QNAP Turbo Station TS-431 4-Bay SOHO NAS Review

Setup – Initialization & Storage

The QNAP TurboNAS TS-431 belongs to the Personal Cloud Storage for Home and SOHO users, and as such features the easy cloud-code for connecting and setting it up. With such an option at my disposal, I have to take that route to initialize this great NAS. As we saw on the previous pages, the NAS has a large sticker on the side with the information for this NAS and how to connect to it. We just navigate to the URL provided, read and scroll or click your way to your preferred method or setup, in this case Cloud Key and we’ve previously seen how the QNAP finder works in our other reviews.

It will find and connect to your new NAS and you can connect it to your existing myQNAPcloud or create a new one. Enter your desired names and passwords and we’re ready for the next step.

For now there’s only one thing left to do, set your device name for remote cloud access.

The final initialization step is to download and install the latest firmware update; just press the button and wait a little for it to finish.

Our brand new personal cloud is running, but we’ll have to configure a little bit more before we get access to it. QNAP created the Smart Installation Guide for this and it will guide you through the process in a couple very simple steps.

The first step is to give your unit a name and define your administrator password. Make this something you can remember even though you don’t use it often. The administrator should only be used in critical situations and maintenance, for normal sharing and access you should create another user for yourself; you’ll also need to select your preferred basic network settings.

The next step is more up to what you need. In my case I only need Windows shares, so I’ll only enable that, but QNAP also supports Mac, Linux, and Unix sharing. Below you’ll find options to enable some of the most basic applications during the initialization, and all of this can be changed at a later time if you should change your mind. So don’t worry.

As the final step, you’ll need to setup your disk configuration. We have a 16TB file system limitation, so we won’t be able to take full advantage of our 6TB drives here. A shame, but that comes from using these drives in this NAS. Which disk setup you choose is totally up to you and what you need and prefer.

Everything is done and we can apply all the settings we just made. The guide will show you a summary on the last page where you can double-check and edit individual parts if needed.

The system will now apply your changes while it tells you a little about some of the features, just lean back and relax for a little bit.

The final page will give you options to launch the admin panel as well as get more utilities directly, ready to continue with your setup.

Now that was real easy and there wasn’t many changes and information needed besides names and passwords, most of it can just be left as it is. Easy enough for everyone, I like that.