Asustor Drivestor 2 Pro AS3302T Review: Powerhouse NAS

Asustor is a subsidiary of Asus established in 2011 to ship cloud networking (NAS) and video surveillance answers. It makes an outstanding vary of NAS {hardware} that covers house customers, small industry environments as much as medium-sized NAS racks for extra challenging purchasers.

Its newest merchandise are firmly aimed on the prosumer area, particularly those who desire a private cloud software that may backup native computer systems and gives a central retailer for private knowledge.

The Drivestor Pro is available in two flavours; the four-drive AS3304T and the dual-drive AS3302T this is reviewed right here. Those promise a number of energy for the house person, and small industry buyer, for people that aren’t already invested in QNAP, Synology or TerraMaster {hardware}.

Design & Construct

Having examined the Asustor Lockstor 4 AS6604T and being normally inspired, I used to be curious to look one thing from the company with doubtlessly broader attraction. The coming of the brand new AS3302T, or Drivestor 2 Pro as Asustor additionally calls it, delivers precisely that.

Having a look on the specs, the adaptation between the dual-drive AS3302T and its quad-drive AS3304T brother is solely the collection of drives the field helps. They each include the similar processor, ports and RAM, so the one promoting level of the AS3304T is the improved inside pressure choices.

Clearly, the four-drive type could also be bodily larger and has extra RAID alternatives as a result of pressure numbers, however in each different admire, they’re the similar platform.

Bodily, there aren’t many surprises right here. The AS3302T is a pressed metal cage for mounting two laborious drives and clad in plastic to make it glance marginally much less like an oblong field. The detachable pressure bays also are wholly plastic however are really extensive sufficient not to simply ruin. Whilst they don’t come with a locking mechanism, Asustor does supply a magnetically connected quilt that assists in keeping the discharge handles clear of curious palms.

For the ones the use of 3.5in mechanisms, the trays are toolless, and for the ones with 2.5in drives, there are some small screws supplied to protected them. I used each HHD and SSD drives, and the NAS doesn’t differentiate between them as garage gadgets.

3 USB 3.0 ports (USB 3.2 Gen 1) ports are supplied, with one at the entrance and the opposite two at the again, and those can be utilized so as to add further USB subsystems, increasing the utmost inside garage capability from 36TB (2x 18TB drives) to a whopping 256TB (18 TB HDD X 14), however usable capability would possibly range via RAID sort used.

For the ones the use of a NAS to seize media, the entrance USB port is connected to a button that may be set to offload the contents of any inserted pressure to the inner media. I’ve noticed this ahead of, nevertheless it’s a well-liked function that permits recordsdata to be temporarily transferred with out a pc within reach.

Cooling is equipped via a 70mm fan that attracts air from the entrance and thru vents beneath and ejects it on the rear.  This fan remained remarkably quiet all over my checks, because it exchanges air all of a sudden even at somewhat low RPM.

Total, this can be a by-the-numbers NAS field design that didn’t supply anything else stunning to find. The one function I’ve now not noticed at the majority of dual-drive NAS is the purple 2.5GbE LAN port at the rear.

Competition

It is attention-grabbing to match the AS3302T with different small NAS containers from Synology since they dominate this marketplace. Synology makes plenty of dual-drive fashions, together with the J Collection DS220j, the DS218 and DS218 Play from its Worth Collection, and within the Plus Collection, the DS220+ and DS720+ fashions.

The Plus designated containers are constructed across the Intel Celeron, however the DS218’s and DS220j each use the similar ARM CPU because the AS3302T, with various quantities of DDR4 RAM.

The place the AS3302T and its AS3304T brother stand out is that not one of the Synology choices helps higher than 1Gbit LAN ports, together with the Celeron-based designs.

Lately, Synology makes no NAS containers with 2.5Gbit or 5Gbit networking inherently. Its containers be offering 1Gbit, or twin 1Gbit with hyperlink aggregation, with 10GbE on the top finish. Some Synology NAS beef up a PCIe slot, and you’ll upload a 2.5Gbit LAN adapter that means. Additionally it is conceivable so as to add 2.5Gbit thru USB, regardless that this is not formally supported and calls for further drivers to be manually put in at the NAS.

Why Synology has disavowed 2.5Gbit (and 5Gbit) on this means is unsure, however in response to the AS3302T and AS3304T, apparently that Asustor is embracing quicker LAN generation for house and small industry customers.

Specifications & Options

The similarities between the specification of this software and the preferred Synology DS218 are not coincidental. Obviously, each corporations have decided that this SoC and reminiscence aggregate supplies a fantastic stability between energy and potency.

The adaptation is that the DS218 handiest gives a unmarried 1Gbit LAN port, the place this gadget has 2.5GbE with the possible to transport 2.5x extra knowledge. That isn’t a large factor because the Realtek RTD 1296 1.4 GHz Quad-Core ARM processor it makes use of has greater than sufficient energy to maintain that and two inside laborious drives. It may well transcode 4K video in real-time, so trundling laborious drives rarely rigidity it.

