Asustor Lockerstor 6 Gen 2 NAS Review

When was it that six-bay NAS devices became so popular? It's hard to pinpoint, isn't it? When it comes to buying/building your own private server, to get away from subscription cloud services, there is always a balance of three key factors for most buyers - Budget vs Scale vs Power. In recent years we have seen HDD capacity limits grow in such an incredible fashion (with 22TB and 24TB HDDs arriving at the end of 2022 across the popular NAS HDD brands), so cracking the 100TB limits whilst still maintaining a 1-2 disk safety net (i.e redundancy) is easier than ever. Add to this, a huge wave of more power-efficient processors and network controllers arriving in the last 3 years and suddenly NAS devices such as the Asustor Lockerstor 6 Gen 2 (AS6706T) are tremendously appealing. This NAS tickets the boxes of EVERYTHING that most modern NAS buyers are looking for in 2022/2023. These include BTRFS support, 2.5GbE, KVM setups with 4K output, USB 3.2 Gen 2 10GbE connectivity, LCD controls, optional 10GbE, FOUR M.2 NVMe SSD storage bays AND all this arriving in a compact desktop form. The 6-Bay entry into the popular Asustor Lockerstor series makes ALOT of sense, but as 6-Bay NAS is still in its relative infancy (when compares to 2, 4 and 8-Bay systems in the last decade), is the Lockerstor 6 Gen 2 NAS the system of your dreams or nightmares? Is it all sizzle and no sausage? Ultimately - does it deserve your data? Let's review the AS6704T 6-Bay NAS from Asustor. Video Chapters...