The QNAP TR-004 is a simple USB enclosure with a fun feature, it supports RAID. This enclosure takes four 3.5″ or 2.5″ drives and attaches them to a computer or a NAS via USB 3. Instead of just presenting four individual drives or as a large JBOD, which are certainly options, the enclosure also has a built-in RAID functionality.
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QNAP TR-004 Hardware Overview
The front of the unit is very simple. There are the four drive trays and status LEDs.
Something our readers might notice is that this is a similar chassis to the company’s 4-bay NAS offerings and even the QNAP TL-D400S we reviewed. If you want a higher-performing version that connects via SATA directly instead of USB, the TL-D400S is a better bet.
The drive trays are interesting. One can see that we can put either 3.5″ drives into the tool-less trays. Alternatively, there are mounting holes for screws to use 2.5″ SATA drives.
Inside the unit we have a simple SATA backplane and we can see the big fan.
The rear has a fan, power input, power button, a USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) interface, and then the red and white RAID level switches and the set button.
The procedure for changing the RAID level of the device is on a sticker on the top of the unit. We can configure the enclosure to present drives as individual, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1/10, RAID 5, or software-controlled. We showed How to Setup RAID on QNAP USB RAID Enclosure both in hardware modes as well as the software-controlled mode if you want to learn more about that.
This is not too hard to figure out, but it feels like a 1990s solution, rather than the slick interfaces we have these days.
Included with the system is a USB Type-C to Type-A cable. The Type-C end plugs into the enclosure, but if you have a Mac, you can just use another Type-C to Type-C cable.
The fan itself is relatively quiet under normal operation. Next, let us get to the setup.
Just a quick note
I use these machines as a DAS
The usb on the 4 bay is only Gen 1 – 5Gbps
The 2 bay has the Gen 2 – 10 Gbps
I do personally appreciate the possibility of using DIP switches to set things up, as it means I don’t necessarily need to use proprietary drivers to change the RAID levels. Especially if I were ever to use it with a system that doesn’t have those drivers available.
That remark about not updating the firmware, I understood that. I updated the firmware on their other usb-attached enclosure with 2 bays and that was a mistake. Ended up having to RMA it back to QNAP.
I just got one of these, no usb light and windows doesn’t think anything is connected, drives spin up and have green lights. Drives do have power disable pin.