TerraMaster F2-220 Review: Network Attached Storage at Affordable Price
Conclusion
Just a few years ago it was extremely hard to find the perfect NAS that would not kill your wallet. Today the market is flooded with manufacturers from all over the world that offer different storage devices at affordable prices. TerraMaster is one of them and what I really admire is their dedication towards storage devices. On their website the only thing you will find is storage related products. A company that has one directional approach is more likely to succeed. Terra Master offers a wide range of network and direct attached devices for small business and home use.
The F2-220 is TerraMaster’s two bay NAS. This small network attached storage is light and packs a lot of horse power underneath. The TerraMaster F2-220 is powered by a Intel Dual Core processor that is running at 2.4GHz. This tells me that this small device has great potential for running a wide range of applications. However, while taking a look at the applications that are available to install, the number of is about a dozen readily available apps, which a little on the low side when compared to other manufactures. Unlike other devices, TerraMaster does not provide an easy way to install applications manually and is the only issue I have with TOS operating system. The F2-220 has plenty of horse power to run some of the most resource demanding applications such as Asterisk, Couch Potato, Plex or FireFly.
What you can expect from the TerraMaster F2-220 is the ability to safely store your files on this device. The F2-220 also has customizable access control so you can keep confidential data away from unauthorized eyes. For small business, access control is a must. For data access F2-220 offer multiple file transfer protocols so you are not limited to just Windows File Services and Mac File Services. It is also worth to mentioning that you can host websites on this device however, only PHP protocol is currently supported.
Dashboard (TOS) is where all of the NAS configurations are made. The OS is very smooth and I did not experience any lag or issues while testing F2-220. Health information is available right away and is very helpful to maintain knowledge of the status of the device.
Performance of the TerraMaster F2-220 is on par with other NAS devices I have reviewed and I really have no complains as far as data transfer. When compared to QNAP TS-253A, F2-220 performed at about the same level. I did see some slower speeds on File Copy to NAS test however, from the user experience I have not noticed any difference in transfer speeds.
I would love to see dual network cards in small device as this that offers failover or LAG. I have tested both RAID 1 and RAID 0 configurations on F2-220 and was very pleased with the results. My personal recommendation with the TerraMaster F2-220 is to use a RAID 1 configuration as it provides redundancy in storage unlike RAID 0 which does not. However, configurations will vary depending on individual needs and requirements.
Price vs Value is very fair for the TerraMaster F2-220 NAS. Currently Disk-less version of the F2-220 retails for about $ 199.95 USD. At $199.95 USD the F2-220 is one of the more inexpensive NAS we’ve tested. Comparing to other two bay NAS devices on the market, I feel that Terra Master F2-220 hits a sweet spot for users looking for network storage while at the same time not forcing consumers to pay for features that they may seldom use.
