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Whats are Pro and Cons connecting a external hardisk to wireless router

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thmsantosh

New Around Here
Hi Gurus,

I want to connect seagate 4TB backup plus external hard disk (powered) via USB 2.0 to a ASUS RT66 U (AC 1750) wireless router's usb port. Unfortunately this router dont have USB 3.0 however the seagate hard disk has one.

Is this a good solution for home network to use as a central data store between all the devices for computing and also media streaming to a smart tv. I have androids, iphone, laptops, wifi printer, tv connecting to the wifi router.

I have make use the network efficiently and to the maximum speed possible.

By connecting so can I get full features of the backup plus hard disk?

awaiting technical info on this.
Santosh
 
No. The best way to utilize it would be to pull the drive from the enclosure and stick it in a full featured server running something like a core i3 processor with 16GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD to cache commonly used file as well as a system boot drive. Probably dual NICs for speed and uptime.

What is your budget and what do you need?

If you actually just need a centralized way to store and access your files and your performance requirements are decent file transfer speeds and being able to stream to one or two devices at a time...well then attaching it to a router should be more than fine and nice and simple.

If you need more than that, you either need a NAS or if you need even better performance a file server.

Only you can judge what your budget and performance requirements are.
 
Not recommended. very low transfer speeds and often times does not work/format properly and I've had one (not disclosing) eat a pen drive.
 
Not only is it slow and clunky, many people end up having issues with permissions, drive corruption, and even files completely disappearing.

Router-based NAS just really isn't all that reliable.
 
I'd say a USB-plugged HDD would do the job for media sharing, but that's about it. If to write files there, or actually copy large files where speed matters, you will be far better off with either a real NAS, or at the very least a networked disk.

And since the router is actually your primary line of defence against network intrusions, this is the last place you'd want to expose critical files.
 
Thanks all for the inputs, pretty sad combination highest ranked router and best storage device will not give the required performance.

My requirement is having a central storage of all the data, media, documents, music which can be accessible through tablets, laptops, android phone, iphone and also stream to my smart TV. Speed is the concern. I dont want to connect each and every device to the external hard disk nor keep it connected to my laptop.

My budget would be 30K INR (~512 USD)

I want to a optimised home network. I have around 10 devices connecting to my wifi router including printer and xbox.
 
You can get a router AND a decent single-disk NAS for under $500 US.
 
With that budget, I'd say get whichever router suits your networking needs, and add an entry level two-disks NAS from QNAP like a TS-219. That would give you much better performance, but also security by having your disks in a RAID configuration. And the QNAP does support DLNA for your streaming needs.
 
The point is, a router is not a NAS or file server. Its kludged on functionality on even the best router. The processor and operating system is not designed for serving files. Also limited RAM also tends to be a hindrance.

Your typical router has something like a single or dual core 400-800Mhz processor roughly equivelent to an ARM A8 with generally 32-64MB of RAM. Your typical NAS these days has the equivelent to around an ARM Cortex A9 and a single/dual core 800-1400MHz processor in it and 128-512MB of RAM, plus better USB host controller and actual SATA controllers built in to the SoC itself.

Really even a basic NAS is just in a whole different catagory of hardware capability.

Then you get up on a real file server or higher end NAS and you are talking a processor with 2-20x the processing power of a basic NAS and significantly more RAM.

My router is a Netgear 3500L. It handles around 6MB/sec reads and 4MB/sec writes over USB2. It has something like an ancient single core 300MHz processor or so in it (just rough, I am too lazy to actually look it up) and 16MB of RAM. My WDR3600 is much newer and I think has a single core 433MHz processor with somewhat newer architecture in it and 64MB of RAM and I think runs around 12-14MB/sec read and writes over USB2. My File server is a Celeron G1610 2.6GHz dual core based new architecture (and BIG architecture) system with 8GB of RAM, it has a pair of Gigabit NICs in it and two 2TB SATA2 5400RPM disks and can easily server files at 235MB/sec read and writes and if I wanted to add disks and network cards, it could probably do a fair job saturating a 10 gigabit link...of course it has something like 128x the RAM and probably around 30 times the processing power of my best router.

