I'm just here to listen to your comments, questions, polite criticism, and praise! Feel free to let me know what you're thinking! And please note. USB4 networking is still experimental and only ASUSTOR USB4 NAS to ASUSTOR USB4 NAS is officially supported. We are working hard to get support for Computer to NAS working!
Further to above! Just to confirm, I have got it (USB4 direct connectivity) working in a Windows 10 Pro and Windows 11 environment (same with Flashstor Gen2) and hit 2GB/s. Haven't tested any other OS' yet, Mac pending next week.
Have you perhaps got a link to a guide how to connect to PC/win11 and to my Mac over USB4 / Thunderbolt? I have the lockerstore 6 bay installed but can't find any info on how to connect over USB 4 / Thunderbolt. Tnx!
@ASUSTOR_YT Have you perhaps got a link to a guide how to connect to PC/win11 and to my Mac over USB4 / Thunderbolt? I have the lockerstore 6 bay installed but can't find any info on how to connect over USB 4 / Thunderbolt. I can't find it on the Austor site/academy. Tnx!
The general impression that I get is that Asus has Synology directly in its sights. Robbie, do you see the Lockerstor taking over Synology's place in the consumer / prosumer NAS market any time in the next 5 years or so ?
Hi Dave. In all honesty....no. and not for any especially negative reason either. Just it's a question of 1) strength in numbers (staff and locations), 2) software utilities and 3) Reputation. Synology went in very, very hard in their first decade and never really had a competitor in that first 10 years (QNAP formed 5 years after or so, but never really broke big ground till 2012/13 in a big way). QNAP would need to "fall over" to free up ALOT of the market space (buyers, existing users upgrading, staffing, solution needs) for Asustor to graduate into a 'Synology'. Again, NOT any slight or negative spin on Asustor - they have been incredible, especially in the last 5 years (unsure if there was leadership/culture changes back in 18/19). But they cannot escalate that kind of growth on all fronts in that timeframe. Plus, it would need Synology to make a more formal exit or noticeable/sizemic shift out of SMB/Prosumer for buyers to smell the blood in the water.
Good job on the video, Robbie. It told me everything that I needed to know. I was especially interested in this new unit as I want to upgrade from my maxed-out Nimbustor 2 drive unit to a new Asustor 4-drive unit. Unfortunately, the $1300 price tag w/out a GPU kind of kills it for me.
If Asustor could release a "lite" version of this NAS with probably one 10Gbe, 2.5Gbe, USB4 Type C for 3/4 of the price would make it a better buy for me. I'm currently looking for a NAS to be primarily used as a NVR, Veeam Backup target and cloud storage. The current price for the Synology DS923+ @$599.00 looks good but I'm waiting if Synology releases any new products in Q1 of 2025. Unfortnately this Lockerstor Gen 3 is really out of my price point and that's fine because I'm not the target audience for this product, just wish they had a lesser spec model available. I looked up their NIMBUSTOR 4 Gen2 (AS5404T) but the only thing holding me back is the CPU/Memory. Having a CPU that could support at least up to 32GB memory would've been perfect.
My first nas was the Asus AS5304T Nimbustor (I believe that was the name but I'm not entirely certain). I started off with 4 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives in Raid5. Nearly 6 years later, I'm still using it and I recently upgraded the drives to 4 10TB WD Reds and a couple of years ago I added an expansion unit with 4 6TB disks. Why am I talking about this? Because despite setting up a TrueNAS system with a lot more capacity and fancy addons over the years, the Asustor has just worked reliably and it is still powerful enough to run several containers. They have detailed guides on how to set up everything and they'll satisfy all of the storage requirements for 99% of people. Back when I bought it, Asustor used to be significantly cheaper than Synology and QNAP. That is no longer the case, sadly
I built a NAS from a Jonsbo N2, Minisforum bd790i and 5 3.5 disks. I’ve thought about putting one of the 10gbe / 2 M.2 slot cards from Synology in it and using dac cables to connect everything through a Mikrotik switch. Now the NAS can play a role in my labs while serving files too.
Mostly comes down to price IMO. For basically the price of that 10 bay one you can get the HL15 chassis and likely build out something better in it. If I wanted to buy a NAS though these are definitely worth considering as I want to run TrueNAS Scale and nothing without ECC is worth considering.
