F4-421 - Absolutely Horrific first-user experience

Initialization of newly purchased TNAS or re-installation of your TNAS
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thatrobhuman
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Joined: 30 Nov 2022, 08:56

F4-421 - Absolutely Horrific first-user experience

Post by thatrobhuman »

Registered here just to say that this was my first TerraMaster purchase, and will be my last.

Your product had no user manual - but instead a url to visit an online manual - that's fine, but I had to give you my email address to even access the product page. Even then, the product installation videos are out of date for my product - they describe hardware that did not come with the unit. The setup guides were of absolutely no help in what steps to take to actually get the NAS up and running.

I was able to stumple my way to your download page, which took two different files to download because I couldn't tell which one I actually needed. It took three TOS reinstalls to even start making use of the NAS.
The first two times I could not get passed the /wizard page. I would enter the data that was requested of me (which: by the way, why do you want my email address to set up the NAS that I'm physically holding in my hands? - also, if you expect people to be able to enter fields, maybe you should actually label them so that I'm not guessing what each input means by looking at the auto-complete options that the browser gives me). Clicking the Next button did nothing. The 30s confirmation code time elapsed so I had to get a new code - when the new code was sent, the timezone and email input reset, so again: I had to re-enter that again. - even then, the Next button did nothing after I re-entered the information with the new confirmation code.

Third reinstall. I was able to get through the wizard dialog - the next screen had a big bright yellow button saying "WARNING" - but no description of what the warning actually was. Just "WARNING"....Feels real put together...

I click next, and I was *finally* able to get my NAS up and running.

From a hardware perspective, two of the harddrive slots feel like they require extra effort to get the harddrive to slot into place - to the point where it feels like I'm going to break them. The first slot in particular, the drive never seems to want to align - this feels very cheaply manufactured.
User avatar
thatrobhuman
Posts: 2
Joined: 30 Nov 2022, 08:56

Re: F4-421 - Absolutely Horrific first-user experience

Post by thatrobhuman »

Follow-up.

Two of the Hard-drives I got were dead on arrival. That's not you problem, but what I find frustrating is that until I get the replacement drives, I don't want to bother setting up a RAID.... except every time I restart the NAS it keeps trying to rebuild the RAID pool that I explicitly removed...
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