TerraMaster Forum

liammcmullan wrote: ↑15 Jun 2023, 18:43 My system partition is 99.9% 7.00/7.41(GB)

That would worry me!

Like a few others here in this forum, I can say that I was having a hard time with the Terramaster product from day one. I purchased a F4-423 which shipped with some flavor of TOS 4.2 just a TOS 5.0 was released and ready for use. I did the upgrade to the latest before getting my data and drives setup. From day one I struggled with very poor transfer speeds and very high CPU usage. I chocked this up to waiting for the next upgrade and giving that a try. Each release seemed to have issues and the initial transfer speeds (SMB mainly) were painfully slow on Ethernet and with two bonded interfaces. I was hoping that some version of TOS 5.1 would be the thing to correct the problems; but nothing. Very slow boot times, unusable SMB (I would often use sFTP instead) and overall bad performance. It sees like I was ready to give up on my investment in the hardware and go with a different vendor.

This all changed when I tried to add in some m.2 SSD drives thinking the slower HDD drives were my issue. Little did I know that adding in these SSD drives broke my configuration and I needed to reinstall the TOS software again; third time is a charm. However, what was different from past upgrades, where I used the upgrade package provided by the product team, this time I was forced to do a fresh install and when asked for the install package and clicking on the link, you are presented with both NEW INSTALL (.ins) packages and UPGRADE packages (.bz2). After installing fresh with the .ins package and having to rebuild all my drives and copy back my data, I can now say that the NAS is fully functional and seems to work as expected. I'm not sure if this has to do with the previously discussed root partition size or some other issues with my configuration that was rebuild after many upgrades; or both.

I do not think it is right that one would be forced to rebuild one's NAS every few years, but that seems to be the case with this product. I can say after all the trials and tribulations from day one until now, I am liking the product and may even stick with the TOS version I have for a period of time. Adding the M.2 SSD drives as my primary Volume1 has really made a difference as well. I'm posting this for others that may be in the same situation and just assumed that the product was never going to function correctly. Before ditching the hardware, I would recommend doing a new fresh install via the INS packages and going from there.

quella wrote: ↑16 Jun 2023, 04:03
I do not think it is right that one would be forced to rebuild one's NAS every few years, but that seems to be the case with this product. I can say after all the trials and tribulations from day one until now, I am liking the product and may even stick with the TOS version I have for a period of time. Adding the M.2 SSD drives as my primary Volume1 has really made a difference as well. I'm posting this for others that may be in the same situation and just assumed that the product was never going to function correctly. Before ditching the hardware, I would recommend doing a new fresh install via the INS packages and going from there.

I'm going to cut my losses and go with another vendor. If I have to rebuild and copy all my data back might as well do it with another vendor and not have to worry about what else could break every time I have to do a software update.

liammcmullan wrote: ↑15 Jun 2023, 18:43
My system partition is 99.9% 7.00/7.41(GB)

Load is 43.8%, CPU 38.5% and RAM 13/20GB 65.8%

Liam

You have to check what exactly occupied your system partition space. A normal system will take no more than 2GB space max. You can ssh to your root file system to check or book our tech team to have a remote session to check.

I just wanted to add that I'm another user that is experiencing the fan issue.

Thanks.

TMroy wrote: ↑16 Jun 2023, 09:22

liammcmullan wrote: ↑15 Jun 2023, 18:43
My system partition is 99.9% 7.00/7.41(GB)

Load is 43.8%, CPU 38.5% and RAM 13/20GB 65.8%

Liam

You have to check what exactly occupied your system partition space. A normal system will take no more than 2GB space max. You can ssh to your root file system to check or book our tech team to have a remote session to check.

A remote session would be great. Do I just email the support team and request a session? Thanks so much!

liammcmullan wrote: ↑16 Jun 2023, 15:00 A remote session would be great. Do I just email the support team and request a session? Thanks so much!

Yes

TM:
You're allowed to feel a sense of frustration in the following lines:

It's more than 6 weeks now since TM has discovered the issue with the too small system partition. I don't see the slightest indication that you are working on a solution. All I read is "don't upgrade to 5.1" or "delete your disks and re-initialize". Is that really all I can expect from a consumer device that's advertised as a safe place for my data???

I suppose this issue affects the majority of users.

So what's your plan TM?

topo01 wrote: ↑17 Jun 2023, 15:43
It's more than 6 weeks now since TM has discovered the issue with the too small system partition. I don't see the slightest indication that you are working on a solution. All I read is "don't upgrade to 5.1" or "delete your disks and re-initialize". Is that really all I can expect from a consumer device that's advertised as a safe place for my data???

Not updating or reinitializing are the solutions.

This is not the first time a NAS manufacturer has run into the system partition being inadequately sized for future updates on legacy products:

• QNAP has had the same issue from last year: https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=166616

• Synology has had this issue in that past on now mostly end of life devices: https://community.synology.com/enu/foru ... ort=oldest

All these manufacturers chose an adequate size at the time their devices became available against the cost of storage itself, so at the time of availability, ~500 MB on QNAP devices & ~750 MB on Synology devices was enough until it wasn't, no different to the 2 GB system partition that Terra-Master has used likely since TOS 3.× …

Both QNAP (as mentioned in that linked thread) & Synology tried to help by suggesting ways to clear space, but ultimately backup of data & configuration and then a complete reinitialization were/are the fix to get around the system partition sizing issue.

Even Terra-Master is putting your data first here by informing you not to update to 5.1 if you have an older device that wasn't initialized with 5.1.× from its first use. They have even gone so far as to not pushing 5.1.× as automatic updates on their backend to prevent issues for the majority of customers.

Security updates can mostly still be made available to legacy devices as patches as Terra-Master has had in the past, until those inevitably run into similar capacity issues on the legacy builds.