I really don't understand the noise about ecc. TrueNAS works just fine without ecc and barring that one guy in the forums who likes to create fantastical scenarios leading to the scrub of death, I haven't run into anyone who actually experienced that. I've been running two TrueNAS systems for the past 5 years on normal desktop hardware with non ecc ram. For most of the 5 years I've used cheap second hand large capacity drives with multiple drive failures and random drive control issues. The data has been just fine because that's how zfs works 🤷♂️
@ 99% of the time it’ll be fine without ECC. But it’s not like ECC support is any more expensive, unless you want to use an Intel CPU for QuickSync, in which case you’d have to get an expensive e.g. W680 motherboard. With AMD ECC basically just works as long as you make sure your motherboard supports it, so with ZFS I’d rather be safe than sorry. An AMD server build with AM5 is basically going to be the same price whether you get ECC or not, so why not? I don’t personally care about QuickSync, as I have a Minisforum MS-01 running Proxmox, so I can pass that CPU through to a VM application host for QuickSync, therefore I don’t need to choose an inferior Intel CPU and choose between getting an expensive motherboard or giving up ECC just to have it in my NAS. This Asustor Gen 3 is a nice unit as far as overpriced turnkey NAS go, but $130p for a quad-core is pretty absurd.
I have 2 Minisforum MS-01’s and I think I see a cameo of one here. It can take advantage of both 10gbe, both USB 4 ports and both 2.5gbe ports! All in one box if you wanted too. You wouldn’t do that but combining this with high speed storage make a lot of sense. I am building an Openshift lab using these and they are awesome.
Yep, the MS-01 is almost used daily in my office now (and let's not forget that 6x m.2 prototype card they sent!). But I could never get both USB4s to reg with the Lockerstor (or Flashstor for that matter) as a remote connection.. independently...yep...but trying to do both at once would crash my Thunderbolt NIC and needed to restart them. Never worked out if it was the pc client or the Asustor - so couldn't point fingers at it
One thing you didn't mention is that due to the height it won't fit well on my bookshelf 😂 I like the format of this video. Still leaning a bit towards the Ugreen, but can't be delivered to my country at the moment it seems.
Any chance there is going to be a two HD version of this? With all that fast connectivity it would be ideal for an SSD RAID with the HD slots used as simple individual hot swappable backup drives which could be taken offline for offsite backup. Would be better if the SSD slots were accessible without tools though! The price may be high, but as storage for the new Mac mini on Thunderbolt 4 or 10GB Ethernet, compared to Apple prices for internal storage, it looks like a bargain (although Thunderbolt 5 would be icing on the cake)!
I'm not sure where Asustor is going with these higher priced models. I hope the know their market. My comments on Asustor are 1 the lack of a flexible RAID implementation 2 Quirkiness I've experienced with the Flashstor 12. I had data corruption issues on the FS12 and left multiple messages at the CA service center. I never got a call back. Ended up having to call TW. They said to use RAID 5 rather than spanned volumes. That resolved the issue. The FS12 runs at 10G for about 3 minutes then drops down to 800MB then after maybe 30 minutes becomes really slow. Copying 3.28TB of large files takes about 2.5 hours. I pulled the drives from the Asustor and put them in another brand's NVMe NAS and was able to copy 3.28TB of data in about 63 minutes. On that other brand's NAS there are no issues with using raid or spanned volume. On a Synology 8 bay spinning drive NAS I'm able to copy the same 3.26 TB in just under an hour. So for me, I'm not sure I'd buy Asustor again. The last two NASs I bought weren't Asustor. I think they're an Ok brand, but I don't think they're offering anything I'm interested in and my experience with the lack of flexible RAID and the quirkiness of my Flashstor 12 and the introduction of these higher priced units has put them off my watch list.
All I want is a turnkey box with 2x4 disk (HDD+NVME) capable of transcoding. I dont need the dual 10gbps ports as my current setup is mainly wireless because of ... yeah reasons. Old house, and I have not drawn cables to all rooms. Fiber in, cable from router to SFF PC and QNAP TR-004. Apple TV's connects wireless, and it does work. Moving files from Laptop to QNAP - yeah okay, that is tiredsome at times - can only move 30ish mb per second over wifi. All the 10gbps users are probably laughing right now. Well it works, and for now is what the budget allows :D
I mean, we're not exactly abandoning budget segments either. Our Gen2 and other NASes all have GPU accelerated transcoding and we're not abandoning them. But numerous people have asked for Ryzen and SPEED. So we are answering them without abandoning you. We want to make sure you buy the one that's right for you.
