AS5304T

As someone who had been looking for a reliable home network storage solution, the Asustor AS5304T has thoroughly impressed me. Its compact size fits perfectly in my home office (tucked away under a sideboard), while delivering performance and features that went well beyond my expectations given the price point. The setup process could not have been easier - between the clear instructions and intuitive software, I had the NAS up and running with my drives configured in a RAID 5 array in less than 30 minutes. I really appreciated the tool-less drive trays. Once initialized, the AS5304T ran virtually silent despite putting in some serious work. The only sound you'll hear is a light clicking when it's doing transfers and such; nothing like the noise I've heard in other models. Transfer speeds have been solid thus far. Dual 2.5GbE ports are great, and large backup jobs and 4K video streaming goes smoothly. Where the Asustor really won me over was in its incredible feature set. In addition to simple file sharing with easy role management, I've been able to run my entire Plex media server off the NAS for silky smooth playback. The support for Docker containers and apps like Pi-Hole/AdGuard opened up even more use cases, letting me consolidate various services I previously had spread across different machines. The backup capabilities have been a game-changer compared to the subpar Windows options I previously relied on. Full system backups are so much faster and more reliable now. While modest in specs, the AS5304T juggles all these tasks without breaking a sweat. I did end up upgrading to 8GB of RAM after some high memory usage alerts, but that was a simple process. For my needs, the AS5304T has tackled everything I've thrown at it with ease. Overall, I'm absolutely delighted with my purchase of the Asustor AS5304T. It checks every box - performance, features, ease of use, and value. This versatile NAS has become the digital brain for my entire home network. If you're looking for network attached storage with a ton of power under the hood, I can't recommend it enough.

Bought this unit after doing loads of research into a new Plex server for all my movies. I had been prev using my Desktop PC combined with normal external HDD's, as the server host, which had worked great for many years. I wanted to make the switch to a NAS system and take the load off my main PC and that was expedited by the failure of a 8tb external HDD and losing ALL my content. Found this unit while comparing different brands. This brand was brought up multiple times on different websites as the best Cost alternative to name branded NAS systems. I chose the 4 bay configuration as I wanted the ability to expand the storage capacity as the plex library would grow. I installed a single Seagate Ironwolf 5600 6tb NAS HDD ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085Z4P89R?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details ) and also while setting up installed a second DIMM or ram ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019FRDKWI?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details ) After that was all done and installed it was time to setup the NAS system and configure it. Downloaded the ACC Control software to my main PC for the setup and access. Issue came with the install of the ACC software. I would get an HTTP / FTP error when the software would goto download prerequisites for ACC, which turned out to only be Net-frameworks X86. Manually installed that, and re-ran the install of ACC Control and it installed perfectly. Next was to open up ACC and initialize the NAS. It saw the new stick or ram and HDD installed and setup the NAS and I was ready to poke around the UI. Once ACC is open you will see the NAS detected on the network and you just double click it and it will open a web UI for navigation. Setting up plex was super simple, with just opening the APP downloaded, search for Plex, Download / Install and set up your server. I didnt aggregate the dual 2.5GBe lan ports as i wasnt sure if my ISP moden supported that, so I ran both the included Lan cables to the back of my main modem. Running this on just my home network, the machine barely even broke a sweat streaming a 1080 with 5.1 ATMOS. CPU stayed under 10% most times, Ram less that 8% and bandwidth was chuggin along at AVG 23 MB/s. I have not tested streaming with a 4k resolution movie yet. I will update when I do with data for CPU / Ram / Bandwidth. If you are looking for a decent in home NAS for a plex system, I feel this one is a great alternative to the ALOT more expensive Named branded one. The UI is easy to navigate and was super easy to set up also.

