This review first appeared in issue 358 ofPC Pro.
Asustors Nimbustor 4 AS5404T is a four-drive NAS enclosure aimed at demanding home users or small offices.
Unusually, it also has four NVMe slots.
This is a refreshing-looking NAS, especially if you love bright lights
You could configure the AS5404T with a four-SSD RAID5 volume, alongside a slower disk-based storage pool.
The caddy clips are hard to remove, too.
Unusually among modern NAS servers, Asustorsoperating systemdefaults to the EXT4 file system, though Btrfs is an option.
The Nimbustor 4 provides blistering performance speeds
Connected via a single 2.5GbE connection, the AS5404T got off to an impressive start.
It performed strongly through the ATTO disk benchmark, recording much quicker data rates than 1GbE competitors.
Cached disk write speeds increased slightly in our file-copy test, although read speeds actually went down a little.
Asustor’s ADM operating system is certainly comprehensive
We also recorded similar performances when we reinstalled this NAS with two Synology 4TB disks.
Dont let this NAS servers media talents put you off if youre buying for business, however.
Its our Labs Winner.
We’ve also ranked the best small business servers.
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