Lockerstor Gen3 Review - GO HOME EVERYONE

Thanks for your review! It made the pricing much clearer.
🧚‍♂️🇸🇪🧚‍♀️

Synology, this is what we want...

I can build a whole brand new ECC system, upgrade my network to 10gb PoE AND put three 20tb drives in it for the price of just this enclosure what the heck

Worth pointing out that USB4 is basically PCIe thru a USB Type C connector. So when using it and the NVMe drives that'll be fighting for bandwidth over the same bus. As for the price, you have to make apples to apples comparisons and in those the Lockerstor Gen 3s are not bad value. This doesn't cost THAT much more than my 8-bay Gen 2 cost when new. (Then again I'm a miser and I got mine second hand for 350€ in the original box, everything included and so new the protective stickers were still on).

Has anyone used this NAS on a Mac? Can we get 20 gbps speed over USB4/Thunderbolt on Mac?

How is software, how it works as 4K Plex, surveillance vs Synology vs Qnap

Are they likely to release a 2 bay option?

One thing that bothers me after having Tier 2 NASes like Thecus, Synology and QNAP is remote support and onsite support specially if you’re in North America and are a business user w/multiple users consuming data from the NAS.

So the question to ask is: how critical is your data and how long can your business live with it?

For reference my clients use Tier 1 NASes from Dell, HPE, etc as they provide 24x7x4 hours or 9x5xNBD response time compared a few days/weeks turnaround time for these overseas vendors. Everything non-prod they might go with Synology for their Advanced Replacement which still takes a few days to receive your unit.

Can I plug in an eGPU using the USB4 for transcoding?

Robbie, What's up with the usb 4 networking... not working. Issues with AMD CPU? How to install TruNAS with no igpu? Asustor not yet ready for prime time at that price 😱

it has amazing performance compared to my QNAP TVS-872X which is slow as molasses.

Gave up on QNAP after 3+ weeks of them troubleshooting QuTS/ZFS performance issues. I only get a fraction of the performance of this Asustor NAS.

hey, i want to ask, whats type of card it is you hold for the third-party os installation?

What’s about ugradeability with existing harddisk-raid from gen2 to gen3?

Wondering if the nvme drives can be raided with redundancy and making this 4 drive unit into technically 8 drive unit?

To complete Asustor's marketing plan once you get good docker images or apps from Mother Duck and Crunchy Data. I would send out machines to Data Science influencer Jake Vanderplas at the Unviersity of Washington in Seattle (Jake is used to handling astronomical amounts of data, hint, hint) and to GIS influencer Paul Ramsey at Crunchy Data. If they say Postgres + Docker (or in Ramsey's case Postrges + PostGIS + DuckDB) on ADM is good Asustor will get lots of sales.

If I was Asustor, I would send a gratis machine each to DuckDB Labs, Mother Duck and Crunchy Data and say can you develop a version of Postgres + DuckDB on this machine (native or Docker or Kubernets) in a cool way such as easy connectivity to cloud services and Amazon S3 storage? If you do, we will feature and promote it.

I currently own an ASUSTOR Flashstore FS67O6T. This AS6804T might be just the product I may want primarily because of the inclusion of USB4 Hopefully to provide a couple of enabling functions. About the USB4 x2 ports, is it possible to connect:

1. to a local PC to use as a DAS for local access? (i.e. video editing I/O, etc.)
2. to Thunderbolt 4 dock (Sonnettech Edge 20) to expand ports?
3. to a second NAS (FS6706T) to back up from FS6812X to FS6706T (currently owned)

Is anyone using this for 4K video editing?

@nascompares @ASUSTOR_YT Do you know where I can find a guide on how to create the USB4 connection to my PC and Mac?
I bought the 6 bay version and installed it according to the available guides. Only about the USB4 connection to my PC/Mac there is no information to be found anywhere.

I’ve been using Synology NAS systems, how does Asustor compare?

Asustor's outreach and communication with customers in comments and reviews in your channel says a lot! Taking product feedback and implementing changes into future products is something they do very well. I purchased the 10 bay gen3 lockerstor a few days ago because it was the best hardware in this segment in a market filled with dinosaurs that have no desire to build a better product. Asustor seems to be setting the bar higher and that's something I want to support and get behind! I'm new to the NAS ecosystem and I don't like rewarding lazy companies or companies who drag their feet or unwilling to improve products via feedback. My decision was between Synology and Asustor and I felt like Synology simply didn't want my money. Synology doesn't offer compelling hardware and is slow to innovate and improve product offerings unlike Asustor!

@Asustor

The hardware is truly remarkable, and the price point is actually quite reasonable—kudos for achieving this balance!

However, I have a suggestion that I believe resonates with a wider audience: please consider introducing a 5-bay NAS device. This isn't just a personal preference; many users seek a RAID 6 solution for its reliability, rather than just fast and large storage. A 5-bay setup is particularly appealing as it strikes the perfect balance—offering redundancy and storage capacity in the 20-40TB range while minimizing hard drive noise, which is a significant factor for many users.

Another aspect worth considering is the exterior design of the NAS. The current design feels a bit outdated for 2024. With such hardware and software, the exterior should match the premium quality of the product. A modern, aesthetically pleasing design would enhance its appeal, particularly for users who want their NAS to blend seamlessly into premium environments. At this price point, the device clearly isn't aimed at the budget category, so it needs a design that reflects its premium positioning.

As much as I value the features your solution provides, I would still lean toward a competitor like Synology simply because their devices align better with a modern and premium aesthetic, when a customer comes into my office everything has to scream high quality.

