Question QNAP TR-004 DAS maximum volume size ?

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Texshooter

Texshooter

Feb 18, 2025
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AI Google says:

"The maximum volume for a single volume on a QNAP TR-004 DAS is 63 TB for non-server versions of Windows. For volumes larger than 63 TB, QNAP recommends using the Windows Server operating system"

My question is:

If I use the QNAP TR-004 storage system configured to hardware manages RAID 5 with 4 HDDs (each drive with identical TB capacity), and I use Windows 11 (not Windows Server), and I only want a DAS rig (not NAS), does the above AI Google's statement mean that the total capacity of all 4 HDDs combined cannot exceed 63TB? I want the maximum amount of storage possible for this QNAP model. And I don't want to make the mistake of buying HDDs that are too big to work with this setup.
 
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It's the maximum size for a volume as presented to the OS. So your total storage can be more, but you have to break it up into multiple logical volumes. The technical reason for this seems to just be Volume Shadow Copy being unable to work with larger volumes, and you CAN have a larger volume it just won't work properly with VSS. If it's DAS and just acts like an external drive, then you can initialize the "disk" and then partition it as needed to have partitions smaller than 64TB.
 
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The TR-004 (I have one) info speaks to what the various Windows levels can speak to, with a single volume.

Non-WinServer, 63TB
WinServer, 64TB and above.


However......should you really be doing that?
Tr-004 is a 4 bay device. A volume larger than 64TB in RAID 5 would mean 4x 22TB drives.
Rebuild time in an array of that size would be about a week. Yes, really.
 
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USAFRet said:
The TR-004 (I have one) info speaks to what the various Windows levels can speak to, with a single volume.

Non-WinServer, 63TB
WinServer, 64TB and above.


However......should you really be doing that?
Tr-004 is a 4 bay device. A volume larger than 64TB in RAID 5 would mean 4x 22TB drives.
Rebuild time in an array of that size would be about a week. Yes, really.
Click to expand...
This still isn't clear about whether it's 64TB max for the "volume" referring to physical disk space that is presented to the OS, or "volume" as in the partition size. I presume this is because they assume that everyone will just make one big partition, rather than breaking it up, so dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator (thus making it more confusing to people with brains) is to tell people it will only support 63TB.

My reading based on what Windows itself supports is that it's just the partition meaning of "volume" (because that's what VSS addresses). So you could use a 4x30TB array for 90TB and present that to the OS as one "disk", and then create two 45TB partitions in Windows, and everything would work fine.

But the bit about the array rebuild size is valid. But if somebody needs the space, they need the space. What else are they going to do? A shit-ton of RAID1 mirrors of smaller sizes and a bunch of drive letters in Windows? Or buying a way more expensive DAS/NAS to be able to use smaller drives for the total storage? (Have to balance cost of drives with cost of the enclosure.)
 
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evermorex76 said:
This still isn't clear about whether it's 64TB max for the "volume" referring to physical disk space that is presented to the OS, or "volume" as in the partition size. I presume this is because they assume that everyone will just make one big partition, rather than breaking it up, so dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator (thus making it more confusing to people with brains) is to tell people it will only support 63TB.

My reading based on what Windows itself supports is that it's just the partition meaning of "volume" (because that's what VSS addresses). So you could use a 4x30TB array for 90TB and present that to the OS as one "disk", and then create two 45TB partitions in Windows, and everything would work fine.

But the bit about the array rebuild size is valid. But if somebody needs the space, they need the space. What else are they going to do? A shit-ton of RAID1 mirrors of smaller sizes and a bunch of drive letters in Windows? Or buying a way more expensive DAS/NAS to be able to use smaller drives for the total storage? (Have to balance cost of drives with cost of the enclosure.)
Click to expand...

NTFS inWindows Server can speak to multiple petabyte size volumes.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/ntfs-overview


Sure, if you break that 4x 30TB 'volume' into multiple partitions, then it will work.

