS-451D is high-performance, has four bays, and is affordably priced, making it a suitable choice for semi-professional users.

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