I hope you consider these points for your future releases—there’s so much potential to make an already great product even better!

You can get 3x unas peo for same price

Eagerly awaiting your video on how you got Truenas or other third party software on this without a GPU that lets you access the bios, etc.

Hi! you mentioned connecting ms-01 to as6804t via thunderbolt(usb4). Will it work if ms-01 runs vmware esxi and how will the storage show up? Can you test please? I would like to use both usb4 on nas to connect to 2 x ms-01 for high availability automatic vm migration and wondering if this is possible. I will be willing to ignore the price if it can be done via USB and keep the sfp ports as backup access to nas via mikrotik sw

So how xo you install truenas on this with no graphics output. Do you remove the ecc mem card and put a low end graphics card in there for display. Want to see how you do it

It's crazy expensive. At this price level for the 6 bay unit I'd just build a server.

Um just buy a new pc for that ridic price.

Prolly should have mentioned that full stop price at the end

I probably would have designed it with 2.5G instead of 5G to value engineer it.

Given the number of interfaces, I am not surprised they reduced the number of lanes for the nvme

I really like this unit.
Nice review.

You mentioned testing the M.2s with and without heatsinks. I see these were M.2 mfr heatsinks, from different mfrs.

Any experience with the Asustor heatsinks that are available fir nominal price?

I saw you used different sized m.2s. Is there a recommended size for these units? Best to use same M.2 NVME, in all the slots? Is it best to populate all 4 slots like you did, a start of using unit? Or is it OK to add more later? I cant find much on the M.2’s in the manual.

Any updates on the Flashstor gen 2?

This is an awesome system. Looking forward to more Asustor video coverage. I need to know how I can get the most out of my Gen2 Lockerstor.

You just reminded me I need to get a couple 1TB NVMe's to stuff in my Gen 2, I have 2 1TB NVMe's in there for read/write cache, but I want a couple more to do a RAID 1 for a volume2 super fast RAID 1 to run a VM on, my only concern is I only have 16GB of RAM of this same new version as this Gen 3 has except mine's not ECC, and my RAM amount is maxed out, and that's why it's been on the back burner. I don't care for this LED panel on the Gen 3. I do love my NAS it's very thrifty on power consumption and I only had one problem that even though their support gave me the correct image file, the instructions were very wrong, but I knew how to flash it anyway. So the support gets a plus for understanding the problem, but a minus for bad instruction.

Even at HALF that Price it is not a good proposition . .

The features are ok, but only if the system doesn't use too much power. In my situation, it would be fairly idle most of the day, only running home assistant, so the disk would be spun down and one or two NVME drives would receive occasional writes. What would the power usage be in this situation? I don't really care how much the system uses when it is active as that is only like 3-4 hours a day.

The closest competition to this has to be the Zimacube Pro, it’s got very similar specs and features. I don’t know why people are complaining so much about the price, as if this isn’t jam packed with “premium” features either. USB4, multiple M.2 slots, lots of high speed networking, a decently fast CPU.

This is the way. Its an awesome device and the pricetag would be justified, if there were not so much cheap used AMD boards and CPUs out there with also ECC support and the iption to add an ARC310. But for this formfactor and prebuilt, its all you need and could ask for in terms of storage. For Transcoding, just get some Radxa X4 and built that Application HA-cluster.
All boxes ticked:
- AMD
- ECC
- 10GBE
- 4x NVME

Improvements?
Check if you can get 1 pciex8 slot and make space for a low profile upgrade card (Low profile GPU or to add 2 more NVME or to add more NICs for a virtualized firewall - this would futureproof this thing furthermore)

Price is just ridiculous, DIY NAS is way better in this situation

The price is a joke considering the software that comes with it. If I didn’t care about NAS software and only cared about hardware, I would go for a diy built I think.

Only x1 lanes for nvme is a no go for me. If you can only do 2gps on the ssds then what good is a 20gbps connection?

So basically a Ryan version of the zimacube pro, see I told y’all equivalent systems would cost same or more….

If this is supposed to be a different product line, then the naming is not good at all (AS6704T vs AS6804T). Most people assume that a jump in generation won't come with around a 110% increase in price ($609 vs $1,299), and that's why there are so many sticker shock comments. I'm going to skip this one, but thanks for making the video!

"why would I want nascompares merch? Oh, 'I hate seagulls' mug. Nice."


Can you imagine what you could build for that money. And you would have truenas

can we also install truenas on these models? @nascompares

For 1200. No. And I love and, but for a small NAS that is for home. No. I need Intel for Quick sync.

I ordered the 6 bay last week, but cancelled 6 hours later when i realised it had no video encoding, or the Ability to add an encoding card. Its such a shame, i was so excited for at least 4 hours 😢 interestingly though the version i ordered did say it had ecc ram

🤦‍♂️💥 Ouch, Robbie... Okay, some of us have been wanting you to take that Unify NAS for a drive while attached to large storage (WD Elements)... Thanks!

Feels like Asustor is one of the best positioned companies to take the crown from Synology in the enthusiat space if they can get their software comparable to DSM.

Be warned about ADM. Every update will stress you out thinking it'll break something. Months ago, an update broke Jellyfin. I managed to fix it but I lost all my settings. Two months later, NextCloud broke (no worries, I had my files backed up).

My data has been safe so far, but do I trust my data to be safe? Of course not. I have backups though. I'm thinking of installing TrueNAS or Proxmox with TrueNAS. At least Asustor let's us do this, unlike Synology and QNAP.