My QNAP NAS + associated connected drives is just a touch over 100TB.
But, multiple volumes.
 
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So if don't want to divide the array into multiples volumes or partitions, to keep things simple, then buying more than 64TB of capacity (i.e., 4x 16TB drives) would be a waste of space. True? Also...

Does this 63TB volume limit include or exclude the extra drive space needed to maintain RAID 5 parity? In other words, does the 63TB limit refer only to the total raw size of my data files (e.g., videos, photos, docs)?
 
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Texshooter said:
So if don't want to divide the array into multiples volumes or partitions, to keep things simple, then buying more than 64TB of capacity (i.e., 4x 16TB drives) would be a waste of space. True? Also...

Does this 63TB volume limit include or exclude the extra drive space needed to maintain RAID 5 parity? In other words, does the 63TB limit refer only to the total raw size of my data files (e.g., videos, photos, docs)?
Click to expand...
RAID 5 with 4 drives is the size of ~3x the capacity of the individual drives.
The 4th is for parity.

The 63TB refers to the volume size, no matter how it is constructed.RAID, or not RAID.
 
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So if you wanted to use 100% of the capacity of a 4 bay RAID 5 config, would you buy 4x 16TB drives (=64TB total) or would you buy 4x 22TB drives (=88TB total)? (with Windows 11 + QNAP TR-004 + hardware manages RAID 5)
 
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Texshooter said:
So if don't want to divide the array into multiples volumes or partitions, to keep things simple, then buying more than 64TB of capacity (i.e., 4x 16TB drives) would be a waste of space. True? Also...

Does this 63TB volume limit include or exclude the extra drive space needed to maintain RAID 5 parity? In other words, does the 63TB limit refer only to the total raw size of my data files (e.g., videos, photos, docs)?
Click to expand...
It's not exactly a "waste". Windows home editions are just as capable of addressing huge volumes as Server is. There are just some downsides like not being able to use VSS for things like backups. Otherwise, volumes over 64TB are possible. Presumably you WILL be making backups to yet some other storage device or cloud, if you plan to put this much of your important data on the device.
 
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Texshooter said:
So if you wanted to use 100% of the capacity of a 4 bay RAID 5 config, would you buy 4x 16TB drives (=64TB total) or would you buy 4x 22TB drives (=88TB total)? (with Windows 11 + QNAP TR-004 + hardware manages RAID)
Click to expand...
RAID5 by definition is the capacity of Y-1 where Y is how many drives you install, and is the type that supplies the most capacity (at the expense of performance but you shouldn't notice with this device). So you need drives that are at least X/3 in capacity, where X is the capacity that you want, so yes, 22TB drives if you want to stay under the limit (which will only be actually like 21TB in binary and you'll see about 62TB in Windows after the RAID configuration).
 
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Texshooter said:
So if you wanted to use 100% of the capacity of a 4 bay RAID 5 config, would you buy 4x 16TB drives (=64TB total) or would you buy 4x 22TB drives (=88TB total)? (with Windows 11 + QNAP TR-004 + hardware manages RAID 5)
Click to expand...
RAID 5 uses the capacity of one of the drives as parity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_5

You can't have a 4x 16TB drives + RAID 5 == 64TB.
Doesn't work like that.


In addition....what will be your actual backup routine, outside the RAID array?
Because RAID ain't a backup.
 
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I hope these are videos that earn you money (and have justification for saving so much for extended periods). But yeah, this seems like what you need. Certainly don't want to work with that data via cloud, and a 10Gb USB connection will be as good as a NAS with a 10GbE link that would probably cost more money and require installing an adapter and buying other equipment.

You have the ability to backup and RESTORE 64TB of data from BackBlaze? Are they a provider that will ship you a NAS with all your data on it if needed?

