Acer Altos EasyStore 2TB review

The Altos EasyStore 2TB is the first network-attached storage (NAS) device we've seen from Acer.

It immediately stood out from other devices we've seen, due to its huge capacity of 2TB.The EasyStore actually consists of four 500GB SATA hard disks mounted on trays that easily slide out from the front of the unit if you need to replace or upgrade a disk. The black metal enclosure feels sturdy, but it is very loud. The din of its cooling fans even drowned out the noise of our PC, so you will want to keep it hidden away.

If your PC has the UPnP service turned on, the EasyStore will broadcast its presence and appear in My Network Places or Network. Double-clicking its icon takes you to the web configuration pages, which let you configure and change settings. The web configuration interface is well laid out, so this isn't difficult.

The Altos EasyStore can be configured as a RAID 0, 5 or 10 array. As a RAID 0 array, all four disks are joined together, providing 1.8TB of formatted storage. RAID 0 arrays tend to be much quicker than other RAID levels, but if one disk should fail then you'll lose all your data. As a RAID 5 array, the Altos EasyStore provides 1.4TB of storage, but all your data will be preserved if one disk should fail.

When configured as a RAID 10 array, the Altos EasyStore provides only 931GB of usable storage. RAID 10 tries to provide both speed and data security, since it automatically mirrors the contents of a RAID 0 array made up of one pair of the 500GB disks on to another RAID 0 array made up of the other two 500GB disks. This means that you should get the speed benefits of RAID 0, but if for some reason a disk should fail then all your data will still be safe.

The Altos EasyStore was reasonably quick copying large files, but slow transferring small files. As a RAID 0 array, the Altos EasyStore copied large files at 12.28MB/s but it transferred small files at 0.96MB/s. It was a bit faster when configured as a RAID 10 array, as our results graphs show. As expected, the RAID 5 speeds lagged behind both our RAID 0 and 10 results; it copied large files at 9.11MB/s and small files at 0.68MB/s. The Altos EasyStore will be reasonably fast copying large files, such as videos or large Photoshop images, but will be frustratingly slow when dealing with small files, such as Word documents or a system backup.

The Altos EasyStore is easy to configure, has plenty of capacity, and costs a surprisingly low 37p per gigabyte. It is an attractive option if you need a RAID-capable NAS device that can be rebuilt easily if a disk fails, but it is distractingly loud and its slow small files performance means it's not ideal if you need quick access to your data.

Author: Alan Lu