@@ASUSTOR_YT I do get the need for speed, and I wish I had the money to change the homelab with speed in mind. Until then - I keep looking for my replacement and the Lockerstor is definetly in my watchlist :) Keep up the good work. And nice channel btw. Love the reviews.
Amazon selling at 1239GBP Like many people on the internet, I start to calculate how much I need to spend on full build 20TBx4+ 4TB nvme x4 or give up on new storage pod and get a gaming rig instead 😂 If just need simple smb storage, probably get those ARM 4bay / uni 7bay which more cost effective (by cut off features you don't need)
Yeah... I'm right about to build a custom NAS, and seeing this video gave me second thoughts, until I saw the PRICE. 1.4k EUR without disks is very very high.
Your last point is one that often gets overlooked so thanks for highlighting it. This is a very good product but I've been having one or two tech issues with it (SMB file sharing on MAC). I'm tech savvy but the world of the networking and some of the configuration issues can get tricky. That's on me to do the research and learn (which I am) but the issue is exacerbated when I do eventually seek help. The support is very s......L.......o......w. I'm getting around one email a day and then it goes quiet for long periods of time so reaching a resolution is taking its time. The experience is starting to give me buyers remorse!
USB4 is not the same as Thunderbolt 4, TB4 guarantees 40Gb/s and USB4 doesn't, among other TB4 features. On systems that come with Windows they can be thought of equivalent in most cases including 40Gb/s capability, but that's because of MS's requirements. If this only supports USB 20 Gb/s that's why, but that means it's still not Thunderbolt 4 in a more significant way.
For this price, cpu need to have int. graphics, polished standard apps, with user friendly OS and longer guarantee period. For now 1000$+ will buy Qnap. For 600$ and less, will still buy Asustor.
Nice potential, products in the early 1k world is really open right now. Too bad the processor choice wasn't intel. I would have been much more interested...
I'm just here to listen to your comments, questions, polite criticism, and praise! Feel free to let me know what you're thinking! And please note. USB4 networking is still experimental and only ASUSTOR USB4 NAS to ASUSTOR USB4 NAS is officially supported. We are working hard to get support for Computer to NAS working!
Further to above! Just to confirm, I have got it (USB4 direct connectivity) working in a Windows 10 Pro and Windows 11 environment (same with Flashstor Gen2) and hit 2GB/s. Haven't tested any other OS' yet, Mac pending next week.
Thank you for providing the hardware to youtubers like NAS compares (and many more) so they can test the product for US users 😁
usb4 nas to computer. Yes please
Have you perhaps got a link to a guide how to connect to PC/win11 and to my Mac over USB4 / Thunderbolt? I have the lockerstore 6 bay installed but can't find any info on how to connect over USB 4 / Thunderbolt. Tnx!
@ASUSTOR_YT Have you perhaps got a link to a guide how to connect to PC/win11 and to my Mac over USB4 / Thunderbolt? I have the lockerstore 6 bay installed but can't find any info on how to connect over USB 4 / Thunderbolt. I can't find it on the Austor site/academy. Tnx!
13:48 We haven't updated that Surveillance Center because we have the new one in beta and we're deprecating the old one.
Price , Price , and no Transcoding = is a no for me . I like the 2 usb4 ports and the 10gbe though
The general impression that I get is that Asus has Synology directly in its sights. Robbie, do you see the Lockerstor taking over Synology's place in the consumer / prosumer NAS market any time in the next 5 years or so ?
Hi Dave. In all honesty....no. and not for any especially negative reason either. Just it's a question of 1) strength in numbers (staff and locations), 2) software utilities and 3) Reputation. Synology went in very, very hard in their first decade and never really had a competitor in that first 10 years (QNAP formed 5 years after or so, but never really broke big ground till 2012/13 in a big way). QNAP would need to "fall over" to free up ALOT of the market space (buyers, existing users upgrading, staffing, solution needs) for Asustor to graduate into a 'Synology'. Again, NOT any slight or negative spin on Asustor - they have been incredible, especially in the last 5 years (unsure if there was leadership/culture changes back in 18/19). But they cannot escalate that kind of growth on all fronts in that timeframe. Plus, it would need Synology to make a more formal exit or noticeable/sizemic shift out of SMB/Prosumer for buyers to smell the blood in the water.
@@nascompares Thanks for the insight Robbie.
Good job on the video, Robbie. It told me everything that I needed to know. I was especially interested in this new unit as I want to upgrade from my maxed-out Nimbustor 2 drive unit to a new Asustor 4-drive unit. Unfortunately, the $1300 price tag w/out a GPU kind of kills it for me.
