Setup
Setting up the TerraMaster F2-210, when everything is functioning as it should, is a relatively straight forward task that almost anyone could undertake with a little bit of research and guidance, but, as we found out, when things don’t quite go to plan, the process is infuriating and downright unacceptable for a finished product.
Starting with the good, TerraMaster have done a decent job of explaining the process and hold your hand throughout the setup procedure. There’s not too many steps meaning you can be up and running inside of 10 minutes, including installing and initialising brand-new hard drives. We’d give the overall experience a good 7/10.
However, when we first unboxed the device and began our evaluation, we ran into a tiny issue that rapidly turned into a huge problem. TerraMaster’s setup procedure went as planned, but once into the device’s Operating System, we were unable to obtain an internet connection; we tried opening ports on our router, removed switches and other devices from the network, swapped out ethernet cables, entered the DHCP settings manually, tried the NAS enclosure at another premises, we even had a network specialist take a look, all to no avail. That wasn’t the end of it though, we delved deeper and logged into the backend of the machine via SSH and had a root around with PuTTY. This unearthed an even more frustrating problem, where the device was reporting it had a functioning internet connection and was resolving addresses. We could even have the device send out test emails without delay. What was going on?
We contacted TerraMaster’s helpdesk on the Friday afternoon but had to wait until the Monday afternoon before we received a reply.
It turned out, after about 10 hours of fiddling around, spread across 3 days, reattempting the setup process several times, all with zero error messages, that TerraMaster’s servers weren’t responding to our device and, based on that, it was refusing to even attempt to obtain any kind of connection. To this day, around a fortnight later, we’re still struggling to get full operability from the Applications Store.
UI/Software
We’ve included a video demo of the TNAS Operating System below, running on version 4.1.10-2924. As you’ll see in the demo, the OS feels incredibly snappy, responsive and fluid, it also looks decent with some lovely background wallpaper options and colourful icons. There are a few niggly little issues like it showing the internet as disconnected all of the time and there being no way of seeing which application/service is accessing the HDDs but they’re certainly not deal-breakers.
Setting up the TerraMaster F2-210, when everything is functioning as it should, is a relatively straight forward task that almost anyone could undertake with a little bit of research and guidance, but, as we found out, when things don’t quite go to plan, the process is infuriating and downright unacceptable for a finished product.
Starting with the good, TerraMaster have done a decent job of explaining the process and hold your hand throughout the setup procedure. There’s not too many steps meaning you can be up and running inside of 10 minutes, including installing and initialising brand-new hard drives. We’d give the overall experience a good 7/10.
However, when we first unboxed the device and began our evaluation, we ran into a tiny issue that rapidly turned into a huge problem. TerraMaster’s setup procedure went as planned, but once into the device’s Operating System, we were unable to obtain an internet connection; we tried opening ports on our router, removed switches and other devices from the network, swapped out ethernet cables, entered the DHCP settings manually, tried the NAS enclosure at another premises, we even had a network specialist take a look, all to no avail. That wasn’t the end of it though, we delved deeper and logged into the backend of the machine via SSH and had a root around with PuTTY. This unearthed an even more frustrating problem, where the device was reporting it had a functioning internet connection and was resolving addresses. We could even have the device send out test emails without delay. What was going on?
We contacted TerraMaster’s helpdesk on the Friday afternoon but had to wait until the Monday afternoon before we received a reply.
Hi Mattew,
Sorry the application server has some problem, we are fixing it now.
Any news will let you know.
Sorry the application server has some problem, we are fixing it now.
Any news will let you know.
It turned out, after about 10 hours of fiddling around, spread across 3 days, reattempting the setup process several times, all with zero error messages, that TerraMaster’s servers weren’t responding to our device and, based on that, it was refusing to even attempt to obtain any kind of connection. To this day, around a fortnight later, we’re still struggling to get full operability from the Applications Store.
UI/Software
We’ve included a video demo of the TNAS Operating System below, running on version 4.1.10-2924. As you’ll see in the demo, the OS feels incredibly snappy, responsive and fluid, it also looks decent with some lovely background wallpaper options and colourful icons. There are a few niggly little issues like it showing the internet as disconnected all of the time and there being no way of seeing which application/service is accessing the HDDs but they’re certainly not deal-breakers.
