New F4-210 set up help

[blue934]

Hopefully this is in the right area.
Please keep in mind that while I am not completely computer illiterate but I AM NAS illiterate.
I just loaded 2 4TB Ironwolf HDD's into my F4-210. My goal is 2 part: I want to back up my music library HDD, my movie library HDD, and my data/document HDD. Plus I am hoping use the Terramaster to stream to devices in my home network.

For starters, what raid option should I use? I went with (raid 0) the one that shows 2 4TB drives. Then, what file system? I went with the default (ext4?). Good choices?...Bad?
I have no idea how to back up an existing drive to this thing. I tried uploading files in file manager but I could only choose files. I don't want to select thousands of files, I want to back-up folders or even better just choose the whole drive ie: My Movies has everything on that drive in that folder.

My Seagate backup drive a few years ago was very intuitive, I had no trouble backing up and scheduling but I am at a total loss here. I even tried some of the videos but didn't find what I needed.

please be gentle
David

[blue934]

I set Raid 1, not Raid 0

[TMroy]

Hi blue934,
If you care about much of your data safety, raid 1 is a good choice that will provide your with one drive fails tolerance. Ext 4 and btrfs both fine, but btrfs can provide snapshots and folder quota later. To backup your existing drive, you can have several solutions. If you have a usb drive, you can plug it into your TNAS and install the USB copy application, there you can back up by folder and even setup a backup schedule. If the drive is located on your computer, you can install the app AOMEI backupper, with that you can have some backup options and schedule backup also available. If the drive is on your Mac computer, you can use the Time machine backup.
Hope it is helpful for you.

[blue934]

That's helpful. thanks. Terramaster just responded to my email with the same Aomei Backup app recommendation so will try that. Can you explain snapshot and folder quota?

[TMroy]

If you adopt a btrfs file system, you can install a app called Snapshot which will take snapshot to your shared folders, in case something wrong happen,you can recover the snapshot to have your data back. Folder quota is a new feature we are going to add for the btrfs file system, with that, you will be able to set the storage quota for each shared folder.

[blue934]

Although I can see 2 drives in my NAS, I only have drive 1 as an option to send to.?
And how do I go about setting up multiple drives for different conditions ie: drive1 for streaming audio/video to home network and drives2,3,4 as backups for PC?

Screenshot_Volume Desktop - TOS.png

Screenshot_Storage Pool Desktop - TOS.png

[TMSupport]

Please be noted that our TNAS is not shown as different hard drives but different shared folder. Since your two hard drives are configured as RAID1, the data on each drive will be mirrored.

[blue934]

OK, what options beside RAID1 would let me see the drives?

And any suggestions on my second question?
"And how do I go about setting up multiple drives for different conditions ie: drive1 for streaming audio/video to home network and drives2,3,4 as backups for PC? "

[TMroy]

Hi blue934,
Again, for a network storage, it does not present you the storage space by drive, it present you by shared folders. So to separate your drive for different purpose, you need to create a shared folders on different drive. When you storing your files on specific shared folder then you are using your specific drive.

Before you can create a shared folder, you need to create storage pool and then volume on your drive. A storage pool can be a single drive or combination of several drives, the mode can be RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 or just single disk. To understand feature of each mode, you can google about how the raid mode work. Here is a article for your reference https://www.prepressure.com/library/technology/raid

For your case, your drive #1 and #2, they can be RAID 0 or RAID 1. Your drive #3, #4 and #5 can be RAID 0 or RAID 5, or even single. When you understand how a raid work, then I believe you will have a clear idea how to pick.

[blue934]

I want to try other options besides RAID1. I deleted the volumes on my 2 drives in order to start over. I removed and reinstalled the drives. The indicator lights for power, LAN, HDD1, and HDD2 are green but TOS is unable to connect. I reninstalled the TNAS PC software and it showed the unit, I clicked on it. It scanned and now says "0 TNAS devices in total.
I have rebooted the box with and without HDD's, rebooted my router but can't get a connection.???
David