If Asustor could release a "lite" version of this NAS with probably one 10Gbe, 2.5Gbe, USB4 Type C for 3/4 of the price would make it a better buy for me. I'm currently looking for a NAS to be primarily used as a NVR, Veeam Backup target and cloud storage. The current price for the Synology DS923+ @$599.00 looks good but I'm waiting if Synology releases any new products in Q1 of 2025.
Unfortnately this Lockerstor Gen 3 is really out of my price point and that's fine because I'm not the target audience for this product, just wish they had a lesser spec model available. I looked up their NIMBUSTOR 4 Gen2 (AS5404T) but the only thing holding me back is the CPU/Memory. Having a CPU that could support at least up to 32GB memory would've been perfect.
love this 5 good, 5 bad format, keep-em coming 🙂
My first nas was the Asus AS5304T Nimbustor (I believe that was the name but I'm not entirely certain). I started off with 4 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives in Raid5. Nearly 6 years later, I'm still using it and I recently upgraded the drives to 4 10TB WD Reds and a couple of years ago I added an expansion unit with 4 6TB disks. Why am I talking about this? Because despite setting up a TrueNAS system with a lot more capacity and fancy addons over the years, the Asustor has just worked reliably and it is still powerful enough to run several containers. They have detailed guides on how to set up everything and they'll satisfy all of the storage requirements for 99% of people. Back when I bought it, Asustor used to be significantly cheaper than Synology and QNAP. That is no longer the case, sadly
I built a NAS from a Jonsbo N2, Minisforum bd790i and 5 3.5 disks. I’ve thought about putting one of the 10gbe / 2 M.2 slot cards from Synology in it and using dac cables to connect everything through a Mikrotik switch. Now the NAS can play a role in my labs while serving files too.
Mostly comes down to price IMO. For basically the price of that 10 bay one you can get the HL15 chassis and likely build out something better in it. If I wanted to buy a NAS though these are definitely worth considering as I want to run TrueNAS Scale and nothing without ECC is worth considering.
I really don't understand the noise about ecc. TrueNAS works just fine without ecc and barring that one guy in the forums who likes to create fantastical scenarios leading to the scrub of death, I haven't run into anyone who actually experienced that. I've been running two TrueNAS systems for the past 5 years on normal desktop hardware with non ecc ram. For most of the 5 years I've used cheap second hand large capacity drives with multiple drive failures and random drive control issues. The data has been just fine because that's how zfs works 🤷♂️
@ 99% of the time it’ll be fine without ECC. But it’s not like ECC support is any more expensive, unless you want to use an Intel CPU for QuickSync, in which case you’d have to get an expensive e.g. W680 motherboard. With AMD ECC basically just works as long as you make sure your motherboard supports it, so with ZFS I’d rather be safe than sorry. An AMD server build with AM5 is basically going to be the same price whether you get ECC or not, so why not?
I don’t personally care about QuickSync, as I have a Minisforum MS-01 running Proxmox, so I can pass that CPU through to a VM application host for QuickSync, therefore I don’t need to choose an inferior Intel CPU and choose between getting an expensive motherboard or giving up ECC just to have it in my NAS.
This Asustor Gen 3 is a nice unit as far as overpriced turnkey NAS go, but $130p for a quad-core is pretty absurd.
I have 2 Minisforum MS-01’s and I think I see a cameo of one here. It can take advantage of both 10gbe, both USB 4 ports and both 2.5gbe ports! All in one box if you wanted too. You wouldn’t do that but combining this with high speed storage make a lot of sense. I am building an Openshift lab using these and they are awesome.
Yep, the MS-01 is almost used daily in my office now (and let's not forget that 6x m.2 prototype card they sent!). But I could never get both USB4s to reg with the Lockerstor (or Flashstor for that matter) as a remote connection.. independently...yep...but trying to do both at once would crash my Thunderbolt NIC and needed to restart them. Never worked out if it was the pc client or the Asustor - so couldn't point fingers at it
One thing you didn't mention is that due to the height it won't fit well on my bookshelf 😂
I like the format of this video. Still leaning a bit towards the Ugreen, but can't be delivered to my country at the moment it seems.
No integrated GPU is totally a deal breaker for my usecase.
