I know this is like beating a dead horse, but when I purchased my full up TS-1685 with 128GB of memory, QuTS was in the offing for this machine and, because of ZFS, was one of the reasons I purchased it but, alas, it never came to pass.
Has anyone hacked a version of QuTS to work on the TS-1685 or should I simply bite the bullet and move on to another OS that supports ZFS?
The TS-1685 already got QuTS, over 1 year ago.
QuTS hero - h5.1.5.2647 build 20240118 - Released: 2024-01-23
https://www.qnap.com/en/download?model=ts-1685&category=firmware
They just removed it after one release and replaced the TS-1685 entirely.
I wonder what they found objectionable with the 1685? QTS has been maintained and I’d sure like a copy of QuTS for mine but can’t find it anywhere.
Surely, the QuTS for the 1655 would not play on the 1685….
I was unclear in my comment or question. I have the 1685 and not the 1655. My question was would the firmware for the 1655 run on the 1685? I suspect the answer is no.
Oh I see. My bad. I brought up the TS-1685 page at QNAP but then when I went to the store, I either typed in 1655 by mistake or it brought up the 1655 anyhow.
The two units look strikingly similar. I don’t see anything in the 1685 that would prevent Hero from running. But that unit is like completely gone from the market. I just looked on eBay and there is one for sale by someone who thinks they can get $3500 for it!
You could always try selling it for $3500 on eBay and then get the 1655! 
But seriously, I feel bad for you making the investment and then not getting to use the OS you want. Maybe a ticket to QNAP support will help.
You could always try downloading and installing the 1655 firmware. Maybe it works or maybe it doesn’t. Could be worth a try…
No worries. And, yes, I downloaded the version for the 1655 and will probably give it a shot. The worst it could do, I’d hope, would be to reject the upgrade. And I’ve always been told I’d go where angels fear to tread 
I’ll let you know how it goes if I do decide to try it.
(PS. I did raise a ticket and the kind people of QNAP said “we’ll let you know”.)
Well, I decided to try to load the QuTS firmware for the TS-x55 series NAS and got as far as the question about “do you really want to do this” and chickened out (for now). There was no error indicating that this firmware was for the wrong platform, etc., so I suspect it would attempt to load the firmware.
The question I have for myself, and maybe you, is should I do this will all the data disks removed from the housing leaving only the PCIe-based SSDs in place or simply go ahead and attempt the firmware upgrade with the disks in place knowing that they’d have to be reformatted, re-RAIDed, etc. if I do get QuTS to work?
Jon, regarding the TS-1655, I just noticed it has an Atom processor whereas the TS-1685 has a Xeon. I wonder why they did that?
No wonder it’s only $1800 new!
Yuck! It’s another example of a NAS built with an underpowered CPU. People buy these thinking they have a lot of power and can do all this stuff. If “stuff” means just sharing files, then yes. But then you don’t need all the other capabilities in the box.
The firmware probably won’t work then.
That stinks…
Yes, I bought my TS-831X with two 10GbE ports thinking it was going to be hell on wheels only to realize that I didn’t do my homework. Yes, it stores and serves files but that’s about it. For example, when I log into the TS-831X via it’s web interface, the mere fact of logging in drives the CPU utilization numbers to 95% and above for nearly a minute before she “settles down”. Maybe there’s a lot more to logging in that I don’t know about but the three other NAS systems don’t seem to have this same effect.
Regarding the 1655 firmware, at least it’s an Intel and not an AMD processor so there’s still hope. Once I screw up my courage I will probably press “Yes” to confirm the upgrade attempt.
I strongly suggest waiting for an answer from QNAP. I would hope that it would block the update, but you don’t want to end up with a brick either.
Personally, all I ever want my NAS to be is a NAS, but I know they aren’t marketed in such a simple way any more.
My 15 year old NAS still runs today just as well as it did when I bought it. I knew what its capabilities were then, and didn’t expect it to do more than sharee/store files.