Check the cost of those drives, though, and make sure it wouldn't be cheaper to get smaller drives with a larger DAS to reach your desired capacity. Those 22TB to 24TB are basically top-tier capacity right now and you pay quite a premium for them, much higher cost per TB. A 6-bay DAS and 5 16TB drives would still give you 64TB, plus the ability to add a drive to get another 16TB later (assuming the QNAP has online capacity expansion capability). $2000 in drives for 4 24TB versus $1500 for 5 16TB gives you a lot of money to play with a bigger device that would be better in the long run.
 
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evermorex76 said:
I hope these are videos that earn you money (and have justification for saving so much for extended periods). But yeah, this seems like what you need. Certainly don't want to work with that data via cloud, and a 10Gb USB connection will be as good as a NAS with a 10GbE link that would probably cost more money and require installing an adapter and buying other equipment.

You have the ability to backup and RESTORE 64TB of data from BackBlaze? Are they a provider that will ship you a NAS with all your data on it if needed?

Check the cost of those drives, though, and make sure it wouldn't be cheaper to get smaller drives with a larger DAS to reach your desired capacity. Those 22TB to 24TB are basically top-tier capacity right now and you pay quite a premium for them, much higher cost per TB. A 6-bay DAS and 5 16TB drives would still give you 64TB, plus the ability to add a drive to get another 16TB later (assuming the QNAP has online capacity expansion capability). $2000 in drives for 4 24TB versus $1500 for 5 16TB gives you a lot of money to play with a bigger device that would be better in the long run.
Click to expand...

I doubt there exists a consumer grade HDD DAS box that can transfer faster than 5 Gbps
I'm hoping it's free to restore 64TB by BackBlaze. I'll need to read the fine print before enrolling.
I'll need to calculate the optimal DAS drive capacity and bay count combo. Perhaps a bigger DAS would be better.
The QNAP TR-004 does not support drive expansion. Adding another drive later will erase all the data.
Does anybody know of a DAS make and model that does support drive expansion with hardware controlled RAID.
 
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Texshooter said:
I doubt there exists a consumer grade HDD DAS box that can transfer faster than 5 Gbps
I'm hoping it's free to restore 64TB by BackBlaze. I'll need to read the fine print before enrolling.
I'll need to calculate the optimal DAS drive capacity and bay count combo. Perhaps a bigger DAS would be better.
The QNAP TR-004 does not support drive expansion. Adding another drive later will erase all the data.
Does anybody know of a DAS make and model that does support drive expansion with hardware controlled RAID.
Click to expand...
I misread the specs and thought it was 10Gbps instead of 5, but a single NVMe SSD can transfer 40Gbps so the only reason for a DAS not being able to do it is arbitrary lack of anybody building one with a faster interface than USB 3.0 (3.2 Gen 1), and faster ones do exist, just maybe not at the low end. A single good SATA SSD can beat 5Gbps.

Read performance COULD theoretically be close to triple the speed when using RAID 5 and 4 drives, but write speed is usually only about the speed of a single drive. You're using mechanical drives, but 3 good ones could easily saturate 5Gbps, and going to more drives just makes it more likely you could approach 10Gbps.

Getting a device with online capacity expansion may be the reason to decide to get a NAS with a 10Gbps interface. 10Gbps NICs are cheap used, and you could connect it directly with a dedicated cable so it could act like a DAS. Even use iSCSI. Don't know about the cost there, though.
 
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Texshooter said:
It's either that or build a bomb shelter.
Click to expand...
There are providers like Datto (and maybe Backblaze) that will ship you a unit containing a full copy of your last recovery point when you have such a huge amount of data to restore or just something too big for your Internet service to restore quickly enough. Depending on the size it could just be a big external drive or it could be an entire NAS itself that you are just borrowing. Of course, they have to first restore the data to the device from their servers, which can take a long time, but then they'll overnight it. Datto uses resellers, rather than direct to customers, and uses an on-site backup device. I don't know if they have a direct to cloud backup service now as it's been a few years since I worked with them. It would be expensive as <Mod Edit> ... with that much data, but anything will be.
 
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