Frustrated with QNAP, I feel decieved.

[VirtualLarry]

5GBe to USB (qna-uc5g1t) Compatible with all qnap NAS? 4.3.6 or higher. - QNAP NAS Community Forum

The product page for their USB3.0 Type-C to 5GbE-T / multi-gig adapter, only lists as a requirement "QTS 4.3.6" (or higher).

Well, if you look at the QTS "EOL" page, it shows that BOTH the TS-431 (4-bay, ARM), and TS-451 (4-bay, Intel Atom) are still receiving QTS 4.3.6 updates, and the TS-431, is listed as EOL, so it won't get any newer (major) version of QTS. Fine by me.

By both of those official documents, you would think that the new 5GbE-T USB3.x adapter would function with both of those NAS units, right? I mean, they're both on the newest QTS 4.3.6.

Only, THAT'S NOT TRUE.

The linked forum thread from their forums, with one of their reps, is the ONLY place that I seen, thus far, that documents that this new USB adapter DOES NOT work with the TS-131/231/431/431U models.

As far as I'm concerned, I feel like I was falsely advertised to.

What it boils down to, is that the TS-431 (and 2-bay, and 1-bay), get "special" versions of QTS 4.3.6, that are DIFFERENT than other Intel-based QTS 4.3.6 NAS units. For example, Snapshots. They were (at one point) advertised for the TS-431, or at least, for QTS 4.3.5 or 4.3.6, but then they were pulled from the ARM-based NAS units, because it didn't work or was otherwise unsupported. The UI is slightly different, in the Networking section and the Storage Manager section, between the model NAS units, on the same QTS version.

So, that explains why I'm not seeing LINK on the port that I plugged the QNA-whatever USB 5GbE-T adapter into on my 2.5GbE-T switch. Sigh.

 

[mxnerd]

I think the reality is that you have to look at how much bandwidth a CPU can really handle. If a CPU can't handle the bandwidth, even a compatible USB 3.0 5Gbps ethernet interface won't help the transfer speed.

NAS vendors usually don't provide that CPU/chipset info (non x86) to consumers like INTEL/AMD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, it may not be an actual improvement, but it could be used as a (third) fail-over NIC, for example.

I'm just a little ticked off because I'm pretty sure that I remember going and looking at their specific product compatibility listings, and seeing BOTH the TS-451 as well as the TS-431 on the last, and thinking "Sweet, I'll get two, both of my NAS units are supported!".

I don't think that they do much good though.

I've got encrypted, thin volumes, on my TS-451, in RAID-5, and with the 5GbE-T connected, I get speeds of up to 122MB/sec, which is just a hair over 114MB/sec. Whether this is because of software timing issues with the copy widget, and my mining in the background on this client PC, or whether there actually was an improvement, however slight, I don't know. Kind of really seems like margin-of-error stuff. That NAS has some 5TB Seagate desktop drives, which may be early SMR drives too, so performance of a RAID-5 of that isn't great either.

I'm going to probably have to do some experimentation with the TS-451 unit, and the 5GbE-T adapter, maybe if I transplant some drives, or get new ones for that unit, perhaps the performance will improve.