ASUSTOR AS6202T Enthusiast 2-Bay 4K-Capable NAS Review

Introduction Today I'm taking ASUSTOR's impressive AS6202T 2-bay enthusiast NAS for a spin in the testing area and a closer look at all the features and function it has to offer. This is one seriously impressive NAS, both feature wise and performance wise. There's also a 4-bay model available called the AS6204T in case 2 bays aren't enough for your storage needs. The AS6202T is based around Intel's new Braswell-based Celeron quad-core processor with Intel AES-NI hardware encryption and powerful iGPU - at least powerful when we talk NAS and multimedia. The system is equipped with 4GB dual-channel memory and it capable of speeds over 223MB/s writing and 220MB/s reading in RAID 1 configurations. With encryption turned on, the system is still able to deliver 222MB/s read speeds and 117MB/s write speeds. Right from the start, we know that we got a powerful NAS in our hands. The AS6202T is just as powerful when it comes to expansion and connection options as it is in its heart. You get three high-speed USB 3.0 ports where one is located on the front together with the 1-touch copy button. There are two more USB 2.0 ports on the rear where you also find two eSATA ports. That is one feature that I really love. eSATA is my favourite method of attaching external storage to my system and finding two eSATA ports is a rarity. Big thumbs up from me for this addition. The two Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports allow for fail-over and link-aggregation setups for increased throughput, lower latency, and backup in case of failure. A bit part of a NAS is the ability to deliver your stored media content to you where ever you are. The network capabilities are great, but the NAS also features direct connection options. With an HDMI 1.4b connector, you are able to connect the NAS directly to your TV or monitor where you can control it with either USB keyboard and mouse or by use of ASUSTOR's remote control. There's also an S/PDIF audio port for the best connection to your stereo system. A lot of NAS system are upgradeable with memory these days, especially in this category, but not all of them make it as easy as ASUSTOR made it. While the NAS already comes with 4GB RAM, which should be sufficient for most people, some might need or want more. You can upgrade to a total of 8GB with this system and it is as easy as sliding the top cover off. The two memory slots will be accessible and the overall upgrade shouldn't take more than a minute or two. We'll take a close look at that on the next page. The dual-channel memory in this NAS is one of the things that will make this NAS run very smoothly when handling 4K playback because it can do that too. The picture build-up will be much quicker and you'll enjoy brilliant ultra high-definition 4K videos with a performance that is unmatched in its class. Besides all the built-in features such as cross-platform file sharing, you can expand the features further by the use of apps. You could for example use SoundsGood or iTunes Server to play high-quality digital music from your NAS everywhere or install additional multimedia server Apps such as the UPnP Media Server and give your NAS the ability to stream multimedia content to your computers, TVs, and mobile devices. That is on top of the direct usage features that I already mention. An overall real multimedia machine. There are so many features, it's hard to mention them all and you'll find a full list on the next page. A few are still worth highlighting such as the MyArchieve function that allows you to use internal drives as external. Gain the speed, power, and capacity of an internal drive, but add the convenience of an external drive. The network recycle bin is another useful feature and it is highly customizable as its based on each shared folder individually. The USB ports can naturally be used for external storage devices and so can the eSATA ports. The USB ports can also be used to add WiFi support. Bluetooth dongle and speakers are also supported and so are USB printers and digital TV dongles. You can even connect a USB DAC, keyboard, mice, and optical disk drives and use them right away as were they part of the original hardware. There are plenty of backup option ranging from traditional Rsync over DataSync for Microsoft OneDrive, DropBox support, Google Drive support, and HiDrive support. It doesn't really matter which service you use, ASUSTOR has it covered. Backup is one part of a safe setup and another is a good software defense against malicious attacks. The AS6202T comes with Antivirus functionality with scheduled scans, automatic definition updates, and a quarantine area for infected files. Especially if you use the built-in download features in this NAS, the antivirus function is a good feature to run. The NAS features an HTTP, FTP, and Torrent download center as well as the Takeasy app to rip content from media sites such as YouTube, YouKu, Tudou, and more. You can even run virtual machines (VM) with Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X. The VM system supports both import and export of OVF formatted machines, you can take snapshots and they support HDMI audio out. A physical NAS Network port can be designated for use by specific Virtual Machines. A lot of people, but home users and enterprises alike, are using VPNs these days. The AS6202T can both run VPN Server and Client, making it easy to integrate into your existing setup. Other security features include the Syslog server and the Surveillance Center