Any chance there is going to be a two HD version of this? With all that fast connectivity it would be ideal for an SSD RAID with the HD slots used as simple individual hot swappable backup drives which could be taken offline for offsite backup. Would be better if the SSD slots were accessible without tools though! The price may be high, but as storage for the new Mac mini on Thunderbolt 4 or 10GB Ethernet, compared to Apple prices for internal storage, it looks like a bargain (although Thunderbolt 5 would be icing on the cake)!
I'm not sure where Asustor is going with these higher priced models. I hope the know their market. My comments on Asustor are 1 the lack of a flexible RAID implementation 2 Quirkiness I've experienced with the Flashstor 12. I had data corruption issues on the FS12 and left multiple messages at the CA service center. I never got a call back. Ended up having to call TW. They said to use RAID 5 rather than spanned volumes. That resolved the issue. The FS12 runs at 10G for about 3 minutes then drops down to 800MB then after maybe 30 minutes becomes really slow. Copying 3.28TB of large files takes about 2.5 hours. I pulled the drives from the Asustor and put them in another brand's NVMe NAS and was able to copy 3.28TB of data in about 63 minutes. On that other brand's NAS there are no issues with using raid or spanned volume. On a Synology 8 bay spinning drive NAS I'm able to copy the same 3.26 TB in just under an hour. So for me, I'm not sure I'd buy Asustor again. The last two NASs I bought weren't Asustor. I think they're an Ok brand, but I don't think they're offering anything I'm interested in and my experience with the lack of flexible RAID and the quirkiness of my Flashstor 12 and the introduction of these higher priced units has put them off my watch list.
All I want is a turnkey box with 2x4 disk (HDD+NVME) capable of transcoding. I dont need the dual 10gbps ports as my current setup is mainly wireless because of ... yeah reasons. Old house, and I have not drawn cables to all rooms. Fiber in, cable from router to SFF PC and QNAP TR-004. Apple TV's connects wireless, and it does work. Moving files from Laptop to QNAP - yeah okay, that is tiredsome at times - can only move 30ish mb per second over wifi. All the 10gbps users are probably laughing right now. Well it works, and for now is what the budget allows :D
I mean, we're not exactly abandoning budget segments either. Our Gen2 and other NASes all have GPU accelerated transcoding and we're not abandoning them. But numerous people have asked for Ryzen and SPEED. So we are answering them without abandoning you. We want to make sure you buy the one that's right for you.
@@ASUSTOR_YT I do get the need for speed, and I wish I had the money to change the homelab with speed in mind. Until then - I keep looking for my replacement and the Lockerstor is definetly in my watchlist :) Keep up the good work. And nice channel btw. Love the reviews.
@@vibaek78 Thank you for your support! We're reading all the opinions and bringing them up during our meetings.
Amazon selling at 1239GBP
Like many people on the internet, I start to calculate how much I need to spend on full build 20TBx4+ 4TB nvme x4
or give up on new storage pod and get a gaming rig instead 😂
If just need simple smb storage, probably get those ARM 4bay / uni 7bay which more cost effective (by cut off features you don't need)
Yeah... I'm right about to build a custom NAS, and seeing this video gave me second thoughts, until I saw the PRICE. 1.4k EUR without disks is very very high.
Is this a reupload it seems like I've seen this
30 watts idle? Too much. This equates around 100 USD yearly for me. It has some very nice features, though.
Your last point is one that often gets overlooked so thanks for highlighting it. This is a very good product but I've been having one or two tech issues with it (SMB file sharing on MAC). I'm tech savvy but the world of the networking and some of the configuration issues can get tricky. That's on me to do the research and learn (which I am) but the issue is exacerbated when I do eventually seek help. The support is very s......L.......o......w. I'm getting around one email a day and then it goes quiet for long periods of time so reaching a resolution is taking its time. The experience is starting to give me buyers remorse!
USB4 is not the same as Thunderbolt 4, TB4 guarantees 40Gb/s and USB4 doesn't, among other TB4 features. On systems that come with Windows they can be thought of equivalent in most cases including 40Gb/s capability, but that's because of MS's requirements. If this only supports USB 20 Gb/s that's why, but that means it's still not Thunderbolt 4 in a more significant way.
Way too expensive for a four bay.
For this price, cpu need to have int. graphics, polished standard apps, with user friendly OS and longer guarantee period. For now 1000$+ will buy Qnap. For 600$ and less, will still buy Asustor.
Nice potential, products in the early 1k world is really open right now. Too bad the processor choice wasn't intel. I would have been much more interested...