INTRODUCTION

   Roughly two weeks ago a company manager approached to inform me that our NAS reviews although quite thorough especially in terms of tests and OS showcasing lacked in-depth product description which in turn ment that people just wouldn't know what NAS servers can be used for. Personally i don't think that our readers need us to point obvious things in our reviews but we have mentioned numerous times the various tasks people can perform with NAS servers including the most popular ones such as using them as email/web/download/visualization/VoIP/media/home automation servers and as surveillance network video recorders (not to mention that showcasing the OS clears these things). Perhaps there are some people out there who'd also like us to point out that keyboards are used to type, mice are used to move the cursor on their screen and hard disk drives are used to store data but at least for us that feels wrong (besides i sincerely believe that if you're reading these lines you know exactly what it is you're looking for). Putting that small note aside ASUSTOR recently released their AS31xxT NAS line and since some of you out there wanted to see just how it'd do against the competition we got the 2bay model to test.

   Founded in 2011, ASUSTOR Inc., a subsidiary of ASUSTeK Computer Inc., is a leading innovator and provider of private cloud storage (network attached storage) and video surveillance (network video recorder) solutions. ASUSTOR is devoted to providing the world with unparalleled user experiences and the most complete set of network storage solutions possible.

   For the new AS3102T NAS ASUSTOR has paired a Intel Celeron N3050 dual-core CPU clocked at 1.6GHz (64-Bit model with 2MB of L2 cache and a burst speed of up to 2.16GHz) with a total of 2GB DDR3L RAM running at 1600MHz (not expandable). Other components include three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI v1.4b port, RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port and two internal 3.5" HDD mounts with support for single, JBOD, RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes. Unfortunately by internal we mean that unlike most NAS servers today the AS3102T doesn't feature removable trays so in order to mount the drives you will need to remove the housing. I honestly have no idea as to the why ASUSTOR chose this path this time over but if the AS3102T excels in performance and features i doubt this will be enough to drive away potential buyers.