that can turn your NAS into a 24 channel surveillance center. The built-in email server is another thing that enterprises will find very useful and a web-based email client is available too. The whole thing is backed by a 3-year warranty. Feature Highlights Embedded with Intel Celeron N3050 Dual Core CPU Local HDMI multimedia output (4K, 1080p and high definition multi-channel audio) Windows + Mac + Linux cross-platform file sharing A multimedia hub for your photos, music and movies Equipped with dedicated hardware encryption engine Packaging and Accessories The AS6202T comes in a simple package that displays the unit itself and the model number on the front. On one of the sides, you'll find a product comparison with other ASUSTOR NAS, allowing you to quickly see if you picked the right device for the tasks you have. The other side features all the hardware specifications and lists the package contents. Inside the box, we find a power supply with cable fitting to the region where you bought it, screws for the drives, two LAN cables, a product disk and quick setup guide. Everything you need to get going with your brand new ASUSTOR NAS. A closer look It is time to take a closer look at the AS6202T NAS, starting with the rear. The media connection is located at the top next to the system fan. We get an SPDIF audio connector as well as an HDMI 1.4b connector that supports up to 4K resolutions. The two eSATA ports are located right below the HDMI port. I love this part as eSATA is my preferred method of using portable storage. It removes the bottleneck created by USB conversion and improves compatibility with apps that don't work well with removable storage devices. Having two eSATA ports available is a big bonus for me. Just because the NAS has two eSATA doesn't mean that it doesn't feature plenty of USB ports too. There are two USB 2.0 ports on the rear that are perfect for use with keyboard and mouse and two USB 3.0 ports which are optimal for modern storage drives. You can naturally also connect all sorts of other devices such as printers, cameras, network dongles, tv dongles, and much more. Next to the USB ports are the two Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 LAN ports that support link aggregation for faster speeds or fail-over protection. The front of the NAS has more features then you'll see at the first glance because it's been cleverly integrated into the overall design. Instead of having a long row of LEDs on the side, ASUSTOR distributed the LEDs into the features they belong to. The power button at the top has an integrated LED strip and the overall activity LED strip is located right below it. The two LAN ports are located on the rear, where they also have LEDs, so their LEDs are located by themselves. At the bottom is another USB 3.0 port with surrounding one-touch copy button and integrated LED strip. The drive trays have two LEDs each for power status and activity. This is a premium NAS and that also shows on the drive trays. The are made from sturdy metal and covered with plastic and rubber to protect the drive and give them their appearance. The front allows for air intake to cool the drives. The previously mentioned LED lights in the drive trays aren't actually in the trays, but on the backplane inside the NAS. The light is just transferred to the front through the tray. You can also mount 2.5-inch drives in these trays, increasing the available storage options a lot. Whether you want to use SSDs or HDDs, 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch, you can. The AS6202T already comes with 4GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, but you can upgrade to more should this be too little. That process is truly easy with this NAS as it only requires you to remove three screws from the back and slide the cover open. Once open, turn it to the side and bend back the protective covers over the memory modules. The modules are secured with adhesive, so removing them can be a bit tricky. Be careful not to break the SO-DIMM brackets. There is no need for any normal user to take it further apart, but we can do so easy too should we want to. The backside of the chassis is well secured with many screws, but once they are out, the rest is easy. First, we remove the SATA bridge for the drives, a simple PCB with two SATA connector on one side and a few capacitors on the other side. The PCB also holds the LEDs for the drive trays. Now we can remove the motherboard and have a closer look at that. The board is well filled on both sides with chips and data lines. In itself, there isn't anything spectacular about the motherboard. It has everything it needs to have and it's secured to the chassis with ESD tape from the rear IO. There is one more connector on the motherboard that is a little unusual in DIY terms and it is used to connect the front panel to the rest of the system. LEDs, button and front USB. The two memory modules used in this AS6202T are from DSL Memory, also known as Data Specialties Co LTD. 1600MHz clock speed, 2GB capacity each, CL11 timings, and 1.35V power requirements. On the rear of the motherboard are two Broadcom BCM57781 Gigabit Ethernet controllers for the two LAN ports. The ASMedia ASM1061 chip takes care of the PCI to SATA conversion of two ports. Next to it is an ASMedia ASM1466 SATA repeater used to improve the signal. The FE1.1 USB 2.0 HUB chip kind off gives away its purpose in the name. It is a USB 2.0 4-port Hub controller. The Realtek ALC887 chip is for the audio features in the NAS. Overall, a list of quality