Review: Acer Aspire Easystore

Network-attached storage (Nas) drives aren’t hard to come by these days, but you don’t find many with built-in Wifi.

Acer’s Asipre Easystore will link to your network via wired or wireless connections.

Although slow wireless speeds usually mean tasks such as copying large files and streaming video are often left to faster wired connections, having wireless on your Nas provides you with a quick and clutter-free way of hooking it up to your network. It’s especially useful if you’re often just streaming audio files, photos and saving documents to your Nas.

Should you require faster speeds, a Gigabit Lan port is also available. Acer’s Aspire Easystore houses four hard drive bays, our review model coming with the maximum total storage of 2TB (four individual Seagate 7,200rpm 500GB disks) – enough to hold even the most extravagant of media collections. And with various Raid options available, you can set up mirroring to safeguard data.

The web-based interface gives you control over functions such as Raid configuration, media sharing (including UPnP), wireless networks etc. It will also attempt to rectify any problems with the drives. With all four drives whirring away simultaneously, a fair amount of heat is generated.

Acer has dealt with this well, though, and a large yet quiet fan keeps things cool; you’ll hear it droning away in a very quiet room, but it won’t be heard if you’re watching TV. There are plenty of cheaper Nas drives available, including smaller versions of the Easystore – more suitable to the average home user.

Advanced features, such as being able to schedule Bit Torrent downloads (as with the Qnap TS-209 Pro), are also missing, but the Easystore is otherwise well-designed and easy to use.