ASUSTOR AS1002T 2-Bay Entry-Level NAS Review

Setup – There is more, Add-Ons & External Devices

There are many options on what you can use this NAS for with all the available apps such as download center, CouchPotato, CMS systems, Galleries, and Games. I mentioned on the last page that the backup services only included Amazon S3 in the cloud area, but you can also get Google Drive support through extra apps. As I said, lots of options.

System Information

There are a few more things that are worth showing, one of them being the system information window. It will provide instant information on your NAS, it’s software and hardware information as well as temperature and fan speed.

You can also find out what is happening on the network, what users are connected right now, and check up on the log files to see what has happened while you were away.

Dr. ASUSTOR is also found in the system information and the main reason that I’m mentioning this part. It allows for a quick self-diagnose to find possible trouble and help you to fix them. It also allows you to export the health record in order to get better help from support and user forums.

Activity Monitor

The activity monitor can be a useful tool as it gives you a live view on the resource consumption. I do feel that this is one place where ASUSTOR still could improve upon their OS with a few more options. The basics are covered, but there isn’t a function to see what process, if any, is accessing drives and which ones, and other details like that.

Storage Manager

We did set up our drives during the initialization, but there are more options than that in the storage manager. This is also the place you need to go if you want to change the setup later.

You can’t run the ASUSTOR AS1002T without a volume. When you delete the current one and none is left, the wizard to create a new one will be started automatically; you can pick either the quick or advanced setup.

With a 2-bay unit, the choices are limited to the four basic modes: Single, JBOD, RAID 0, and RAID 1. There aren’t enough drives available for the rest of the modes, so they’re grayed out.

Select the drives to be used in the new volume and the new volume is ready to be used.

After the creating, the new disk array will synchronize which can take up 12 hours on a system like this. You can start to use the new volume now, but the performance might be affected until it has completed the sync.

Apps

These were just the basic settings that we’ve seen so far. ASUSTOR created the ADM system to be modular and the basic system doesn’t have tons of things installed by default that you don’t need. Instead, ASUSTOR allows you to install just the apps you want and there are hundreds to choose from the App Central.

There are several ways to filter the apps, making it easier to find just what you need. The App Central works the same way that you’re used to from the app store on your smartphone and tablet and the installation only requires a single click.

External Devices

You can connect a variety of devices to your ASUSTOR AS1002T NAS via the two USB 3.0 ports. The primary function for most users will be the connection of flash drives and other portable storage drives, but you can also connect USB printers to the NAS and turn them into network connected ones.

Wireless networking and Bluetooth is both supported, but both require optional USB dongles to be connected. Please check compatibility list before you purchase to make sure that the two will work together.

The ability to connect an external optical disk drive to the NAS is awesome. You can easily rip any drive to an ISO and create a backup on your NAS that way. That is on top of the ability to share any optical disk over your network.

UPS devices are also supported on the AS1002T, allowing the NAS to withstand shorter power-outtakes and safely shut down if they last too long.