components. System Specifications, Features & Power Consumption Hardware Specifications Software Specifications Features Login The basic login screen is simple and thereby also fast to load, something that's nice, but you can also customize it to your liking once you are logged in. Dashboard The dashboard resembles a mobile operating system more than more NAS systems do, and the features are located slightly different. That's no problem at all, on the contrary, it is a great thing. It is easy to use for novice users and advanced users will quickly find everything they need as everything is sorted logically. Power Consumption The chart contains the actual power consumption measured at the PSU connection and while loaded with a maximum amount of drives. Peak, or maximum, power draw will occur during boot times. Setup - Initialization, Storage, and External Initialization Installing the ASUSTOR AS6202T is a really easy task. Either you can pick the 1-Click Setup where you barely need to enter any information or you can take the customized tour. Using the 1-Click setup requires you to give the NAS a name to be recognized in the network, set a new administrator password, and select the drive setup you prefer. That is all you need to do. See, couldn't be any simpler. The NAS will automatically format the inserted drives, create the basic setup, and connect everything. Once the setup is done, you can choose to register your NAS. It is free and opens up a lot more options when it comes to easy remote connection and smart apps. You can then select the country you're located in to get the relevant connections and optionally join a newsletter list. Now we're all done. You can naturally skip the whole registration process if you don't wish to do so. You can also do it later, change it later, and remove it later - should you wish to do so. The NAS is set to check for updates automatically and there is a good chance that it will prompt you with an update option the first time you set it up. Software updates are released quite frequently and it is always recommended to keep headless units up-to-date. Besides the update notification, if one is available, you'll be welcomed by a setup guide that will explain the basics of how the NAS works. Settings There are a few settings that you might want to familiarize yourself with right away. You got a drop down menu at the top by pressing the username where you can access some basic settings. You can get a quick view on the volume usage. But most importantly, you can change your home screen and set up a layout you prefer. But all the main settings are found on the dashboard under the fittingly named Settings app. This is also where you can change the style of the login page. You can choose from existing templates and also create your own setup. There is a full compliment of date and time features from manual to NTP synchronized times. ASUSTOR's ADM operating system is available in a lot of different languages. I personally prefer to keep all my technology in English, but other people might not. Either way, you got plenty to choose from. Storage Options We just created a storage setup in the initialization, but we might have changed our mind and want to change that - at some point. Luckily the Storage Manager makes that very easy. Select a volume and press the Remove button. You can naturally also create new ones if you got spare disks and manage the existing ones. Removing the last volume will automatically launch the setup guide for a new volume. You can choose either the quick setup or the advanced. Since we took the quick one last time, we'll pick the advanced this time. First, you have to select a volume mode. RAID 5, 6, and 10 are naturally not available since this only is a 2-bay unit. The next step is to select the drives to include in this new drive volume. Those with the 4-bay model also have the option to set up extra spare drives for their volume, but again, since this is the 2-bay unit, we don't have enough drives available. Before all these changes are applied, we get one last look at our new settings. Once we confirm it, the NAS will start to remove the old setup and create the new. There's a final safety in place where you have to enter the administrator password to be able to delete the volume. This is a great safety that easily can prevent accidental data loss. Virtual Drives A really cool built-in feature are the Virtual Drives. You can pick any ISO file and mount it as a virtual shared folder and gain access to it over the network as if the original disk would be inserted into a drive. Mounting a virtual drive is as simple as browsing for the ISO file and give it a name. External Devices The External Devices app is a centralized app with access to anything external you can connect to the NAS. The first page is most likely going to be the most used and this is where you get a view of the USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and eSATA connected drives. You can also connect USB printers to the NAS and share them out over the network. Create a modern network printer from the old relic instead of getting a brand new printer with LAN. Wireless and Bluetooth dongles can also be connected to give the AS6202T and expand the functionality even further. It isn't an unlikely scenario that users of this NAS also opt to get a UPS. The AS6202T naturally also support this and you can connect it with your network enabled UPS. Last but not least, ADM also allows you to connect optical drives through the external ports. With the