When we reviewed the two-bay Asustor AS5202T network-attached storage (NAS) device last year, we were impressed with its fast performance, massive app catalog, and high-end components. The new Lockerstor 2 AS6602T, designed for small-business use, offers more of the same, but with a few improvements: a more powerful CPU, plus dual M.2 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) slots for fast caching. At a $399 MSRP, it’s not exactly cheap for a two-bay NAS unit without installed drives, but its superb performance, plentiful apps, and solid feature set earn it our latest Editors’ Choice award for two-bay NAS devices nonetheless.
Box of Speed
The Lockerstor 2 uses a gray-and-black enclosure that measures 6.4 by 4.2 by 9 inches (HWD). The chassis has two front-loading, hot-swappable drive bays with locking drive sleds. Unlike the AS5202T, this NAS requires tools and screws to mount the hard drives to the drive sleds. Mounting screws are included in the box, along with a LAN cable, a power adapter, and a quick installation guide. As with nearly every NAS device that we review nowadays, hard drives are not included.
In addition to the drive bays, the front of the enclosure holds a power button, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, and a One-Touch Backup button. Also up here are LED-stripe indicators for USB activity, LAN activity, power, and system status.
Around back are two LAN ports, two additional USB 3.2 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, a reset button, and a 70mm cooling fan. The LAN ports are 2.5Gbps ports that can be combined using link aggregation to provide up to 5Gbps of Ethernet connectivity when paired with a compatible router or switch.
The AS6602T uses the latest internal hardware, as NAS internal processing silicon goes. It’s powered by a 2GHz Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core processor (the AS5202T, in contrast, relies on a dual-core CPU), 4GB of DDR4 RAM that’s expandable to 8GB, and 8GB of flash memory. Two M.2 SSD slots can be populated with NVMe drives for speedy data caching.
The NAS accommodates two 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives (hard drives or SSDs) for a total capacity of up to 36TB, with two cutting-edge 18TB 3.5-inch drives. If you use an expansion unit, you can pile on additional drives for up to a staggering 252TB of storage. The Lockerstor 2 supports RAID 0, RAID 1, Single Disc, and JBOD, as well as the Btrfs, NTFS, HFS+, and ext4 file systems.
A Look at the Software Side
Like other Asustor NAS drives (including the AS5304T and AS4002T), the AS6602T uses Asustor Data Manager (ADM) software, an icon-based operating system that makes it easy to configure the NAS, add users, assign permissions, and install apps. The main desktop contains a dozen icons, including Access Control, Activity Monitor, App Central, Backup & Restore, File Explorer, and Settings.
You use the Access Control menu to create users and groups, add shared folders, and assign app privileges. The Activity Monitor displays real-time CPU, memory, and network activity. It also lets you see drive-usage stats in a colorful pie-chart format.
App Central offers more than 340 apps in categories such as business/office productivity, home entertainment, professional design, security, and backup. Here, you can download iTunes and Plex Media Server, VPN Server and Cloud Backup apps, mail-server apps, and web hosting apps. Business-related choices range from antivirus and ticket-system apps to document-server, project-management, and bulletin-board ones.
The Storage Manager icon takes you to a screen where you can create and manage volumes, view individual drive health statistics, schedule Disk Doctor scans for bad blocks, and view S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring Analysis and Report Technology) drive information. The File Explorer can be used to browse and manage files stored on the NAS, assign folder permissions, and share links to files. Backup & Restore allows you to configure the NAS for remote syncing, set up FTP and cloud-based backups, configure the One-Touch Backup feature for use with external USB drives, and create a schedule to back up system settings.
You can also use the Settings icon to edit network settings; configure hardware settings such as fan speed, LED brightness, disk hibernation and sleep mode; configure notifications should the NAS encounter any problems; and edit the time and date.
Installation and Performance
Installing and configuring the Lockerstor 2 AS6602T is painless. After installing a pair of Seagate Ironwolf 10TB drives, I connected the NAS unit to my router and powered it up. I opened a browser on my desktop PC, which was connected to the same router, and typed start.asustor.com in the address bar. (You can also use the AI Master mobile app to install the NAS.) I selected the AS66 series from the list, downloaded and installed the Asustor Control Center (ACC) software, and launched the program. The software immediately recognized the device, so I clicked the Uninitialized button, which initializes the drives and downloads the current version of ADM.
After the NAS restarted, I chose 1-Click Setup with a balanced configuration (RAID 1) and the Btrfs file system, which yielded a total of 9.09TB of storage. It took around 13 hours for the system to synchronize the drives, after which I created a test folder and the installation was complete.
We test NAS file-transfer performance by timing read and write speeds while transferring a 4.9GB folder containing a mix of music, video, photo, and office document files between the NAS and a desktop PC connected to the same network. In these tests, the Lockerstor 2 turned in some of the fastest file transfers we’ve seen from a two-drive NAS…
Its score of 92MBps on the write test squeaked past our previous leader, the Asustor AS5202T, and topped the TerraMaster F2-210 and the Synology DS220j by 22MBps and 5MBps respectively. Likewise, the AS6602T led the pack on the read test with a score of 94MBps, topping the DS-220j by 4MBps, the F2-210 by 17MBps, and the AS5202T by 7MBps.
Verdict: It’s a Lock
You’ll likely pay a bit more for the Asustor Lockerstor 2 than you will for other two-bay NAS drives. But even if you pay near list price, in return you get a NAS unit that uses the latest hardware to deliver speedy performance. You also get fast LAN (multi-gig) and USB connectivity, a pair of M.2 SSD slots, and a wealth of office-productivity, media-server, security, and data-backup apps. You’ll need tools to install your hard drives, but that’s a minor one-time gripe, and it doesn’t keep the AS6602T from claiming an Editors’ Choice award among two-bay NAS devices.