Per your suggestion, I probably will wait for a response from QNAP as SteveKo offered to run it up the flag pole. But, in the end one of my Intel-based NAS systems will be moved to TrueNAS just for fun.
its really simple. There are professional QNAP’s, and there are crappy QNAP’s. You pay more money for the professional QNAP’s. When the TS-1685 was released many years ago, they had a piece of junk as the “backup system” called the TS-1635ax. It looked the same, and people thought it was the same box, but it performed terribly, and people got angry.
The same applies today with the TS-1655. QNAP replaced the TS-1685 with the TVS-h1688X (which is old in 2025) - but it is the current 12 bay desktop model, and it runs QuTS. It’s a great product. But QNAP came out with the “cheap version” - great for backup, but not great for performace - and that is the TS-1655. People think that because it “looks” like a TVS-h1688X, its the same box - but it’s not. IT IS SLOW, and has poor performance compared to a TVS-h1688X. Great for a backup system - not great for a high performance NAS.
This certainly applies to plenty of other QNAP models. People see an SFP+10G connection on a QNAP, and think “oh, it’s cheap, and it can do 10G, I am buying that !”. Well - they soon find out that is not the case. The TS-831X is a perfect example of this. The TS-831X is a piece of crap. It was never as good as the 2015 TVS-871T, never as good as the TVS-873a, never as good as the TVS-h1282T, never as good as the TVS-h1288X, and never as good as the current TVS-h874. But it was CHEAP, and people bought it (I bought one - a HUGE mistake) - and then people get on these forums and start to cry.
You want good equipment - SPEND THE MONEY - buy the right stuff. Adding more RAM, or an M.2 drive after the fact, is not going to fix a piece of junk.
I see this type of complain on the Synology forums, and on the Ubiquiti forums with the new UNAS PRO, which is a $500 piece of junk, just like the QNAP TS-832PXU. I love Ubiquiti, and I know they will eventually come out with a professional NAS system, but the UNAS PRO is an Annapurna Cortex A-57 piece of garbage, just like the TS-832PXU.
There is no cheap way out - there never has been. (well QNAP is cheaper than major manufacturer servers, but QNAP has great stuff, and crap as well).
I saw on another forum someone said “when you pay for peanuts, you get monkeys”. Great expression I never heard.
Bob Zelin
Well said. My TS-831x has been relegated to nothing more than being powered on weekly to take an RTTR job from the TS-1685 which I did install a four hole QNAP PCIe M.2 NVME adapter. As you mentioned, the 1685 is a great machine but it was heavenly-priced when I bought it quite a few years ago.
Another example: TS_H886. We originally bought the one with a Xeon D1602 processor. Sounds fast with a Xeon cpu. Had to sell it and buy the version with the Xeon D1622 which is over 3 times faster. They never should have made the low power version. CPUMARKS-2459 and 6205. When you take out the overhead for the o;erating system; over 3x the power left over for actual use.
Thankfully, I got a “model mismatch” error. Trying to put TrueNAS on my TS-879 Pro has been an exercise in futility too.
The UNAS is fine.
It’s only supposed to be storage. Considering it can fit 7 drives in quite a few different setups the $500 price point is fine.
Anyone buying it expecting to do cool shit with it is being silly.
It’s ONLY Network Attached Storage.
OK. Let’s just be clear here. The Cortex A-57 is a great MPU core (except this one is by Annapurna and they a competitor of my company!). But the A-57 is an EMBEDDED MPU core and in the low power family of ARM’s MPU cores. There is nothing wrong with this core when used in the proper application which is embedded applications like an IoT device, high end security control panel, audio equipment, etc. It is not a good core for a device like a NAS other than simply being a file server. For that and maybe some lightweight Linux apps it does fine. But not much more than that…
The only thing you CAN do with UniFi NAS right now is plain fileserver.
Which is why it’s fine.
That said UniFi just emailed me this morning with new NAS stuff and I saw them talking about 10gig. If they used potato CPUs again we can start dumping on them for real.