built-in multimedia features and HDMI out, this could be an amazing feature for Blu-Ray or DVD playback. Setup - Users, Groups, Shares, and Services Up until now we only made our drive setup and got our administrator user, and that is something we need to change. The logical next step would be to create users, groups, and shared folders. All three of these settings are found in the Access Control. User Accounts Besides the admin user, there's also a default guest user. The list view provides a quick view of users, their quota, and status. Adding new users isn't complicated either. The only information that you are required to add is a name and a password. You can optionally also add a description and email, and also disallow the user from changing the password themselves and set and expiration date for the user account. Next, you can either define a new role for the user or mark him as an administrator. Selecting a new role will allow you to assign the user to already existing user groups. We'll create more of those in a bit. Each user also has their own access rights when it comes to shared folders. And we can set a disk quota to prevent users hogging all the drive space for themselves. And now our new user is created. You can also specify app rules during creation, but we haven't installed any apps yet. User Groups User groups is an easy way to maintain control of a lot of users without having to edit them all manually. Set app and folder access rights for the group and then add user to the group. Quickly disable single shares and apps for a whole group becomes as easy as if it was a single user. Creating user groups are very similar to users. We need a name and an optional description. We can then add already existing users to the new group. Set access rights for our shared folders that will apply to all users in the group. And that's it, easy as Sunday morning. Shared Folders The main reason to set up a NAS is to share files, naturally. The cornerstone of this are Share folders and you can create pretty much as many as you want. Some features and apps will also create folders for their own needs and your usage. Creating new shares only require a name. You can optionally add a description, enable the network recycling bin, and encrypt the share with a password You can set the basic access rights for users too while creating the new share and define who has access in what way. Once you're done it's added to the list where you also can edit the settings and access rights at any time. Services The network services are all collected in the conveniently named Services app. The first one is probably the most used as it is for Windows-based network sharing. You can change all the relevant settings to match your network setup, including setting the max Samba version to use. You can also join an Active Directory server by simply entering its details. Apple PC users are also fully covered by the AFP protocol. You choose whether it should advertise itself via Bonjour and Time Machine is also supported. You can also check out the Time Machine backup list directly from here. Linux and Unix users are naturally covered as the NAS is built on a *NIX platform, but it is your choice whether you enable or disable the NFS protocol. The built-in FTP server is quite comprehensive and has all the features you'll want. The user rights are the same as for the NAS, which makes the setup very easy. SSL and FXP are both supported by the FTP server, you can limit the transfer speeds, and manually edit the passive port range. The NAS will even detect your external IP automatically when you enable the respond function. WebDAV support has also been added to the compliment. The Web Server functions allow you an easy setup for a local web presence. It has all the features and options you'll want from a simple server like this. Virtual hosts are also quickly created through the interface. For database usage, ADM comes with MariaDB built-in. You can also add database servers through the App Center. SSH is a vital function and ADM also supports SFTP. A vital NAS role is to act as a backup target and an easy way to do that is by using Rsync. Last but not least, we find the TFTP and SNMP features that complete the setup. Network Configuration There are a couple more settings that are important to take a look at and the first of them are the network settings. We find all the settings we would expect here and with two LAN ports at our disposal, we can also create a link aggregated connection. ADM is a clever system in regard to link aggregation and it will show you if it failed to establish the connection you configured. You got all the settings you'll want for the LAN interfaces, both of them individually or trunked connections. You can naturally also adjust your MTU size to fit your network setup, some might prefer a larger size here. Within the advanced settings, you can enable VLAN tagging for the ports and also configure your IPv6 setup. The Wi-Fi settings are only available when you have a dongle connected to the NAS, but it works the way any wireless setup does. Last but not least, we have the Proxy settings. This might or might not be an important function for you and it's fully supported either way. VPN users will find the necessary settings for their connection within the Settings app in the same-named section. Setup - Activity, Hardware, Notification & Other System Features So far, I've mostly focused on the basic file distribution features, but the ASUSTOR ADM operating system has a lot more features, function, and