ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review

ASUSTOR continues its NAS lineup refresh with the solid Drivestor 4 Pro AS3304T, featuring ADM and 2.5Gbe networking support.

Published
Manufacturer: ASUSTOR
4 minutes & 6 seconds read time
TweakTown's Rating: 93%
TweakTown award

The Bottom Line

ASUSTOR delivers a fantastic four-bay platform with full ADM support and 2.5Gbe!

ASUSTOR has slowly been rebranding their NAS lineup for the last few years, something that started with the Nimbustor platform several years back and has moved through their SMB series with Lockerstor and now the latest: DriveStor Pro.

Drivestor Pro denotes ASUSTOR's high-end entry-level platforms. There are two models at launch with Drivestor 2 Pro and Drivestor 4 Pro, indicating the number of drive bays. On top of everything, ASUSTOR has designed these new platforms to be efficient while baking in all the features a potential NAS user would want with high-level hardware to handle it.

For the Drivestor 4 Pro, this gives us an ARM-based platform with the Realtek RTD1296. This is a quad-core CPU that operates at 1.4GHz that has been paired with 2GB of DDR4, again for efficiency. This unit has 8GB of eMMC onboard for handling ADM.

Storage and connectivity offer consumers four 3.5" drive bays, tool-less installation, and a SATA 6GB/s backplane. The maximum capacity is 72TB internally, while the Drivestor 4 Pro does support external expansion with the AS6004U for a peak capacity of 288TB.

This expansion takes place over the three USB 3.2 Gen 1 connections available on the Drivestor 4 Pro. At the same time, network connectivity is handled by the single 2.5Gbe connection. The MSRP of the ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro comes in at $329.99 with a three-year warranty.

Packaging

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 05

Drivestor 4 Pro is delivered in white box packaging, label to the right, offering model identification alongside hardware features.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 06

A label on the back of the box offers full hardware specifications along with package contents.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 07

Included in the box, we have a Cat5e ethernet cable, power adapter, and drive screws.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 08

Aesthetically, the DriveStor 4 Pro shares the Nimbustors design with an updated rose gold logo on the bay cover. LEDs to the left give insight into each drive's activity along with LAN, power, and USB.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 09

A closer look at the LED panel, power button at the top, and one-touch backup at the bottom.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 10

Our sample arrived diskless, so we set up four IronWolf 2TB drives for testing.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 11

Rear I/O is real simple, USB 3.2 at the top, 2.5Gbe in the middle, and power input at the bottom. To the left, a large cooling fan pulls air through the unit.

Drivestor 4 Pro Set-Up

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 20

ACC continues to be the preferred setup for any ASUSTOR appliance. From here, once your NAS is powered and attached to the network, you can search it out and initialize the setup process.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 21

Setup takes only a few moments, starting above.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 22

During the setup process, the wizard will guide you through a few options. A new option is the choice of light or dark UI and one-click setup vs. custom setup.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 23

For our purposes, we chose custom, and that leads us to choose drives and RAID mode. This NAS supports 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 24

Once we complete the setup, we land on the desktop for ADM. This will look quite familiar for most that have used ASUSTOR in the past. We have icons to help navigation through the system.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 25

At the top, we have access control; this menu allows you to configure users, groups, and domains. You can create shared folders and set up application privileges if needed.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 26

Activity monitor will offer insight into resource usage, including processes through the second tab.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 27

App Central is where you will install a wanted/needed application on the NAS. Some of the more popular ones can be seen above.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 28

Backup and Restore gives you a suite of options for maintaining your data through remote sync, FTP, or direct-attached storage.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 29

External devices supported on ADM include a hard drive, printers, and optical drives to name a few. You can also manage a UPS that is attached in this menu.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 30

File explorer will allow you to manage any data stored on the NAS directly.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 31

Services allow you to control connectivity to the NAS through SMB, NFS, or SFP. You can also set up FTP, WebDAV, and other servers in this menu.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 33

The storage manager is where you will find access to your volumes and drives. You can set up iSCSI here as well.

Testing - Benchmarks

I went for a direct approach to testing the performance of the Drivestor 4 Pro, using a synthetic benchmark in CDM and then real data with diskbench. I tested both RAID 0 and RAID 6 for this review.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 34

Our first bench is with the NAS in RAID 0. CDM showed 221.8 MB/s reads and 260 MB/s write.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 36

Staying in RAID 0 with real data, we see a sustained write speed of 255 MB/s to the NAS.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 35

Moving the NAS over to RAID 6, we see performance drop slightly, 209 MB/s read and 143 MB/s write.

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS Review 37

RAID 6 with real data sustained a write speed of 209 MB/s.

Final Thoughts

For me, the DriveStor 4 Pro is a solid entry-level platform that really shows ASUSTORs "drive" to build out their entire lineup with 2.5Gbe. This is something we don't see with vendors like Synology or TerraMaster that still rely on legacy 1Gbe for most of their portfolios.

With Drivestor Pro, ASUSTOR has also shown you don't need x86 level hardware to have a high-performance NAS; The RTD1296 handles data at 2.5Gbe speeds quite effortlessly while supporting all of the features of ADM, including some of the most popular apps like Plex.

In my testing, performance was hitting well into the 200 MB/s read and write in RAID 0, and RAID 6 still pushed over 200 MB/s in reading, write taking a small hit in CDM while using real data showed an identical outcome in diskbench. All together, ASUSTOR has a well-built entry-level platform that offers 2.5Gbe and four bays for a touch over $300 US, a win for consumers getting into the NAS market today.

TweakTown Storage Test System

Photo of product for sale

Performance

95%

Quality

90%

Features

95%

Value

90%

Overall

93%

The Bottom Line

ASUSTOR delivers a fantastic four-bay platform with full ADM support and 2.5Gbe!

TweakTown award
93%

ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 Pro (AS3304T) NAS

TodayYesterday7 days ago30 days ago
$299.00$319.00$319.00
* Prices last scanned on 3/18/2024 at 1:38 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Tyler joined the TweakTown team in 2013 and has since reviewed 100s of new techy items. Growing up in a small farm town, tech wasn't around, unless it was in a tractor. At an early age, Tyler's parents brought home their first PC. Tyler was hooked and learned what it meant to format a HDD, spending many nights reinstalling Windows 95. Tyler's love and enthusiast nature always kept his PC nearby. Eager to get deeper into tech, he started reviewing.

Newsletter Subscription
We openly invite the companies who provide us with review samples / who are mentioned or discussed to express their opinion. If any company representative wishes to respond, we will publish the response here. Please contact us if you wish to respond.