30-second review
TerraMaster makes a wide range of NAS hardware, from cheap two-bay NAS designed for home use to larger floor-standing and rack-mounted platforms aimed squarely at businesses.
The TerraMaster T12-500 Pro fits neatly into the latter grouping, although a home user could make it the centrepiece of a massive media system.
This NAS can mount no less than twelve conventional hard drives or SATA SSDs and another two NVMe modules, bringing the total quoted storage capacity to 264 TB (22 TB x 12). Obviously, drives larger than 22TB are available, and each of the NVMe drive slots could hold an 8TB module, so it should be possible to get more than 300TB installed in this unit.
TerraMaster envisioned the T12-500 Pro’s specific function as a main backup server or offsite backup in a business with 50 to 100 people.
Anyone familiar with the TOS operating system used on other TerraMaster NAS products will immediately be at home here, as it uses TOS 6.0 and can install all the same apps and tools.
The cost of this unit is much higher than that of a typical NAS, but given the number of drives and the computing platform inside, it’s not expensive. The budget needed to fill it with 22TB or larger drives will be much more than the cost of this NAS.
The downside of this choice is that it lacks some of the extra features that other backup solutions include, like lockable trays, ECC memory, and Thunderbolt ports. Conversely, it’s relatively easy to deploy, has dual 10GbE LAN ports, and is perfect for a growing small business that might want to start modestly and then expand.
With relatively few competitors for this slice of the NAS market, this might be one of the best NAS devices.
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? From $1,800/£1,700
- When is it out? Available now
- Where can you get it? Direct from TerraMaster and online retailers
Direct from TerraMaster, the T12-500 Pro is $1,799.99 or £1,699.99, depending on whether you are in the USA or UK. It can be sourced from the TerraMaster outlet on AliExpress for less, but import duty and shipping might make it not worth the wait.
The cheapest Synology alternative is the eight-bay DiskStation DS1823xs+, which costs a little less than the T12-500 Pro, but to reach the same amount of drive capacity requires a Synology DX517 expansion unit that costs another £450/$470. Also, getting 10GbE networking requires a PCIe card, and the processor in that NAS is not on par with the one in the TerraMaster.
From QNAP, the TS-1655-8G is available with twelve 3.5-inch drive bays, two M.2 NVMe slots, dual 2.5GbE, and PCIe slots, but it starts at £2000 or $1850. What undermines this option is that the TS-1655-8G uses only an Intel Atom-class processor, DDR4 memory, and cards must be added for 10GbE networking.
Therefore, the T12-500 Pro is competitively priced. However, it’s also worth considering that filling this machine using 22TB NAS hard drives is likely to cost over $5,400, and if you go for 24TB drives, you might be waving goodbye to $7200 or more. And that’s without any NVMe drives. Accept now that the cost of the T12-500 Pro might be the cheap part of this project.
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Specs
|
Item |
Spec |
|---|---|
|
CPU: |
Intel Core i7-1255U (10 cores, 12 threads) |
|
GPU: |
Intel Iris Xe Graphics (96EU) |
|
RAM: |
16GB DDR5 ECC RAM expandable to 64GB |
|
SATA Storage: |
12x 2.5 or 3.5-inch drives (HDD or SSD) |
|
M.2 Storage: |
2x M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 |
|
Ports: |
3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C |
|
Networking: |
2x 10GbE LAN |
|
OS: |
TOS 6.0 |
|
Maximum Capacity: |
4x 22TB HDD + 2x 4TB M.2 NVMe |
|
PSU: |
500W |
|
Dimensions: |
295 x 135 x 334 mm (HWD) |
|
Weight: |
7.9 kg |
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Design
- Tower configuration
- Trays aren’t lockable
- Easy NVMe and memory upgrades
The T12-500 Pro sports an industrial tower case entirely made of thin pressed steel, making it a handful to lift out of the packaging for a single person.
However, the general lack of plastic in most of the facia and sides promotes the idea that this is a robust piece of hardware that should be able to handle a knock or two.
The front is wholly occupied with the twelve drive trays, with the exception of a power button on the upper right. One USB port might have been useful on the front, but sadly TerraMaster put them all on the back.
There is a perforation running up the front and across the face of each drive tray included for drawing air across the system and drives before one of three 92mm fans can push it out of the back. In normal use, this is a quiet system, although, with twelve drives working hard, it might become louder, as I’d expect.
All the external connections are on the back. These include two 10GbE Ethernet, four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (three USB-A, one USB-C), an HDMI out port, and the main power cable inlet.
Since seeing the Ugreen NAS and the latest Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen 3 that come with Thunderbolt ports, as the T12-500 Pro didn’t offer this technology, it seemed a missed opportunity. Surely, being a backup server, it would be ideal if it could be linked directly using Thunderbolt to the source server, avoiding the local network. But this wasn’t an option that TerraMaster engineers ever considered or rejected.