abilities. In this section, I will take a look at the hardware and monitor functions as well as energy saving features and easy methods for remote connection setup. Activity Monitor The Activity Monitor is a great way to quickly find out what takes what amount of resources, what's draining your systems resources, and what processes are running. The first four pages explain themselves and show the CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk Usage respectively. The fifth activity page is a little more interesting when looking for more details. You can see each process that is running, their state, and how much CPU usage and Memory they're consuming. Hardware Information The System Information app provides a quick and easy glance at your NAS' hardware and setup. On the first page, you find information such as BIOS and ADM version, time-zone settings, hardware info and temperature. The network page has all the information you'd expect, it does however not report the 802.3ad connection error that's currently present. The Log page is a little more interesting. You can find all the events that have happened here in order to quickly diagnose why something happened. For example, you can see all the failed events from my various testing below as well as USB detection, virtual drive mounts, and more. This is also where we can view what users currently are logged into our server. The final page called Dr. ASUSTOR is able to diagnose your NAS and detect possible trouble before it becomes an actual problem. This is a very useful feature that every ASUSTOR users should check on regularly. Hardware Control ADM offers quite a bit of control over the hardware itself, not just the software. For example, you are able to control the LED brightness and disable specific LEDs. You can also enable a special night mode and customize that. In the same way, you can also disable the system buzzer from various events. We can also disable both the IR receiver and hardware reset button. The AS6202T can be sent to sleep mode on a specified inactivity timer and the same goes for both internal and external connected drives. EuP mode is supported for that extra bit of environmental conscience and we can define what to happen in various power situations. Power Scheduling is another awesome feature that lets you configure the NAS to automatically turn on and off by scheduling. Last but not least, the fan speed can be manually changed in three intervals or be set to automatically adjust based on system temperature and load. Notification You can send and receive notifications to both email addresses and also via SMS. The last does however require you to have the service available already. Neither takes much effort to configure and you'd be done in a minute or less. Push notifications to your mobile devices is another way to receive warnings and systems messages. You got your phone with you most of the time anyway, so why not simply use this. More Features Ease of Access is just what the name promises. It is an easy way to set your NAS up to be accessed from you anywhere and from any device as well as sort your router and DDNS connections. The EZ-Router will automatically configure any port forwards that installed apps require in your router if UPnP is enabled. You can also manually add more rules or modify existing ones and let ADM send it on to your router. No need to fiddle with multiple user interfaces. If you don't want to use ASUSTOR's Cloud Connect, then you got plenty of other options in the form of DDNS services. ADM supports a long list. Besides the EuP settings we saw earlier, the AS6202T also has its own Energy Saver feature. This can be set to the automatic version that keeps track of internal and external drives as well as the fan, or you can manually adjust them all. With the Network Recycle Bin feature you don't need to worry about accidental file deletion on network drives anymore. Normally when you delete from a network drive, it's gone. This adds a recycle bin to your shares and adds another convenience. Security, Backup & More Apps As a file host, which a NAS is, we need to keep an eye on our security as well. This covers both backups of our files as well as intrusion protection and file protection. Security The first thing you'll want to do in regards to safety is to make sure that your firmware is updated. The system is updated frequently with both fixes and new features. Do it manually or let the NAS handle updates itself. ADM Defender is a basic firewall app built into ADM. Create access policies with black and white lists as well as trusted lists for those who always should have access. File protection is offered via the Avast Anti-Virus app, among others. It does require you to register for an account, but it is free. The could be particularly useful if you're also using the built-in download features. Backup A RAID setup is a great safety, but it should only be considered a safety in regards to always-on availability. It should never be used instead of backups. With that said, it's time to look at the methods you can backup the content on your NAS. Rsync, or Remote Sync, is one of the easiest ways for backup jobs. It is supported on pretty much any system that exists and it's easy to use through its simplicity. You can create backup jobs to FTP servers, internal drives, and external drives too in the same way and you can create multiple jobs for each of them. The One Touch copy button on the front can be configured here too. You can set which way the copy should work and