Looking at the TerraMaster D4-300, you'd be forgiven for assuming it's a network-attached storage (NAS) device. It's not. It's actually a DAS: a direct-access storage device. The main difference is that you don't connect a DAS to an Ethernet port on your router. Instead, you connect it directly to a USB port on your PC, as you would an external hard drive. While this means you can't share its storage with other devices on your network, you can still load it with up to four internal hard drives of up to 18TB each, in effect giving your PC up to 72TB of external storage. Note that it comes without any drives, so you need to add the price of those, unless you have some spares kicking around. The four drive bays are easily accessible from the front of the unit and accept both 2.5in and 3.5in drives. This means you can install either mechanical drives or SSDs, depending on what you plan to do with the device. Next to the drive bays are a power button and some lights that show which bays have drives installed. We tested it with SSDs and found that it transferred data at a steady 500MB/S over its USB connection.
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