The other feature that I’d expected but wasn’t present was a PCIe slot, even a low-profile one.
When I talk about the internal system, we’ll come back to that feature and how easily the T12-500 Pro might have had that feature.
There is one omission that many IT Managers will not be thrilled about, and that’s the lack of lockable trays. With such a compact design, the trays were always going to be minimalistic, but the ones in this NAS are remarkably basic and flimsy.
They consist of a thin piece of perforated steel with a spring-loaded latch on the front. Mounting drives require a screwdriver and screws (both provided), but the trays aren’t numbered, and there is no way to lock them.
A person responsible for maintaining this NAS would probably be aware that touching the latch while the system is in use would be a bad idea. But accidents happen, and senior people, in particular, can’t resist pressing things without considering the consequences. The trays should lock, either individually or all, and there is no argument against that feature that stands any scrutiny.
Access inside is easy as the side away from the trays is completely detachable with the removal of just three screws. Behind this panel is a small motherboard mounting the CPU, and RAM, with cables connecting to the SATA drive bays.
On the motherboard is space for two M.2 NVMe 2280 Gen 4 drives, and there are two SODIMM memory slots, one of which was occupied by a 16GB stick of DDR5 memory. Adding M.2 modules and memory is super-easy, and you can also pull out the small flash drive that the system boots. That last feature might be important for those who choose to use Unraid, Proxmox or TrueNAS on this hardware, and not TOS.
One curiosity about the internal topology is that the motherboard includes an unused PCIe 4X slot, admittedly with no corresponding external bay on the back of the NAS. It might be possible to use an M.2 PCIe card to add extra M.2 slots (1 or 2) to the system with this PCIe slot. Though, it might need a 90-degree slot adapter to fit.
Why an engineer would put the slot on the board and yet make a case that you can’t use it is confusing, but inevitably, there was a reason it appears.
In the same vein, there are four fan headers, but only one is used.
Perhaps the same board makes more sense in an alternative NAS design, and it was just placed here for commonality.
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Features
- Intel Core i7-1255U
- Integrated GPU
- Unused PCIe lanes
From the number of products arriving with Intel mobile 12th-gen processors in them, one might easily conclude that Intel over-manufactured these chips and now wants to dispose of them to sell Core Ultra silicon instead.
My guess is that TerraMaster got a great deal on the Intel Core i7-1255U in this NAS, and it’s a powerful platform, probably more than a ‘backup server’ needs.
That choice does provide plenty of flexibility about what this hardware is used for, and it could easily handle multiple tasks in addition to the backup function.
The weakness of the Intel Core i7-1255U is that it came from a difficult phase Intel was going through with fabrication. This chip is designated as being on Intel 7, but that naming is a marketing exercise for a 10nm process node.
That said, even using Intel 7, this is a reasonably power-efficient chip as it only has two hyperthreading performance cores, with the other eight being efficiency cores. The basic power demand is only 15W, though it will turbo to 55W if needed.
That power profile includes the 96 execution units of the integrated Iris Xe GPU. The graphics performance of the Iris Xe has been overshadowed by processors with the Intel ARC components. But in this context, it does provide hardware encoding of H.264, H.265, MPEG-4, and VC-1 to a maximum resolution of 4096 x 2160 at 60 fps.
There is a slight caveat to the GPU specifications. Because the Iris Xe only runs in 96EU mode with dual-channel memory, it doesn’t accept that DDR5 is inherently dual-channel and will downgrade automatically to 80EU. That’s the old UHD specification. I didn’t have the modules to discover if that reverts with two DDR5 modules, but I suspect not.
The only other disappointment is that the HDMI out on this machine doesn’t support a graphical user interface, so this functionality can only be used to create real-time streams for other devices like a SmartTV or Chromecast display.
With a strong processor and some GPU options, the Intel Core i7-1255U seems to be a great choice for a high-end NAS, but in other respects, it seems underutilised.
According to Intel information on the Intel Core i7-1255U, the processor has PCIe 4.0 lanes and 20 lanes in total. However, with only two 10GbE LAN ports, twelve SATA, two M.2 NVMe Gen 4 slots, and four Gen 2 USB ports, that still doesn’t add up to a fully occupied 20 lanes.
Some of what is left has been used in the PCIe x4 slot on the motherboard, which is challenging to use.
The irony of this hardware is that it’s probably better specified as a Docker container engine than as a file server—not that it’s rubbish at that, either. The CPU and GPU would be underused as a backup server, and it probably wouldn’t be worth putting more RAM in it. However, if you did make the modest investment to bring this up to the maximum 64GB of RAM, the number of containers or VMs it could run would be significant.
It’s just a shame that it doesn’t support ECC memory for those who like the greater stability those modules provide.