whether it should be copied or moved. The only cloud backup feature built directly into ADM is for Amazon S3 and it works in the same way as all the other backups. More cloud backup options can be installed through apps. The NAS' settings can also be backed up and restored from this app, all in one convenient place. Through the App Central, you can add more cloud backup options such as Google Drive, HiDrive, and DropBox. App Central There are a lot of apps available to install on your ASUSTOR NAS and there's one for every occasion. Installation is as easy as pressing the Install button on each item. Clicking somewhere else on the icon will load the details on the app. The categories such as Top Apps, Latest Apps, and Beta Apps help you find what you don't know as fast as what you're really are looking for. Beta apps sport new features, but they might not be as stable or fully tested as the normal versions. It's still great to have the ability to test them early on. The Installed apps can quickly be viewed at once, turned on and off, and removed again by the tile keys. There's also a log for the app central, showing you what installed when. One of the awesome apps is the download center that allows your NAS to download for you in the background. No need to have your PC or any other device running for something your NAS can do. You can add torrent files and download from URL, subscribe to RSS feeds and more in this app. You can also get uTorrent and other download tools in the App Center. The Mail Server is one of the apps that businesses will appreciate. Everything you need is built right into the app and the setup is a breeze. There's also a web-based email client available for your employees to use. The Photo Gallery opens outside ADM and it's what you think it is. An app to store and organise all your photos. Direct Usage via HDMI A NAS as powerful as the AS6202T would be a waste not to take advantage of. The built-in HDMI port allows the CPU to use the iGPU and you to use it directly. You can either use ASUSTOR's remote control or connect a keyboard, mouse, and other input peripherals directly to your NAS There are a few settings that you can change inside the Portal app such as what information should be displayed on the screen. The main setting you might want to access is to change the resolution, like for example to 4K as the NAS supports. The ADM control built into the direct usage simply loads a browser instance and as we can see below, the 4K resolution is working sweet. It's by far the smoothest 4K experience that I've had from a NAS so far and ASUSTOR deserves praise for this. With access to ADM from the NAS itself and without the need for any other device, the configuration and monitoring become real easy. You can also use it to browse the web and your favourite pages, such as Eteknix for example. The YouTube app works much in the same way as you're used to it from your smartphone and tablet. Search, find, click, and play the videos. KODI is also part of the app availability and it works like a charm. Testing Method Most of the hardware for NAS testing isn't an important factor when it comes to benchmarks, most of it comes down to the network infrastructure. I will be teaming the two Intel Gigabit Ethernet ports on my test bench and connect them to my managed switch. The same will be done with the available LAN ports on the NAS, which should give a great testing environment. As part of the testing, the NAS is connected through a D-Link DXS-1210-12TC managed 10GBase switch and then to our test bench to give the best real world setup test that we can and the NAS itself will be packed with Western Digital's latest RED NAS drives. Intel's NASPT software does require us to drop the memory down to 2GB, as using any more would lead to data caching and skew the results. I will be testing the NAS box performance under each of the RAID options that it has available as well just a single drive. Full volume encryption and shared folder encryption will also be tested where available, to check what impact it has on the performance. Test system: Supermicro C7Z97-OCE Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3 Exceleram EP3001A 2GB PC3-10666 Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Sapphire R7 240 2GB be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer C Lian Li PC-T60 Disks in Product: WD RED NAS 6TB Angelbird SSD2go Pocket 512GB USB 3.0 Network Setup: D-Link DXS-1210-12TC D-Link DXE-820T We would like to thank our sponsors for supplying us with the components needed for the test system as well as drives. Software used: With a device of this sort having so many different applications, Intel's NASPT software covers all the bases and also gives us a set of results that we will be able to utilize and give a benchmark against other similar systems in the future. Intel NASPT (Network Attached Storage Performance Toolkit) performs its test by transferring varying sizes and quantities of data to and from the device based on twelve different scenarios. HD Video Playback HD Video playback is a read test, where a single 2 Gb file is read in 256 kB blocks sequentially from the drive. This simulates where a 720p HD video is being watched across the network to a media player on the other end. 2x HD Video Playback 2x HD Video Playback works with exactly the same data set as the first HD Video test, however, this time, the same content is streamed twice from the NAS box simulating two simultaneous streams being made to external media players. 