KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
We have reviewed many NAS systems over the last two years and today we are looking at our first product from Asustor, a subsidiary group of electronics giant ASUS. The 602T is a dual drive system with full cross platform support.
There is no doubt that ASUS are a force to be reckoned with. They generate billions of dollars a year in revenue and release a huge variety of products from motherboards and graphics cards to tablets, headsets and sound cards. Setting up a dedicated division for networked devices means they are taking NAS systems seriously.
There are six products available including the AS 602T, AS 604T, AS 606T and AS 608T. The last digit (before the ‘T') represents the number of drives each unit can accommodate. Therefore we can work out, there are already 2, 4, 6 and 8 drive bays in the line up.
Has the AS 602T got what it takes to challenge the likes of Synology? At £399 inc vat, it is definitely targeting the high end enthusiast user.
Product overview:
- Superior personal cloud storage space
- Diverse array of apps for multimedia and digital home entertainment
- 24/7 round-the-clock download assistant
- Your complete backup solution
- Support for a multitude of mobile apps
- Designed for energy efficiency and quiet operation
The Asustor AS 602T arrives in a plain brown box with a sticker featuring the company name.
The product is well protected between two thick pieces of foam. It is also wrapped inside a clear plastic cover.
As well as the main NAS, there is a peripheral box which contains a power supply (100-240V), regional specific power plug, two LAN cables, a software disc and mounting screws for two hard drives.
The AS 602T is finished in a two tone colour scheme – a bronze metal chassis and plastic front cover featuring the buttons and drive bays. It looks very similar to several QNAP products we have in our offices.
At the side of the chassis are air vents, used to pull in cool air over the components during operation.
The build quality of the unit is exceptionally good, measuring 163.5mm x 108 mm x 230mm (HxWxD). It weighs 2.1 kg.
There is a USB 3.0 port at the bottom. Along the top are several lights which detail activity for network, USB, hard drives and power.
At the back are several Gigabit Ethernet connectors, which support link aggregation and load balancing. There is a single USB 3.0 connector and four USB 2.0 ports as well as a Kensington lock, HDMI output and power connector. A large fan (70mm) is positioned top left and works in an exhaust position, sucking in cool air from the vents at the front of the side panels.
The drive bays are easily removed, by pushing in on the main lever, shown above. These feel really strong and offer tactile feedback thanks to the strong spring positioned behind them.
Each bay is covered with soft felt, to protect against the sensitive drive circuitry underneath. The drives are screwed in from the side. Engineering quality is high, with all the tolerance set perfectly.
With both drives removed, we can see the little SATA daughtercard in all its glory.
Getting a look at the insides isn't difficult, there are simply three screws to remove and the metal chassis can be slid off. The main motherboard is protected underneath a protective cover, so it won't come in direct contact with the metal.
Underneath the cover, is an expansion connector which is in fact an SO-DIMM like you would see in a laptop computer. There is 1GB of DDR3 memory installed on the board, but you can add another 2GB into this slot to cope with more demanding environments. A nice idea.
While it is difficult to see here, the motherboard has an Intel ATOM 2.13 dual core processor onboard.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.
Asustor are using an operating system which is in the early stages of development, we wouldn't expect the same level of polish and refinement as we get from the Synology DiskStation Manager.
Over the last week of use, we can report that the operating system is actually very robust and stable.
Asustor call the operating system ‘Asustor Data Master' which is unfortunate as it sounds more like a simple hard drive repair utility than a fully fledged Linux operating system.
While the name of the Operating System is less than ideal, in operation it will appeal to the inexperienced NAS user.
We decided to try an Apple Macintosh today, using the latest OSX operating system (10.8.3). We installed the software suite from the optical disc, which took only a few seconds.Over Wireless the NAS system was found within the space of a few seconds. We had an alert ‘the following server have not been configured yet'. So we selected the 602T.
The second stage of installation can either be a ‘one step setup' or a custom setup. We opted for the one click as we feel most people will be using this.
The next stage is to configure the network name for the NAS system, along with a password. Asustor are trying to make this as simple as possible and instead of asking about RAID configurations, they simply ask if you want the maximum capacity of the drives in the unit, or a ‘balanced' setting. We went for maximum capacity.
The software has now gathered enough information to start setting up the NAS into a basic configuration to use. This takes a few minutes – we used 500GB HDD's so it might take a little longer with larger drives.
Within a few minutes, the NAS was set up and we toggled the ‘connect to web portal upon close'. This is handy, if you don't want to access your router to get the IP address of the NAS system on your home network.
The main Control Center software gives an overview of the system now that it is configured.
When the browser first loaded (Safari in this case), the NAS system automatically checks to ensure the user is running the latest version of the operating system. In this case there was an update, so we downloaded the 85MB software package.
The software package takes a few minutes to install and the whole process is difficult to mess up, following a series of on screen prompts.
