Asustor Drivestor 2 AS1102T review

The Asustor Drivestor 2 AS1102T ($ 169.99) is an entry-level storage solution for all of the data in your home. You don’t often see multi-gig LAN ports or 4K video transcoding capabilities in this price range. The AS1102T is also a solid performer that is easy to install and comes with a generous selection of apps. It’s our new editorial choice for affordable two-bay NAS devices.

Quad-core CPU transcodes 4K video

The AS1102T uses the same black case as the Asustor AS3102T v2 and AS3203T models that we tested a few years ago. It measures 6.5 x 4 x 8.6 inches (HWD) and doesn’t require any tools to access the internal drive bays. The front panel has a diamond-shaped design and a gold-colored Asustor logo as well as a USB 3.2 port and LED indicators for power, status, LAN connectivity and hard drive activity. On the back there is a 2.5 gigabit (2.5 Gbit / s) LAN port, a second USB 3.2 port, a reset button, a power button and a power socket. You won’t find the secondary LAN, WAN, and HDMI video ports that you get with the AS3102T.

The AS1102T is powered by a 1.4 GHz quad core CPU, 1 GB DDR4 RAM and 8 GB flash memory. A 70mm fan keeps all of these components cool. The device supports 4K video transcoding and can accommodate 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives (not included) for a total raw capacity of 36 TB. Adding an expansion bay module increases the potential total raw capacity to 180 TB. This NAS supports the volume types RAID 0, RAID 1, Single and JBOD together with the EXT4 file system.

You manage the AS1102T with Asustor’s ADM 4.0 operating system, which offers a handful of features that were not found in previous versions. An improved search engine, updated OpenSSL connectivity, and easy-to-use web server tools make administrative tasks a little easier than previous Asustor devices. The web-based ADM console offers a Windows-like user interface that makes it easy to create and share folders, back up data, configure drives, and download apps. You can also use a number of Asustor mobile apps to control certain NAS functions, although the app lacks the full functionality of the ADM console.

When you first open ADM, you’ll see a 14-tile desktop, including Storage Manager, Access Control, App Central, File Explorer, Activity Monitor, Online Help, and Settings. You can use the activity monitor to view CPU, memory, and network activity. You can also monitor drive usage statistics here in a colorful pie chart format.

Tap the Access Control tile to create shared folders and user groups, and to assign app permissions. In Storage Manager, you can create and manage data volumes, view drive health statistics, check for bad blocks and other hard drive errors, and view information about Self Monitoring Analysis and Report Technology (SMART) drives.

You can use File Explorer to browse and manage files stored on the NAS, assign folder permissions, and share links to files. Use the Backup & Restore tile to configure the AS1102T for remote synchronization and to set up cloud-based backups and create backup schedules.

You can access and download more than 100 Asustor and third-party apps from App Central. App categories include Home / Personal Applications, Business Applications, Security, Backup and Sync, Web Hosting, Office Productivity, and Bulletin Board, to name a few.

Use the Settings tile to edit network settings, configure fan speed, and manage system error notifications. Here you can also configure ADM Defender to protect the NAS from malware and enable media mode, which reserves a portion of the NAS storage for better transcoding and media streaming performance.

Testing the AS1102T: Easy Setup, Fast Performance

Setting up the AS1102T is very easy. After installing two Seagate 10 TB IronWolf drives in the bays, I connected the NAS to my router and opened a browser on my desktop PC that was also connected to the same router. I typed acc.asustor.com in the address bar and downloaded and installed the Asustor Control Center software, which the NAS immediately recognized. I tapped the Uninitialized button and configured my time and date settings as well as my network settings (DHCP or manual). Then I chose RAID 1 for a total capacity of 9.09TB.

The initialization process took a few minutes in total, but it took the software about 20 hours to sync the drives before the NAS was ready for testing.

The AS1102T achieved quick results in our file transfer tests where we used a 4.9 GB folder containing a mix of music, video, photo, and office document files to measure the read and write performance of the NAS. (See more about how we test NAS and hard drives)

Its write speed of 89 MB / s was faster than the QNAP TS-230 (75 MB / s), TerraMaster F2-210 (70 MB / s), and Synology DS220j (87 MB / s). It also managed 89 Mbit / s in the read test, outperforming the QNAP TS-230 and the TerraMaster F2-210, which both achieved 77 Mbit / s. The Synology DS220j was just a tad faster at 90 MB / s.

The best affordable two-bay NAS

If you are looking for a network storage device with two slots and multi-gig LAN, but do not want to spend a bundle, you have come to the right place with the Asustor Deskstor AS1102T.

This affordable entry-level NAS may not have the many network and video connections you get on higher-priced models, but it does give you a single 2.5 Gbps LAN port and offers hardware-based 4K video transcoding. It uses a tool-free case and is managed with Asustor’s easy-to-use ADM software and has a nice selection of apps that allow you to use the NAS in a number of different ways. All of this together makes the AS1102T the Editors’ Choice Award for affordable two-bay NAS devices.