4x HD Video Playback In the same way that the 2x Video Playback streams to the equivalent of 2 external media players at the same time, the test here doubles that again up to a simulated 4 media players. HD Video Record The HD Video Record test is, as the name suggests, a write test to the NAS box. A single 2 GB file is written to the device in 256 kB blocks sequentially to the disk. HD Playback & Record The HD playback and record test now put the drive under the same single record and playback tests as before, but now at the same time. This will factor for the quick changes needed to switch between reading and writing two large blocks of data across the network to the device. Content Creation For content creation, Intel have simulated access to via video creation applications. This is made up of 98 files with 12 MB reads and 14 MB writes in varying sizes of blocks. The activity is predominantly non-sequential with the majority of access time made up of writing to the drives. There are quiet periods of read/write activity interrupted with busy periods to present a difficult workload on the drives. Office Productivity The office productivity simulation is very similar to the content creation, with a total of 607 files written to and read from the drive. A total of 1.4 GB of data is written to and read from the drive with a close balance between each made - the majority of write access is made up of 1 kB writes. File Copy To NAS This test quite simply put copies a single large file from the test system to the NAS box to show how well the system can sustain a single write speed. The 1.4 GB file is copied to the drive and written in 64 kB blocks. File Copy From NAS File copy from the NAS works in exactly the same way as the copy test, but it works in the opposite direction. The single 1.4 GB file is read off the NAS in 64 kB blocks. Directory Copy To NAS In the directory copy to NAS test, a directory tree representing that of a typical commercially available office suite is copied to the NAS to trace the bulk copy of a complex directory. A total of 2833 files making up 247 MB are moved, but the file sizes vary considerably with an average size of 41.4 kB. Due to the varying sizes of the files, only around 50% of the writes are sequential. Directory Copy From NAS In the same way that the file copy from NAS traces the same file back across to the test system, the directory copy from NAS does exactly the same but to the entire directory that it copied across previously. Photo Album Last of all is a test based on a photo album. When a photo album is viewed on-screen, only the images that you see are loaded from the drive and so when you scroll through the album, the new images have to be fetched and read. The album here contains 169 photos with varying file sizes based on the size, quality, and detail in the image. Reading the files in a photo album puts an unusual read load upon the drive as the metadata is read, a thumbnail constructed and finally the image viewed. Average Throughput This page shows the average throughput from each of the previous 12 tests in one and it can serve as an easy comparison between products. Encryption Throughput A proper security setup is important for a NAS and we'll naturally also test how the unit performs in this regards. With built-in hardware encryption engine, we shouldn't see much of a performance impact here. Final Thoughts Pricing At the time of writing, the ASUSTOR AS6202 2-bay NAS can be yours for $508.95 at NewEgg, £462.00 via Amazon UK, or €449 through Geizhals. Overview Wow, wow, wow. Where do I begin? The ASUSTOR AS6202T is an amazing NAS for prosumers, enthusiasts, and SMBs alike. The NAS is built upon a powerful CPU that supports 4K output, it comes with plenty of memory and an operating system that just works. With ADM, you don't have to fiddle around and try this and that, you just do and are done with it. It is as simple to use for beginners as it is for advanced users. We saw a really great performance from the NAS in our benchmarks and it impressed in the normal drive setups as well as with iSCSI and encrypted shares. The AS6202T keeps the performance top and didn't let me down a single time during my tests. There is no shortage of built-in features and there are tons of apps that can be installed from backup solutions to media players and email servers. Connection wise the AS6202T is top. You get plenty of USB ports and even two eSATA ports that I really love to see and having two of them makes it even sweeter. Dual Gigabit Ethernet LAN with support for failover and link aggregation setups guarantee a strong connection while the HDMI port allows the NAS to be used directly as an HTPC replacement with 4K (2160p) support. It looks good, it works well, performs great, and has every connection you'll want. What's not to love about the ASUSTOR AS6202T? Pros: Powerful CPU with hardware encryption 4GB Dual-Channel Memory HDMI with 4K support Three USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, two eSATA, and Dual Gbit LAN Eco-friendly through power saving features and low consumption Great operating system for novice and advanced alike Cons: None Neutral: Price might be too high for you, but it's fair for what you get "ASUSTOR's AS6202T is a powerhouse! It delivers a stable base with fast transfer speeds, plenty of connection options, and 4K direct usage via HDMI." Thank You ASUSTOR for providing us with this review sample.

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Encryption Throughput

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