Initial Setup

QNAP's Qfinder makes it easy to access your NAS from a PC, as it'll find it on your network and display its IP address and more details, and you can log in to your NAS via Qfinder. If your NAS hasn't been set up, you can start the setup process via Qfinder as well, which will take you to the setup wizard.


For whatever reason, QNAP has chosen to inform you about the product warranty as the first step of the software setup process, most likely to get you to buy an extended warranty. As you can see, the TS-432X came with an older version of QTS, which is the norm for most NAS devices, and as you'll see, the OS was updated during the setup process.


The next step included approving the terms of use, and then we get to where you have the option to either use the current software, install the latest version from QNAP's server, or to manually upload a version you want to use. We ended up having a glitch here, where we were informed that we were already using the latest firmware, which wasn't the case, and as such we had to manually install the latest OS version after the setup process was done.


At this point you have to enter some admin credentials and name your NAS, in case you're not happy with the auto generated name. Then it's time to pick your time zone, which for some odd reason, defaults to Samoa, but your best option here is to synchronize with an NTP Server, as that way your NAS always keeps the correct time. This is followed by setting up the IP address, we'd suggest DHCP and then fix it in your router, rather than using an old-fashioned static IP address. The final configuration step involves how you want to deal with firmware/OS updates, and once you've picked your option here, you're done.


This is where you get a last chance to change any of the settings you made above and after hitting apply at this point, you get a final warning, asking if you're really, really sure you want to wipe all the data on your NAS, before the installation kicks off. The installation takes a while and once it's done, the NAS will reboot, which takes several minutes.


Once it's rebooted you're met by the screen above, and you're almost at the point where you're ready to start using your NAS. First a few updates.


After which you're greeted by several screens you have to click through, to make sure you understand that you have to set up a storage pool before you can use your NAS for its intended purpose.


As mentioned, we had a small glitch with regards to the firmware update during the setup wizard, but it seems like QNAP has a fail-safe, and we were asked to install the latest firmware as soon as we'd click our way through the information screens above. This meant another reboot before we could use the NAS, but at least we were on the most recent build of the OS at the time. Kudos to QNAP for having added this small, but useful addition for when the setup process doesn't go smoothly.