Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
Storage Manager
Storage manager is all things storage. Creating volumes and managing them happens here. You can have a bird’s-eye view of your entire storage platform or peek into individual disk’s S.M.A.R.T. Info. Disk Doctor is there to perform an instant or scheduled Bad Block Scan or S.M.A.R.T. Scan. You can also create and manage all aspects of an iSCSI target or LUN, including port.
App Central
App Central is your home for functionality expansion. Here you can find a ton of apps that can add functionality to your ASUSTOR NAS. There are a TON to choose from and the list grows constantly. Apps are broken down into categories:
- Backup & Sync
- Blog
- Bulletin Board
- Content Management
- Database
- Download
- eCommerce
- eLearning
- Framework & Library
- Media Player
- Media Server
- Multimdia
- Office Productivity
- Project Management
- Security
- Social Networking
- Ticket System
- Utility
- Web Hosting
Services
Services is home to all things related to network services. The menu breaks down logically:
- Windows
- Mac OS X
- NFS
- FTP Server
- WebDAV
- Web Server
- MySQL Server
- Terminal
- Rsync Server
- TFTP Server
- SNMP
ASUSTOR Portal
ASUSTOR Portal is the application that displays when your NAS is direct connected through HDMI to a TV or monitor. This portal is customizable and can display many informational bits about your NAS.
System Information
System Information is a means to discover some basic information about your NAS. ADM version, BIOS, Model, CPU, Memory, Serial Number, etc.
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.