Just unpacked my TS-453A after 7 years in a box...

English
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I used it for a semester in the 2016/17 school year to help manage pictures in my yearbook class, then packed it up and put it on a shelf. I want to check it out now - either sell it or start using it again. When I last used it, one of my students was an expert at using it, so I did not have to learn much about it at all. My questions:

  1. It takes 5 minutes to boot up. Is that normal? It is not hooked up to any network now.
  2. When it finally boots up, the screen says “you must install HD Station before using HDMI output function.” Is this what I should see? How do I erase the 2x1 tb hard drives and have it blank for the new use/user (still not sure what I will do).
  3. Is the operating system on one of the 2 disks? or is it stored in a chip? Can I take the 2 hard drives out, connect them to another computer and erase them?
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  1. It takes 5 minutes to boot up. Is that normal? It is not hooked up to any network now.

Y…yes, even the latest version of QTS takes a long time to boot up, sorry.

  1. When it finally boots up, the screen says “you must install HD Station before using HDMI output function.” Is this what I should see? How do I erase the 2x1 tb hard drives and have it blank for the new use/user (still not sure what I will do).

You said “It is not hooked up to any network now.” so I think you just use its HDMI and output to screen.

However, most functions can only be used after connecting to it via IP, and HDMI output only provides a few operations.

  1. Is the operating system on one of the 2 disks? or is it stored in a chip? Can I take the 2 hard drives out, connect them to another computer and erase them?

The operating system will be stored on one or both hard drives, depending on their RAID mode.

If you just want to clear the data on these two hard drives without backing up the photos on them first, you can directly connect them to a normal computer and start formatting.

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The OS is stored on all internal drives no matter if single disks, pooled drives or some sort of RAID(s)

Erasing QNAP used disks is easiest via diskpart and "clean’ option (when Windows is used)

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You won’t be able to use in Windows unless you do this: How to Erase a Recovery Partition in Windows | Laptop Mag
Then you can have Windows format and use.

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If you don’t have a use or want to learn how to use it, I would sell on ebay. Probably worth $3-400 will taka a month or so to sell. Do not sell with drives since anyone who buys it will be able to see contents of drives. Also, I believe QNAP does not support shipping a NAS with drives installed.