After about 3 weeks of research I settled on the Asustor AS5304T NAS because of the features and flexibility. I was looking to replace a now ancient HP Home Server where we store all of our media for distribution around the home to various iOS and Windows based devices. The AS5305T handles even 4k to the OLED TV and works great as a back-up device for PCs and laptops alike. PROS: Easy to set up - feature rich with lots of apps - can handle both SSD and HDDs but you will loose a drive slot if you want SSD caching - looks nice with the rest of the equipment - future proof Ethernet 2.5gb and USB 3.x ports - expandable RAM to 8gb - tons of tips and online documentation (Asustor College) online to help with set-up and customization - stays cool with large quiet fan - very good value when on sale. CONS: NO way to directly contact support by chat or phone - you have to submit a support ticket and wait however long for them to respond (typically referring you to back FAQs and online docs). If Asus is going to play in this league they MUST up their support game and have (easy-to-understand) US live support. - NOISY enclosure and all plastic disk trays that broadcast even small drive sounds out into the room. I've put this NAS on a foam base just to keep the noise down. TIPS: To get the best speed/response out of the various apps (PLEX and more), I installed a 1TB SSD in bay #1 first then installed all of the software, apps, (and frequently used media files) onto the SSD before installing any additional HDD drives. The NAS runs very fast and I didn't have to loose a drive slot to set up an additional SSD caching drive.

Ich verstehe die handvoll negative Rezensionen nicht. Das Asustor Nimbustor ist ein absolut feines NAS. Ich konnte nicht feststellen dass es lauter als aehnliche Geräte von Synology oder QNAP sein soll. Die Oberflaeche ist sehr schnell und mittels Möglichkeit den Speicher auf 16GB aufzurüsten und auch durch VirtualBox kann man seine eigenen virtuellen Maschinen auf dem NAS laufen lassen. Es ist mittlerweile mein drittes Asustor NAS (neben diversen Synology und Qnap Teilen) und bin sehr zufrieden. Die Auswahl an eigenen Anwendungen ist villeicht nicht so professionel wie bei den länger auf dem Markt vorhandenen Synology oder Qnap. Dafür stimmt Preis/Leistung.

Excellent product. too bad to see the price went up very high.

Setup is a breeze, and it's easy to add or replace drives on the fly. Native Plex Server app works perfectly. Now I have Movies, TV Shows, Photo, and Music libraries in one place available from anywhere. I also have AppleTV on various Macs setup to use the media libraries as their home, and this works great for media bought from Apple. Even if your network is 1GB it still speeds up if you link the two 1GB ethernet ports in a round-robin. Throughput speed and the amount of noise are both entirely dependent on the drives you use!! I can tell you that four Seagate Iron Wolf drives singing you the song of their people makes a real racket.

For beginners: it’s not as easy as it could be. There’s a lot of documentation of the usual kinds, including manuals, online help and user forums, but it takes persistence and some fearless trial and error to get things the way you want them. Also, despite some of the doomsaying about Asustor support, I must say that the email support I received, when I needed it, was effective and fairly swift. Easy to install: it’s a breeze to install with just one quibble. I had purchased a 4GB Ram chip to expand memory to the maximum of 8GB. The build quality of the NAS is pretty flimsy and in fact I found one of the clips that was supposed to hold the expansion memory in place had been broken before arrival. Somehow I got the one remaining clip to hold the RAM in place and after that, everything was a breeze. The whole thing, including two RAID 1 volumes of Toshiba 6 TB hard drives, was initialized and ready to go within a day. Moreover I was mostly waiting for the device to do its thing. I didn’t have to do much except cheer it on. Ease of use: the user interface is very much like a smartphone. Very straightforward to operate the unit. I am using it to consolidate my approximately 5.5 TB of old movies on one volume and to put all my various forms of backup on the other one. I have 5 computers in the house and regularly do disk image backups to NAS using NovaStor as well as synchronizing several cloud storage volumes on OneDrive and other services. It’s all working problem free. The new NAS has exposed an underperforming home network though. The NAS cpu and ram are barely sweating but the network is saturated. A quick check of my current network’s capabilities against the state of the art means an upgrade to a WiFi 6 mesh network in the very near future. But that’s another story and I hope it will be similarly boring. The Asustor NAS, the four Toshiba drives and the memory expansion are running quietly in our family room. When everything is quiet (a rare thing) the clicking of the drives is noticeable but not annoyingly so. All in all, I’m pleased with my Asustor AS5304T.

I had to buy a new nas drive because my old one stopped me from.using it remotely so it was time for an upgrade. The quality is great feels well made and easy to use. The speed seems to be good and fast and the performance of the drive is great and has worked perfectly. I have films and TV programmes on the nas and I can watch them without problems so I highly recommend this drive