How it would carry out with huge numbers of exterior drives hooked up via USB is not one thing I will be able to simply check, however with a most throughput of three x 5Gbit, it must cope fantastic.

It might be argued that it’s going to have much less energy to be had to run packages than the DS218, however the community efficiency is much more likely to have an effect on the effectiveness of a NAS in maximum eventualities. The praise of 2GB of DDR4 RAM turns out ok, regardless that the power so as to add extra would had been a pleasing function for the ones with explicit file-sharing problems. There aren’t any SODIMM slots to improve RAM or some other doable upgrades.

I additionally spotted that whilst you’ll use SSDs as drives in it, you’ll’t cause them to cache any other typical laborious pressure, in contrast to another Asustor fashions. There’s a believable state of affairs the place you utilize a big, say 12TB, pressure on this gadget which comprises a library of recordsdata that do not wish to be secured. For optimum velocity of retrieval, including an SSD and environment it to cache the 12TB can be a logical possibility, however the AS3302T cannot be offering that.

What it can give is a cheap number of packages, overlaying the numerous doable makes use of {that a} NAS of this selection can also be put. I counted 150 packages in general, with many overlaps with the ones on different platforms. Those come with the ever-popular Docker-ce, Plex, Drupal, Git, IDrive, WordPress, Apache, PostgreSQL, Python, Perl, PHP 7 and Twonky.

This assortment has a slight bias in opposition to developer-related apps, however there also are many for media serving and syncing knowledge from different networked techniques. However it used to be additionally great to look apps for house automation, surveillance, and eLearning.

Probably the most apps have the polish that customers may be expecting if they have used a Synology NAS, however now not all. The easier ones are the ones Asustor commissioned for backing up, syncing knowledge from shopper techniques and UPNP media distribution. It’s conceivable to manually set up Linux allotted code for individuals who are glad to try that, enabling builders so as to add no matter capability they would like or create.

Asustor has made nice strides with its app variety, widening the providing and offering extra of the capability that customers in actuality want. On the other hand, I realized that probably the most gear are not at the most recent variations, suggesting that having such a lot of is proving difficult for the ones charged with keeping up this blossoming assortment.

It’s heartening that Asustor has selected to up its recreation in admire of the apps, as that is the a part of the broader NAS resolution that the ones competing with QNAP and Synology have ceaselessly selected to forget about.

Worth

The Asustor Drivestor 2 Pro AS3302T retails at the Amazon UK for round £280 and Newegg.com and Amazon for US$249.99.

For many who need extra pressure area, the AS3304T is round £400 in the United Kingdom and US$329 from on-line shops in the United States like Newegg and Amazon.

All the ones costs are with none drives, as this gadget is available in a ‘naked’ state, that means it is important to finances for the ones as well as.

Relating to pricing, that is nearly just like the Synology DS218, however 30% costlier than the identical DS218 Play. The Play makes use of the similar SoC however handiest has 1GB of RAM and a 1Gbit LAN port.

If you are now not positive which to shop for, take a look at our best possible NAS pressure chart.

(*2*)

Verdict

The AS3302T is set something, 2.5GbE, and in case you are now not considering that generation, then it will not be for you. That isn’t to mention that it is not a cast NAS possibility, however when you take away the 2.5GbE issue, it competes with the four-year-old Synology DS218 with a identical software assortment.

The brand new ADM 4.0 OS is an growth over the former unlock and gives a responsive interface to the truckload of capability that Asustor put on this field.

I believe this unit must be a bit less expensive to pressure house its networking benefit. Maximum house shoppers will wish to put money into a brand new transfer and enhanced adapters to make use of the additional 2.5GbE LAN efficiency, and the ones further prices may just make it a tougher selection for them.

However for the ones short of to look 250MB/s dossier transfers to their NAS, this resolution outperforms dual-link 1Gbit aggregated designs, and it is also considerably less expensive than maximum competitor gadgets with twin LAN ports.

Specifications

Asustor Drivestor 2 Pro AS3302T: Specifications

• Processor: Realtek RTD 1296 Quad-Core 1.4 GHz Processor
• Reminiscence: 2GB DDR4 (No upgrades)
• Drives: 2 x 3.5″ or 2.5″ SATA HDD/SSD
• Raid Modes: Unmarried, JBOD, RAID 0/1
• Most Interior Garage: 36TB
• Most Garage with exterior growth: 252 TB (18 TB HDD X 14, Capability would possibly range via RAID varieties)
• Networking: 1x 2.5GbE LAN port
• Networking Protocols: CIFS/SMB, SMB 2.0/3.0, AFP, NFS, FTP (Unicode Supported), TFTP, WebDAV, Rsync, SSH, SFTP, iSCSI/IP-SAN, HTTP, HTTPS, Proxy, SNMP, Syslog
• USB ports: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Entrance) / 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Rear)
• OS: ADM 4.0
• Interior pressure codecs: EXT4
• Exterior pressure codecs: FAT32, NTFS, EXT3, EXT4, HFS+, exFAT
• Dimension (HxWxD): 170x 114 x 230 mm
• Guaranty: 3 years