A new user may find the rows of icons initially intimidating, so Asustor have configured a first time popup to offer some guidelines as to how to proceed. This can be permanently disabled via a checkbox.It is worth pointing out now that multiple windows can be opened at the same time, and scaled to fit inside the main browser window.
The first ‘access control' button presents a series of options regarding account information, if you want to set up guests or dedicated users with specific profiles. It all makes perfect sense and we didn't experience any glitches.
Activity Monitor is useful to keep track of CPU, memory and network demands on the NAS system.
App Central can be used to enhance the functionality of the NAS server, by patching in new settings and support. This should be popular with a large audience, and we already can see several applications to tackle some of the most requested functionality, like Dropbox and iTunes for instance.You can even download Boxee to use the HDMI connected NAS system as a media player.
The system can be backed up and restored via this self explanatory panel. You can use USB drives, FTP or the Cloud.
External devices can be monitored directly via this panel.
If you run into issues, or are just naturally curious, you can view all the files on your drive(s) by exploring the drives directly from the browser window.
The services panel will be very important, especially if you have a mixture of devices on your network. There is direct support for Mac OS X here as well as NFS, FTP and even WebDav.
The settings Menu will be commonly accessed as there are a plethora of options for configuring the hardware. You can control the LED lighting and FAN speeds for instance.
Storage Manager shows the drives you have installed and the RAID configuration, if any. We can see that Asustor automatically defaulted to RAID 0, when we asked for the full capacity of the two drives.
The online help menu may be useful for people who are running into a problem as you can read up on any aspect of the interface.
We are testing the NAS within our gigabit network which is pretty much as good as you will get for a home or small office environment. It is a mixed network with several 1GBit switches for ultimate performance.
All tests are performed ten times to ensure that no abnormalities can creep into the final results. We copy across several files at the same time. This product supports 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation which enables multiple connections to be linked in parallel to increase the link speed beyond the limits of any one single cable or port and to increase the redundancy for higher availability.
Most implementations now conform to what used to be clause 43 of IEEE 802.3-2005 Ethernet standard, usually still referred to by its working group name of “IEEE 802.3ad”. The definition of link aggregation has since moved to a standalone IEEE 802.1AX standard.
For this page we have removed all mechanical drives and are using a Solid State Drive, kindly donated by ADATA. The XPG SX910 256GB which we reviewed in the past. We copy across several large files to maximise the bandwidth.
With link aggregation enabled the Asustor AS 602T NAS achieves a score of 121 MB/s on the read test and 97 MB/s on the write test. These are really good results.
We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrumNoise was measured from a meter away.
The 70mm fan spins quite actively to ensure there is plenty of cool air circulating across the drives and components. It is audible when under extended heavy load, such as when copying files to two hard drives over a long period of time. Generally however, the fan isn't that audible.
Power consumption is much in line with what we would expect from an ATOM powered NAS system. At idle the NAS consumes around 19 watts of power, and this rises to around 30 watts under load. You can send the NAS to sleep by leaving it for a certain amount of time, or by holding down the power button for a few seconds. It drops to around 3 watts in this state.
The system cools well, thanks to the active fan, both hard drives hover around 28/29c. Ambient room temperature was 23c.
Asustor may be a new name in the NAS sector, but this is certainly a remarkable first product for us to review. While it isn't as sophisticated on a software level as products from long term market leaders Synology or QNAP, there is no doubt that they are a company to watch over the next year.
The biggest problem Asustor will face will be brand recognition, specifically when factoring in the price point. You can buy this NAS from SCAN for £399.00 inc vat, which puts it right in a head to head against established market leaders.
There is no doubt that the performance of the AS 602T is excellent and it can handle intensive duties without much of a problem. You can easily insert another 2GB of inexpensive SO-DIMM memory if you need a little more multitasking capability within a demanding environment.
‘Asustor Data Master' is a terrible name for their Linux NAS operating system, sounding more like a simple hard drive repair utility. In practice it actually proves to be very capable, responsive and stable. They do need to change the name however. With a few more years of software development Synology and QNAP may have something to worry about.
I can certainly recommend the AS 602T NAS system, it has impressed me, especially for such early stages of development. The price is high, but Asustor are gunning for the market leaders and have not skimped on quality or features.
Pros:
- good overall performance.
- Excellent software development.
- bulletproof to configure.
- Application download support.
- Can be turned into a Boxee media player.
Cons:
- expensive.
- tough competition against Synology and QNAP.
- ‘Asustor Data Master' is a terrible name for an OS platform.
Kitguru says: An excellent first showing from Asustor. Watch these guys over the coming year.
I really like the look of this NAS system, great product from the new company!
They will have problems selling this – they should have just used the ASUS name. people will think its a different far east company trying to ride on the ASUS section of the name.
Good review and good results – the product is well finished, you can always tell from the trays, belive it or not. if they put in the quality with the springs, felt covers and disengaging mechanisms, they are putting it in elsewhere.