ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro AS3304T v2 NAS Review

TweakTown's Rating: 91%

The Bottom Line

The ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro AS3304T v2 NAS offers good performance in a four-bay appliance for the entry-level homelabber!

Pros

• + 2.5Gbe
• + Tool-less drive installation
• + Power consumption
• + Price

Cons

• - None

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Off the heels of the Drivestor 12, we remained in talks with ASUSTOR about their recently released NAS appliances, and they noted upcoming releases that replace the now-aging Drivestor 4 Pro series, notably the AS3304T v2, the second generation of the Drivestor 4 Pro itself. This NAS shares some aesthetic components like the chassis from the original, but under the hood is a new hardware set that ASUSTOR hopes increases performance while maintaining efficiency.

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As noted above, the hardware has undergone a near-complete change for the v2. The original used a Realtek 1296 SoC, while ASUSTOR has chosen the Realtek 1619B for this latest iteration, a quad-core SoC operating at 1.7GHz; memory has not changed, keeping with the 2GB DDR4. It's worth noting here that it is not upgradable, though it should be plenty for its intended use case.

Connectivity includes three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, available for expansion with AS5004U and AS6004U chassis. With either chassis, the v2 will allow an additional twelve drives. Network connectivity includes a single 2.5Gbe port.

The pricing of the ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro v2 comes in at $339 with a three-year warranty.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro AS3304T v2 NAS

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$319.00	$319.00	$339.00	-	Buy
	-	-	-	-	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 10/8/2024 at 8:47 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Packaging

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The Drivestor arrived in retail packaging, which includes the features listed to the right and an image of the NAS.

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The AS3304T arrived with the power adapter, rated at 90W, a CAT5e ethernet cable, and drive screws for those wanting to use 2.5" drives.

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Unboxing, the v2 maintains the same design we have become accustomed to. This includes a piano black cover for the drive bays, complete with branding. We have the power button on the left side, followed by LEDs for each bay, ethernet connectivity, and power. At the bottom left, we have a quick-access USB 3.2 for one-touch backups.

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After removing the front cover, we expose the four-drive bay design.

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Most of the connectivity is found in the rear I/O. This includes a Kensington lock on the far left, while dual USB 3.2 and the single 2.5Gbe connection can be found along the right side. Centered, we have a large cooling fan that pushes air through the chassis.

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We reached out to Patriot Memory for testing the AS3304T V2, as the cost of 1TB SSDs in the SATA form factor is quite low and can significantly boost the performance of the NAS in daily operation. That said, you of course sacrifice capacity in this arrangement.

Software

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As seen above, ASUSTOR's NAS setup runs through the Control Center app.

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As seen above, further setup continues in your web browser; we start by detecting the system we are setting up.

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Landing on the dashboard, we have a desktop full of icons, allowing easy access to most of the Drivestor's features. We note several new icons, including Dr ASUSTOR and the Web Center.

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When navigating through the system, we start by opening the activity monitor. This tool provides an overview of the system's overall performance and allows for more detailed insights, with separate tabs for CPU, Memory, and Network. On the side panel, one can also access information about current processes, drive usage, and settings.

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Next, we will have a small sample of the available apps for Drivestor.

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Backup and Restore offers various data backup options, such as Rsync, SMB Backup, and FTP. Internal backup is available for multiple volumes, and external backup can be done with a USB 3.2 drive.

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System services can be seen above; this includes all the basics, like SMB, AFP, and NFS.

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Next, we will manage RAID arrays, volumes, and iSCSI connections using the storage manager.

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DR ASUSTOR, which I do believe is a new feature for ADM 4.2, offers system health checks, including drives and support tools, in case of system issues.

System Benchmarks

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We started testing the Drivestor with a quick run through CrystalDiskMark. The system is connected via a 2.5Gbe connection and offers fantastic sequential throughput, hitting 296 MB/s read and 200 MB/s write in RAID 5.

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Switching the workload to IOMeter with 4K Random workloads, we pull up our charts. In this first workload, we note the ASUSTOR seems to top out around 13K IOPS read at QD32.

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Looking at write performance, the v2 holds around 2500 IOPS throughout testing.

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We have now switched the workload to a Sequential setup. This netted us around 100 MB/s at QD1, then ramped to just under 270 MB/s by QD4, when peak performance was reached.

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Sequential write was again consistent with the ASUSTOR; we started at 80 MB/s QD1, and peak speeds were reached at QD4, a touch under 180 MB/s.

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Our 8K 70/30 or OLAP workload wrapped up our testing of the Drivestor 4 Pro; we ended up with about 1500 IOPS QD1, which scaled up to 3000 IOPs at QD4, the unit's peak.

Final Thoughts

I had a great experience with the Drivestor 4 Pro v2 as I became more familiar with the new ADM and the latest generation of ASUSTOR appliances; our recent review of the Flashstor 12 certainly helped as our introduction to the new platform a few months back. It's great to see the market advancing, with ASUSTOR now offering 2.5Gbe on entry-level appliances like the AS3304T v2, and even better, this unit can be expanded should your needs grow with an optional expansion chassis from ASUSTOR.

Performance was on par with expectations, and we easily reached top performance with our Patriot SSDs. RAID 5 in CDM was our first stop, and we picked up 296 MB/s of read and 200 MB/s of write in sequential workloads. Switching to IOMeter, we did see more granularity from the v2, QD4 being where this unit seemed to pick up performance across workloads. Random read and write peaking at 13K and 2.5K IOPS, respectively; while looking at sequential, we see the same 270 MB/s read and 180 MB/s write. Our OLAP workload shows the unit quickly ramping up performance to around 3K IOPS at QD4, again this seemed to be the sweet spot for the ASUSTOR in our testing.

In terms of pricing, the Drivestor 4 Pro v2, at $339, has little direct competition in the market. We were able to snoop out a QNAP TS-462 that shares similar specifications with 2.5Gbe connectivity on a 4-bay unit, though we also note that ASUSTOR still has older appliances like the AS1104T available. That said, we find the 3304T v2 a solid value for users wanting to get into a NAS platform in a home environment; offering 2.5Gbe and solid expansion over USB 3.2 gives this unit a solid life expectancy that should serve you well alongside ADM, which has grown immensely over the years and now offers nearly any application for your needs.