The Terra-Master F2-210 is the latest addition to the oriental house, a product with a more discreet profile than the brothers F2-220 and F4-220, much more powerful but also compared to the D5 Thunderbolt 3, designed for direct connection and not for network connection.
The idea of this small NAS is to serve the needs of the living room, or a small office where storage is the most important thing, but it is also equipped with the basic services and above all with Plex.
Terra-Master F2-210, the review
Preliminary operations
The new Terra-Master F2-210 looks good right from the start: the packaging is essential, in rigid cardboard with a rubberized polystyrene inside to protect the little one during the journey: to accompany it the power supply (external), a screwdriver cross and two sets of screws, one for mechanical disks and one for 2.5 “SSDs.
Preparing the drive is very simple, but as for the older brothers you need to be careful to insert disks that do not contain operating systems, it is better to format them first from a Mac or PC, to avoid that the first installation is not successful.
In our case we did some tests with different types of drives but in the end we opted for a 6TB WD RED drives and a 1 TB SanDisk SSD (which we usually keep housed in our handy HDD protection case): in particular we hijacked the 6TB mechanical drive as a document storage unit while the SSD was used as a disk cache by WD RED.
A choice, ours, designed to optimize speed, because the data entered inside was not essential (basically the backup of the iMac): those who want to use the Terra-Master F2-210 for work would do well to consider a more robust configuration in RAID 1, losing something in data access speed but certainly gaining security given the complete redundancy. With just two Bays then it is not that much can be done, although for the sector they are more than enough.
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A beautiful silence was never written
Once put on the track, the Terra-Master F2-210 demonstrated what we expected: it did not make itself felt at all, with the ability to manage workloads in the “Home” area in a completely transparent way.
The 6TB WD RED drive, which usually has a dull echo (like all mechanical drives for NAS) also showed good auditory response, a sign that the Terra-Master F2-210 case design works.
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The heart is built around a quad-core ARM V8 64-bit at 1.4 GHz, equipped with 1 GB of RAM (in fact not a lot and not replaceable): this however guarantees 4K video transcoding and several other Apps, including to which we mention in addition to Plex also Joomla, Prestashop, Emy Server, WordPress, Transmission and Piwik in addition to backup.
Basically, much more than what can be asked of an apparatus like this.
Aesthetically it is decidedly austere and we have not noticed any differences compared to its brother F2-220: frontally it shows the two sleds with easy access with hook device while in the back there are two USB-A and a Gigabit Ethernet socket. The contour is given by an Aluminum case with porous paint, pleasant to the touch that has never heated up.
The large rear fan has never bothered and although we put it under the pressure, it has never shown itself ready to go up to speed: it must be said, however, that we used the Terra-Master F2-210 especially in the living room, for the copy. iMac backup and Plex movie management.
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OS, vertical growth
We must admit it, the first time we saw Terra-Master's OS we turned up our noses and indicated the situation as in due growth, this is because the comparison with the current market is a must. However, we had already noticed some news with the F2-220 model but during the review of the Terra-Master F2-210 the jump is obvious.
Although the cut is elementary, the most important functions are all there, from the multimedia app to active services, from apps for development to support for external disk formats (FAT, ExFAT and finally HFS +) up to the ubiquitous Plex, which in the home environment carries out most of the extra archive tasks.
The interface is very colorful but extremely simple, with commands that can be found immediately and customizations that are never too crazy: advanced functions typical of SME solutions are missing but in the Home environment the product is now perfectly balanced.
Also commendable is the App, finally present, for iOS and Android, which allows browsing of documents even if it does not offer a complete diagnosis of the NAS and does not allow the main operations such as shutdown (but we are confident in this).
The App Store offers the necessary solutions for the living room environment and for something more even in the SOHO market, where such a NAS is not a bad solution, even if in a business perspective we advise readers to evaluate the most powerful F2-220.
The possibility of encrypting internal disks and even individual shared volumes is interesting, a practically mandatory solution for freelancers who intend to store sensitive data, given that even if they are not real companies they are also subject to the GDPR.
Considerations
The Terra-Master F2-210 is a good product, very good from the hardware point of view, where excellent in the price / performance ratio and with a rapidly growing software, which already now offers stability and practicality but which, observing the last year , we can say that we can think well for the future, even the near future.
We see it well in the living room next to the TV, as well as as an important aid (especially for encryption) for the freelancer, as well as in a small studio, where the need for services beyond archiving is not much felt.
Silence is important and guaranteed, the simplicity of the OS, for better or for worse, also allows those who have no experience to try the integrated solutions, as well as have fun with all the potential of Plex, which here do not pay attention to the ARM processor and they show themselves very well.
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Pro : • Excellent price / performance ratio • Quiet • Simple and light OS
Versus: • At times the OS is too light • The RAM is not expandable
Price: 159.99 Euro
Terra-Master F2-210 can be purchased starting from the page of the parent company's website, or directly from the Amazon.it pages
