ASUSTOR AS3104T 4-Bay SOHO NAS Review

Backup, App Central, VirtualBox & More Apps

Backup

A good NAS setup also includes a good backup system and ASUSTOR again collected all parts within one section. Whether you want to create remote sync jobs, internal or external backups, FTP backups, or even cloud backups, ADM has you covered.

Source, target, and intervals are set when you create a job and you can also edit them later on, should you need to.

The cloud backup here is only for Amazon S3, but other cloud services are supported through apps from the app store.

You can also backup and restore your entire system settings here, and that’s those of your NAS.

As mentioned, you can also get other cloud services on your ASUSTOR NAS and they can be found through the app central that we’ll take a look at in a bit.

App Central

The App Central is where you find even more functions, features, and apps. There are a lot to choose from, may it be games such as dream chess and free civ or the FTP explorer and even Libre Office.

Third party apps that aren’t in the central can be installed manually too, but you should be sure that you can trust the source that supplied it – the same way you always should be careful in this regard on any device.

You can browse apps by viewing all or limit it to the official ASUSTOR apps.

You can also sort them by groups, especially useful when you want to find all the features for the Portal function.

And there’s even a beta apps section for apps that still are being tested.

VirtualBox

One of the really cool features that you definitely should try out is the VirtualBox app. And yes, the name already gives away what it is. You can run virtual systems on this NAS too, may they be Android, Linux, or Windows.

The setup and configuration are real easy and done with just a few steps. You should already have an iso file with your installation on the NAS when you start here, it will make things easier.

Select how much you want to use of the 2GB RAM the AS3104T has.

And define the virtual hard drive setup.

Now you can start the server after which it’ll need a boot medium in order to continue. You can also open console windows with a single press.

More Features and Apps

There are plenty more apps, as mentioned, but there are some that are more important than others. One of my favourite tools is the download center that can handle all sorts of downloads from torrents and magnets to direct HTTP and FTP links.

The FTP explorer is a basic FTP client that will allow you to connect to other FTP servers directly from your NAS. A convenient and fast way to transfer files from one system to another.

LooksGood is an amazing video player app that works in conjunction with other ASUSTOR apps and the hardware transcoding abilities.

SoundsGood is similar, only for sound instead of video.

Takeasy is another download client, but this one is for streaming sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Download your favourite videos and watch them offline too.

Apple device users will be happy to find an iTunes server as well.

There’s also a personal cloud system

And the popular Plex server is also present.