TS-459 Pro & Twonky & HD > 2TB & Hot Spare

[zeitverschwendung]

Hi,

I am planning to buy a TS-459 Pro (or TS-559 Pro) soon (Christmas is coming), but there are still some features I'd like to be sure about prior to the purchase.

1. On the forum I found some topics on the Twonky Media Server. I also read that version 6 of Twonky will probably be integrated into the next Turbo NAS FIRMWARE V3.4. Is it sure that version 6 will be integrated into V3.4 and if yes, when will V3.4 be released? If it's released, will the latest Twonky version be available on any QNAP hardware or only on some?

2. The HDD compatibility list only lists drives with maximum 2TB capacity until now. Since this border has been crossed some time ago I'd like to be future-proof with the hardware I buy now. I'd rather upgrade to disks with higher capacity in some years than to have to buy a new NAS. In the forum I found many questions referring this topic but unfortunately no really satisfying answers. Could you tell me something about QNAP's approach on this issue? What about the actual QNAP hardware, will there be a satisfying approach supporting HDDs > 2TB or do I have to wait for the next hardware generation? What about (U)EFI, 64bit OS, 512 byte vs. 4k etc.? And if some of the current QNAP hardware will support those drives, which ones will this probably be and which won't?

3. Since I plan to use the NAS at home, it'll probably be sleeping 90% of its lifetime, so sleeping modes and overall power consumption aren't of minor concern. I'm not absolutely sure yet which NAS to buy, the TS-459 Pro, TS-559 Pro, or one of the corresponding Plus-versions. Looking at the comparison charts, the faster Plus-versions seem not to impact power consumption at all. What about the difference between the 4 and 5 slot versions in case both are equipped with 4 HDDs only... will there be a difference or does the difference mainly result from the additional HDD? Besides that I'd like to use a hot spare, which is activated if one of the other drives has a problem. This ‘hot’ spare should in fact be cold until it needs to be activated, is it implemented to be sleeping until needed or is it running all the time? Last question to this topic, how reliable do the power saving functions work now, I read about some issues from time to time… will the device including all HDDs reliably go to sleep mode if not accesses for some time?
If I buy a QNAP NAS from one of the big dealers, do you know if they (or who) delivers them equipped with which type of HDDs, since they normally just inform about the capacity, not the models. Or do they just equip the NAS with the cheapest HDDs so that I rather should buy them by myself?


Some friends of mine have been waiting for quite some time for issues like the above-mentioned to be resolved. Until now, most of them decided to buy other brand’s NASs since they became tired of waiting and didn’t want to hope for those features to be implemented in future. So I know about a dozen potential customers who decided to buy the competition’s cheaper devices, which offered the features they needed, even though lacking of many of the cool additional features QNAP offers.
So, since I am interested in the full bandwidth of possible features, the question is, is it worth for me to wait for some more time?
Is there a roadmap for the next firmware versions, when they will be available and which features they will offer, maybe even with a percentage of completion for each feature?
Will I be able to spend my Christmas holidays on configuring my new NAS, or would I regret to buy now and should rather wait for the next model?

Thanks in advance for your time!

[zeitverschwendung]

9 days till Xmas, more than a month since I posted those questions, still no reply. I wonder if the after-sales service is more reliable than the presales. If there are no answers to my questions, this information would already do as feedback. If the answers would cause devastating potential buyer behavior, I may understand why there is none. If I simply wrote too much, which may have scared off any potential responder, I am deeply sorry for this mistake, but did at least choose the correct alias for what I did, 'zeitverschwendung'. Would anybody from the presales service team please condescend to provide me with the pieces of information I am longing for? Thanks in advance!

[QNAPJames]

Hi there,

1. v3.4 beta (http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=151&t=37720) is now available in the beta forum. As to TwonkyMedia 6, since we are still testing its stability, therefore, we offer our users the TwonkyMedia 6 QPKG for test in advance.(http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=224&t=37706). And this QPKG is available for all models.

2. We have been working on the hard drive compatibility for our NAS models, including drives larger than 2TB. Basically the hard drive support will come with the future firmware upgrade (if need), therefore, you won't need to wait for the next generation hardware. As to the advanced technologies you mentioned, unless there's a hardware limitation, otherwise we would always try to satisfy our customers and bring them the better stuff.

3. Basically the 4 and 5 bay NAS have the same hardware, therefore, the major difference of power consumption comes from the hard drive. And the (hot) spare drive might not in sleeping mode, but the probe of the spare drive will be parking. The hard drives will go to standby mode automatically if there's no access. If you encountered any problem regarding HDD standby, you may contact our tech. support, and they will be willing to check it for you (to find out which process prevents the hard drives go to standby mode). If you would like to know what HDDs will come with the NAS, it would be better contact the dealer directly for more information, since QNAP only provides the NAS without any HDDs.

Feel free to ask if you have any other questions : )

James

[zeitverschwendung]

你好,

thank you very much for the reply, I'll go shopping now