Asustor NAS Server (AS5002T)

Build Quality:Metal enclosure, nice clickyness when you insert the drives, seems pretty quiet, although I have nothing to compare it to.Setup:The Asustor 5002T arrived on my doorstep last night after work. By 9pm I had configured to my liking and integrated and into my network, SAB,Couchpotato, FTP, NFS, SAMBA, SSH, permissions, Plex, UPNP etc. So it was super easy to setup and get configured. I used a single WD RED 6TB drive and upgraded to 4GB ddr3 ram, some old macbook memory a friend gave me, it worked perfectly. I setup link aggregation as well (Adaptive Load Balancing) really cool feature, I'm not positive it increased throughput and stability because I started with LAG from jump but I suspect it's been helpful.Performance:I was really concerned about SABNZBD performance and Plex transcoding however my concerns were quickly alleviated when I was able to achieve full download speeds thru SAB (10mb per sec) after just a few tweaks to the configuration. Transfer speeds from my desktop backed up folders (totaling about 75GB in movie directories) moved very swiftly topping out at about 107mb per second. While that was transferring I decided to push the little box as far as I could so while the transfer was happening I downloaded some very large files through SABNZBD and began Plex streaming to my phones and laptops (2 local network, 2 outside network) and streamed a 1080p film through NFS to my living room TV. It all went off without a hitch for the most part, however fast forwarding/skipping while all this was happening did cause some issues and my file transfers fell to about 80mb per sec. The CPUs were absolutely pinned at 100% during this process which is to be expected. Overall I was pretty impressed :):)Plex transcoding definitely taxes the CPUs which do not yet take advantage of the Intel Quick Sync feature of the j1800 Baytrail processor. I touched base with ASUSTOR about this and they confirmed they will be incorporating the FFMPEG-QS fork to improve transcoding by Q2 of this year (whether or not this applies to Plex or just their aiVideo app I have not been able to confirm yet).Pros:-Super powerful-LAG really seems to help with multiple streams load balancing and such- App store is robust,tons of apps- Accepted off the shelf memory (DDR3)- Easy to setup- Fairly quietCons:My biggest issue thus far is with flaky access to the server while outside the network, for some reason I'm having trouble connecting to the thing from my phone and browser at work. Sometimes it works perfectly other times I get 404 errors, sometimes I get kicked off the server and when I try to reconnect it just stalls. I put in a trouble ticket with ASUSTOR- No Quick Sync support yet- Asustor forums are basically a ghost town, not nearly as much community support as Synology, QNAP etc- The Android Apps aren't well designed and there are problems connecting to the various services.- The CPU seems to run really hot its been at 50c or higher all dayOverall:I'm really pleased with this NAS so far. There are a few nagging issues however I'm fairly confident they will be resolved. For $308 from Amazon this thing is a steal. Time will tell whether or not it can handle the stress I plan on putting it through but so far so good. I'm really excited to find out where it stacks up against other 2 disk NAS servers in its class...****UPDATE:12/30/15****Been using this bad boy for about a year now and loving it. Asustor has updated their software to alleviate issues that were present early on. It now runs like a beast, I'm pretty sure they have implemented quicksync because performance for PLEX transcoding is significantly better than it was earlier this year. This is the best two drive NAS in existence, not sure why one would spend the extra $150 to get the 5102T. Shout out to smallbuilder. net for benchmarking and ranking this thing. ASUSTOR is killing it right now

I purchased this unit new along with one by Synology. The Asustor has not worked since day one and the Synology drive has been up and running since delivery. Technical support from Asustor has not been timely or helpful and last service requests not answered. Tech support for computer hardware is just as important as product specs in many cases and whatever the reviews for this product an occasional one may need repair or replacement but when a manufacturer won't make timely adequate responses then it is time to try another vendor.

This is a good NAS with decent price comparing with others famous brands. They provide most useful apps and the functions are good enough for you to build up a home SOHO. However, you need to install more memory if you wanna use KODI as your home multimedia center. It will be very slow if your NAS is using 1G Ram which come with the factory configuration. And the Asustor Portal is useless, while using Youtube and Chrome browser on TV is very painful, slow, lag and hard to control either using the control app or the USB keyboard/mouse. On the others hand, I like very much the itune server app which allow me to play the hi-res music with my Marantz NA6005 network player via airplay or the optical fiber connection and use my iPad as the music player control GUI.In general, the AS5002T NAS isn't perfect but more than enough functions in term of the cost.

So far this NAS has worked very well. I am still in the process of transitioning data from an older ReadyNAS Duo which is failing. I loved that I was able to upgrade the ram with an off the shelf chip, instead of paying for over-priced upgrade parts.It was simple to mount two 3TB Western Digital RED drives. Placed them in RAID 1 using the web UI.I did have some initial struggles because I failed in reading the documentation. Initially I could not find the device on the network and the light on the fright was steadily blinking. Eventually I realized this meant it was not booting (initially I thought it was formatting the drives). After reviewing the documentation I found that you cannot mix memory sizes so the 1GB + 2GB combo was out. Further the 2GB memory card needed to be in the specific slot that previously held the 1GB. At this point I was able to boot without further issue. I have ordered a second 2GB card and will install when it arrives.I do not plan to use any of the media features. I am very satisfied with the price and performance of this device so far, just for use as a NAS.

Easy to set up and full of useful applications. Certainly one of the better home/small business NAS boxes.

I like this Asustor product. Great value with plenty of function. Asustor includes an IP camera recorder for up to 4 cameras at no additional charge.I have a few of these an one of them is primarily a DVR for security IP cameras and works great. I used to pay thousands of $ for similar functionality.

Excellent. I upgrade memory to 8 and brought 4TB works great. Installed Plex. I need to set up for backup and surveillance as well. When you upgrade memory make sure to peal off the glue/sticking item. :)

Nice upgrade from my old Netgear ReadyNAS DUO v1. Interface is much better and it isn't really that much bigger. Noise level might be slightly higher, but I had replaced the fan in the ReadyNAS with a quieter one after it failed.

very good product & performance, the only problem is BIOS