TerraMaster TD2 Thunderbolt 3 2-bay DAS Review

1. Introduction2. TerraMaster TD2 Thunderbolt 33. ATTO & CrystalDiskMark4. Backup & Restore5. Throughput6. Real Life File Transfers7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

TerraMaster may be a name new to some, but they have been producing NAS and DAS products since 2010 aimed at both SMB and home market segments. The TD2 Thunderbolt 3 is part of the companies Video Editing Pro product line and is a 2-bay DAS with dual Thunderbolt 3 interfaces.

The TD2 Thunderbolt 3 supports a pair of 3.5in HDD (up to 16TB each at the time of writing), 2.5in HDD or 2.5in SSD's. Single disk, JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks), RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes are supported so you have a choice between performance or a modicum of data security.  The drive supports hot swapping and hot plugging and has a very useful automatic RAID rebuild feature.

To switch between drive modes is very easy if a little fiddly.  On the back of the unit is a small selector switch with a reset button access hole next to it. All you need to do is turn the switch to the drive mode you require and then press the reset switch. TerraMaster provides the tiny screwdriver and the reset pin to carry this task out. Then it is a matter of going into the OS (both Windows and Mac are supported) to initialise the disks.

As for performance, it obviously depends on the choice of disk and mode but the official TerraMaster figures are reads of 760MB/s (using a pair of SSDs in a RAID 0 array) with writes of up to 390MB/s (SSHD in a RAID 0 array). We used a pair of 240GB Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD's to test the device with and using the ATTO benchmark got a read figure of 821MB/s with writes producing 575MB/s, both figures a fair bit faster than the official numbers.

We found the TerraMaster TD2 Thunderbolt 3 on Amazon UK for £229.99 (inc VAT)

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Pros

• Dual Thunderbolt 3 interfaces.
• Ease of use.
• DisplayPort 1.2.

Cons

• The storage mode selector is a little fiddly.

KitGuru says: Very easy to set up, the TerraMaster TD2 Thunderbolt 3 sits neatly in the gap between a full-blown NAS and a simple external drive.

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