Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
When it comes to the NAS itself, the AS5008T follows the ASUSTOR recipe. This NAS looks identical to its older sibling the AS-608T with only a few differences. First, we already mentioned that it shed the LCD display and the controls that go along with it. The rest is pretty much the same.
Up front you find the familiar ASUSTOR drive trays configured with four trays in each of two columns. ASUSTOR drive trays are still my favorite design to date. Each tray is sturdy, constructed of steel, and garnished with plastic. The drive trays remove easily, sport LEDs for activity and power, and feature an easy release locking mechanism. Again, there are no visual ques anywhere that suggest which drive tray is which drive number in your storage pool, and thus the recycled image from our AS-608T review.
Outside of the drive trays, there really isn’t much going on in the front. You have your Power button and LED indicator, your activity LED, network activity LEDs, a One Touch Backup Button, and a USB 3.0 Port.
The sides are barren of any detail, the bottom has feet.
Around back we find two large 120mm cooling fans, the PSU, S/PDIF port, dual eSATA, four Ethernet Ports, two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 Ports, and an HDMI 1.4a port.
Well Joe I was going to build your “Build a NAS for Affordable Storage – The Complete Guide” until I saw this. I couldn’t build that for this price and with the upgradable RAM it’s perfect for me. Thanks for this review, the NAS and 8 5 Tb hard drives are on the way.
William, I am happy to hear that you will not be following our guide… for this reason alone :). This is a strong NAS at a FANTASTIC price. Please let us know how you make out with it.
For sure Joe. As happy as I am with my Qnap 4 bay, this unit will be faster and with the HDMI I’ve finally found a use for my old Samsung monitor. Thinking about a bluetooth dongle also for a keyboard and mouse setup.
No need for that. If you have a phone (android or iOS) you can use the official KODI remote control app. Personally, I use Constellation on the iPad. Makes for some slick controls. All you have to do is make sure you have the “web server”, a user name and password configured in KODI. Then you are good to go.
The hard drives and the ram are in. Just waiting for the NAS now.
OK, I’ve added the 8Gb’s of ram, added 8 5 Tb drives and now I’m dumping my external HD’s onto the NAS. This is going to take a couple of days it looks like. I’ll post later when everything is done and I’m transferring files over the network and streaming to my WD TV Live
Your next purchase should be a switch capable of delivering 802.3AD link aggregation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation
I personally use the Netgear GS724T
OK Joe you’re going to have to help me out here. Although I studied electronics in college and I’ve built computers from scratch, this switch is apparently over my head. Why would I need this and what will it do for my system?
802.3ad Link aggregation allows you to take two Ethernet Ports and combine them in to one (faster speeds when there are multiple connections to the NAS)
802.3ad Link aggregation allows you to take two Ethernet Ports and combine them in to one (faster speeds when there are multiple connections to the NAS)
Joe the Android apps from Asustor do everything I need to do remotely.
Time has passed, how are things going with the ASUSTOR NAS?
So,now that I’ve transferred my TV collection from my Qnap NAS I have to say, this is one fast NAS. I’m sure the 8Gb ram upgrade makes a big difference. When I stream to my WD TV Live the buffering is a lot faster than the Qnap. There’s also a noticeable difference when I’m searching through the different folders from the TV Live.
Transferring files through the network from my Mac is faster and I haven’t had any error messages like I do with the Qnap.
I’m not trying to put down Qnap here but these boxes aren’t really comparable. 512 Mb’s of ram vs. 8 Gb’s. Single core processor vs. dual core and so on.
The Qnap has been good for my needs and I honestly never thought that I’d need more than 8 Tb’s of storage, but I am a bit of a digital media hoarder it turns out. It’s also a little more reassuring to be able to use Raid 6 and have that 2 drive fail safety with tons of storage still.
So the Qnap has been relegated to just movie storage and hopefully now that it’s no longer sitting with less than a Tb free it will perform a little better.
Altogether the AS5008T with 8 5Tb drives and the ram upgrade came to just under $3.000 Canadian but I’m very happy and I’m sure this will be the last NAS for years to come. But who knows?
Awesome to hear… I loved this NAS when I got it. For the price… hard to beat.