Asustor Drivestor 2
Not the most flexible NAS, but an affordable and compact device that’s fine for undemanding tasks
PRICE Diskless, £145 (£174 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/329drive
Ahome NAS can function as both a private network storage space and a media centre for sharing and streaming music, videos and photos. Whichever role you’re most interested in, the Asustor Drivestor 2 ticks all the important boxes.
The budget-friendly price still delivers upmarket features, including 2.5GbE and access to a curated store of apps, with plenty of media tools as well as backup and connectivity solutions.
It looks simple but stylish. The all-black design has a patterned cover and a small footprint, with LEDs for power and drive activity and a single front-facing USB-A 3 port for easily transferring or sharing files on external media. At the back there’s the power connector, plus Ethernet and another USB-A 3 port. That’s about it – it’s as plain as possible, while retaining all the features that most home users will need.
Setting up the NAS can be a little tricky as the drive bays aren’t easily accessible: you need to shut down the unit and remove two screws at the back to get at them. Presumably Asustor reasons that home users won’t need to hot-swap drives like professional NAS users, and it’s probably right.
It’s also important to note that the Drivestor 2 doesn’t directly support 2.5in drives – they’ll fit on to the standard SATA connectors, but you’ll need a 3.5in caddy (which isn’t supplied) to mount them in the right position.
Aside from this the setup process is quite painless: Asustor’s NAS detection software automatically finds your drive on the network and walks you through setting it up. Simply click through to set up a basic ext4 volume, in either JBOD, RAID0 or RAID1 configuration, provide user credentials and that’s it.
Subsequently you can manage the Drivestor through a web browser. Asustor’s ADM
OS offers a desktop-style interface that makes it easy to browse files and check your NAS settings and status. It’s further enhanced by the App Central library, which offers a decent selection of applications to download on your NAS. Whether you’re looking for a quick network backup solution or wanting to stream and share home videos and photos, it’s easy to set up quickly. Just remember that the Drivestor 2 isn’t particularly powerful: it uses a mid-range Realtek RTD1296 CPU with 1GB of DDR4 RAM (which can’t be upgraded), so only install apps that you’re going to use.
I chose to install Plex as my main testing ground, since the Drivestor 2 is primarily designed for file sharing and media streaming. The native Plex service was quick to detect and catalogue my video collection, which included a mix of video files in all kinds of formats and bit rates.
Partnered with the Plex app on a Samsung TV, the Drivestor 2 made an excellent first impression, easily presenting and streaming 1080p files encoded in H.264. However, I encountered delays when scrubbing through high-resolution video, and stepping up to 4K media exposed the appliance’s lack of horsepower, with jerky playback.
The Drivestor 2 also struggled with H.265 video files. Asustor advertises that the Drivestor 2 can deliver smooth H.265 performance, but that’s with the company’s own LooksGood media software. In
Plex, H.265 video has to be transcoded, and the Drivestor wasn’t powerful enough to stream even 720p video that had been stored in this format.
The Drivestor 2 does have a dedicated Media Mode in the settings, which reserves 512MB of RAM for multimedia, but I didn’t see any benefit from turning this on. In short, if you transcode your videos to different resolutions or bit rates, you’re going to be spending a lot of time staring at a blank screen.
Besides media streaming, the Drivestor 2 is a great choice for network backups and file storage, with several backup apps available that can integrate with popular cloud solutions for seamless file syncing.
The 2.5GbE Ethernet port is a welcome touch if your network infrastructure can support it, and even with regular Gigabit Ethernet. I could read and write data at more than acceptable speeds. The unit is also nicely unobtrusive: the large cooling fan at the back proved almost silent during my tests, so you can happily situate it in a busy living space.
If you want a powerful, versatile media centre that can handle a wide range of file types, the Drivestor 2 isn’t it. Nor is it particularly convenient to upgrade and expand, since it only has two bays, they’re not very easy to access, and they’re not designed for 2.5in drives.
Even so, with its broad feature set and range of downloadable apps, the Drivestor 2 certainly has its appeal as a home NAS. Its drive support should be fine for most home storage needs, and the inclusion of 2.5GbE connectivity is a great bit of futureproofing. Once set up, it’s a neat little NAS that can be tucked away in a corner to save all your files and stream suitable media with minimal user input and very little noise.
SPECIFICATIONS
4-core 1.4GHz Realtek RTD1296 CPU 1GB DDR4 RAM 8GB flash memory 2 x 3.5in SATA bays 2 x USB-A 3.1 2.5GbE 102 x 218 x 165mm (WDH) 1.1kg 3yr warranty
“Drivestor 2 is a great choice for network backups and file storage, with several backup apps available”