QNAP TR-004 Performance
On the performance side, here are four Seagate Exos X22 20TB drives in the enclosure using ATTO Disk Benchmark.
It seems like the answer is that one gets around 250MB/s maximum. We are using RAID 10 here because the RAID controller is DRAM-less so RAID 5 performance was poor and rebuild times are long enough that with 20TB drives, we did not feel comfortable going down that path.
Next, let us get to the power consumption.
QNAP TR-004 Power Consumption
The USB RAID enclosure comes with a 60W power brick, which also lets us know it is a relatively low-power device.
Power without drives at idle is around 1.6W.
With four 20TB drives, we often saw 30-33W when the disks were spinning but without access and slightly higher when there was disk access.
The maximum we saw was around 54W during spin-up.
Final Words
For folks who need more storage from a QNAP NAS, a backup appliance for that NAS, or those who simply do not want a NAS and want RAID 10 external storage, this seems to work reasonably well so long as you do not update the firmware. We would avoid firmware updates unless absolutely necessary given our experience, and that feels strange to type.
USB Type-A/ Type-C are not the most secure connectors, but for a lot of folks, they are at least easy. This is the type of enclosure we can see many folks who want to do backups of files and then store them offline. It is also an easy way to move a lot of data from a desktop or laptop to a NAS. At $219 for the enclosure, this is going to be our recommendation over the TR-002 in most cases. It is larger to accommodate two extra drives, but the extra capacity is useful. The TR-002 is $80-90 to connect each of the two drives it holds. This TR-004 is an incremental for $40-60 depending on the day making it $55 to connect each drive.
While you are paying more for QNAP’s brand than some of the cheaper options, this is a relatively well-thought-out enclosure that matches QNAP’s other 4-bay units.
Where to Buy
We purchased ours on Amazon.
- QNAP TR-002 (Amazon Affiliate)
- Seagate Exos X22 20TB Renewed (Amazon Affiliate)
- WD Gold 20TB (Amazon Affiliate)
Note: We participate in various affiliate programs and may earn a small commission if you use these links.
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.
Thanks for this helpful review. I want to clarify something. I have one of these coming and want to run it as RAID 5. You mentioned that hardware RAID 5 is slow because the unit is dram-less. Did you test that? If you were going to run the unit as RAID 5 you would use the software mode? Thanks again!
QNAP TR-004 Firmware 1.2.0 2022-11-01
[Fixed Issues]
– Fixed an issue where the TVS-882ST3 NAS could not detect the TR-004 expansion unit if the expansion unit had 20 TB Western Digital WD201FKGX-68BKJN0 HDDs installed in all four slots.
You should be able to do this now.