We used and liked the iTunes Server, Plex and other media interfaces, OneDrive and Google Drive cloud support, in particular. If you want to see a complete demo, Asustor have a live demo page here, we recommend using this and understanding the features and benefits. One of our other favourites is the “My-Netdata” application, giving a live dashboard view of the NAS status and performance.
Test Setup
All synthetic tests are carried out three times with the best result taken. We used the various software’s own test count settings. We use charts to describe the benchmark results. These use colours that can often be similar or even different shades of each colour. If this becomes hard to read, you can click on any of the review samples on the chart to remove it, or add it back in.
| Test Platform | i7 LGA2011-v3 |
|---|---|
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel i7-5820K |
| Motherboard | Asus Rampage V Extreme |
| Graphics | MSI GTX 970 GAMING Twin Frozr V |
| Memory | Ballistix Sport LT 16GB Red DDR4 2666Mhz Memory Kit |
| Drives | Crucial MX200 500Gb SSD |
| PSU | Corsair HX1000i |
| Chassis | MicroCool Banchetto 101 |
We used two Samsung HD103UJ 1Tb drives for this test. The drives are old and we intended to use these drives instead of our Western Digital Reds. We have seen so many of these drives we thought it would be a good representation of a good NAS usage, got some old drives, stick them in a NAS!
We use several synthetic benchmarking tools, they are a synthetic reference and can have several factors either included in the test or impacting the test. Therefore, we use a static and standard test system. For this NAS test we used the following software tests;
- IOMeter
- ATTO Disk Benchmark
- Windows File Transfer
All firmware, BIOS, drivers and patches are updated as of the date of this review. For this review, we used a standard home powerline networking setup. Bandwidth is provided by some TP-Link AV1200 pass-through powerline adapters, some CAT6 cabling and we even managed to hook up a standard (for the UK) Sky home hub. The home hub is going to be the weakest link, but it is relevant to the types of usage this NAS will get.
However, we did hook up the NAS to the powerline adapter our Home Server project is on, this would cut out the home hub for certain operations, the results are at the end of the review, so read on. Part five of our Home Server project coming up very shortly.
Asustor AS3102T 2-Bay Network-Attached Storage Review
Package - 8.5
Performance - 8.5
Price - 8
Consumer Experience - 8.5
8.4
We would recommend the Asustor AS3102T to anyone who wanted to step into the world of Network-Attached Storage, at least, and if you already have a NAS setup in your home or small business, we found the Asustor AS3102T to perform without fault, so look over the reviews and specifications when you consider your next upgrade.