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Software
- TOS 6
- Community applications
Since TerraMaster, among other NAS makers, got bitten by ransomware attacks, it has taken security much more seriously, and all of its NASs now have a security advisor tool that highlights potential weaknesses in the current configuration.
With support now added for WORM (write once read many) volumes and two-factor authentication of user logins, security has come a long way from where it was on TOS 5.0.
However, TerraMaster’s authentication method, OTP, uses the mobile version of the TNAS app, which could be problematic if you misplace the phone. It is a mystery why TerraMaster didn’t use one of the standard 2FA tools, like Google’s or Microsoft’s authenticator applications.
In most other respects, TOS 6 is acceptable for most purposes, has a good selection of 1st-party and 3rd-party applications, and even has Community apps.
But, with so many people now creating a standard configuration of tools using either VMs or Docket containers that can be easily moved to other platforms, many of these tailored solutions might not be needed.
The long and short of it is, if you don’t want to use TOS, then TerraMaster hasn’t locked down the BIOS of this machine, and you can configure it to use a third-party NAS OS, such as TrueNAS, Unraid or Proxmox by removing the internal USB boot drive and configuring the machine to boot instead from the UEFI volume of an installed M.2 drive. For TerraMaster, a sale is a sale, evidently.
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Performance
- SATA ports and drives
- Floods 10GbE ports
- Power consumption
When I opened up the NAS, one feature struck me as odd: how SATA is configured on this machine. This NAS might have twelve SATA bays, but only three drive cables are coming from the motherboard. How does that work?
The connectors on the motherboard appear to be a way to merge two conventional SATA pin sets into a single cable, and each cable then travels to the drive backplane.
In this NAS, the bays are organised into three groups of four, each with one of these cables allocated to it.
Assuming that each of these cables represents two SATA ports, eSATA standards would allocate each SATA channel to two physical drives, which is well within the capability of a conventional physical drive. If you use SATA SSDs, speed might be capped at around 250MB/s, I suspect, but it isn’t limited like that on the M.2 SSDs.
If my guess is correct, each block of four drives has about 1,200MB/s of bandwidth to share, sufficient to occupy a 10GbE port fully. When parity-bit drives come into the equation, as they should, there is more than enough bandwidth using all bays to flood both 10GbE ports, and that’s without resorting to using the M.2 slots for caching.
In my testing, a single 10GbE port could achieve 850MB/s of read performance, but I didn’t see any options for aggregating the ports in the system settings.
My recommendation is that if you want to optimise this system for supporting backups and have servers or clusters that you can isolate on the network, map each set to a different port and allocate two storage pools to six different drive packs.
This specific hardware allows for the segmentation of backup operations at the network and storage levels.
Creating a single twelve-drive RAID 5 pack on this system is possible, I believe, but I wouldn’t recommend that approach from a management perspective.
When I first fired up the T12-500 Pro without drives installed, it pulled a meagre 9 watts. However, once the drives started to be added, this consumption steadily grew to around 110W when it was fully populated and all the drives were in use. With a full complement of memory and multiple docker containers and apps installed, it could get close to 200W, but that’s well within the limits of the Delta 500W PSU.
Due to the 24/7 nature of NAS, power supplies can take something of a hammering over time, and failures aren’t uncommon. TerraMaster at least didn’t use anything outlandishly proprietary, and getting a replacement from Delta or TerraMaster shouldn’t be difficult. But a failover PSU would have been a useful option.
There are even more powerful NAS platforms available using AMD Ryzen and Intel Xeon processors, but the T12-500 Pro’s performance is top-tier at this price point.
TerraMaster T12-500 Pro: Final verdict
It’s easy to be critical of some choices TerraMaster made with this NAS, but it’s clear that many of those were indirectly dictated by Intel and its Core i7-1255U. Thunderbolt ports would have been wonderful, but the designers kept this machine as straightforward as possible for good reasons.
However, if this machine is promoted as a ‘backup server,’ then why does it need a Core i7? It probably could get away with a much less impressive chip for that role, but its inclusion makes the T12-500 Pro dramatically more flexible. It can live anywhere between a Docker development environment and a backup server, with many layers in between.
Lockable and toolless trays and Thunderbolt ports would be a good addition to the next iteration, but in other respects, most of what it offers is sufficient already.
Because it is much cheaper than the alternatives from Synology and Qnap, I can see some IT professionals taking this NAS seriously, even if they don’t use the TOS operating system.
Should you buy a TerraMaster T12-500 Pro?
|
Value |
Expensive for a four bay, but cheap for a twelve |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
No tray locking, but a solid construction |
4 / 5 |
|
Features |
Powerful CPU and dual 10GbE LAN ports |
4 / 5 |
|
Software |
TOS 6 is fine, but you can ditch it for something else |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
More powerful than a backup server needs to be |
4 / 5 |
|
Overall |
Not cheap, but you get plenty for the money |
4 / 5 |
Buy it if…
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