A router is not a file server. Say it with me again. A router is not a file server.

At least a cheap single disk NAS is built to serve files and its processor architecture and other supporting bits are generally geared toward that, as is the operating system running on it. A cheap single disk NAS is probably going to get you 60-100MB/sec reads and 40-80MB/sec writes as well as handling multiple client access somewhat gracefully. A good router might do 20MB/sec reads and writes and will not gracefully handle multiple clients. A cheap single disk NAS is $100-150 and a good investment if you want to share files on your network.

A router attached drive is really only useful if you have no budget and just need to get files accessible around your network with no requirements on performance.
 
A router is not a file server. Say it with me again. A router is not a file server.

This just can't be said enough.

I have a cheap single-disk Buffalo Linkstation and it outperforms router-based NAS in pretty much every way.
 
This just can't be said enough.

I have a cheap single-disk Buffalo Linkstation and it outperforms router-based NAS in pretty much every way.

I agree a file server is the best solution for more advanced users and network environments.

For a less experienced users you can't beat the ease of use and access of network attached storage using your router.
 
See I disagree somewhat.

My Linkstation is just as easy to manage as any router NAS I've ever used and in some cases is easier. It's not as full-featured as some.

It supports per-user auth so Windows users here in my house don't have to remember to use the admin account like they did with Netgear Readyshare. It's completely transparent to them.

And finally I've NEVER had to troubleshoot it (it has been rebooted 3 times in the last 2 years and all of those were for firmware upgrades). It just works.

Yes, I'm fairly technical. But if I had to compare my experience with router-based NAS to my Linkstation, I'd recommend the Buffalo every time even for the not-so-technically inclined.
 
See I disagree somewhat.

My Linkstation is just as easy to manage as any router NAS I've ever used and in some cases is easier. It's not as full-featured as some.

It supports per-user auth so Windows users here in my house don't have to remember to use the admin account like they did with Netgear Readyshare. It's completely transparent to them.

And finally I've NEVER had to troubleshoot it (it has been rebooted 3 times in the last 2 years and all of those were for firmware upgrades). It just works.

Yes, I'm fairly technical. But if I had to compare my experience with router-based NAS to my Linkstation, I'd recommend the Buffalo every time even for the not-so-technically inclined.

Right :) I looked up the buffalo Linkstation and its an actual NAS.

I did not realize that. I was assuming (wrongly) that this was a computer you configured as a file server.

This looks like a very nice unit and it's built solely for the job. I wish I had one.

It's only the additional cost that would hold me back for getting one.
 
Right :) I looked up the buffalo Linkstation and its an actual NAS.

I did not realize that. I was assuming (wrongly) that this was a computer you configured as a file server.

This looks like a very nice unit and it's built solely for the job. I wish I had one.

It's only the additional cost that would hold me back for getting one.

I only paid like $140 for it at the time.
 
Really attaching to a router should only be done because you don't have the financial means for a NAS. If you poke around, there are inexpensive single disk models for less than $100...which means it isn't a huge financial commitment to buy one and even those cheap ones are going to be much more capable. Generally the setup is a matter of a couple of minutes through a wizard on most of them for basic setup and you have better performance, flexibility and security than attaching an external drive to your router.

What router attached storage is good for is sometimes when you need to quickly transfer some files off something like an external HDD or thumb drive to a wireless device which has no USB port. Plug it in to the router, transfer the files, unplug it from the router. This is why travel routers with a USB port and SMB share functionality are really nice. Stationary routers with it...meh.
 
This just can't be said enough.

I have a cheap single-disk Buffalo Linkstation and it outperforms router-based NAS in pretty much every way.


LOL - and Excel is not a database, but some foiks insist on using it as one :D

Routers as a budget NAS - for some people, that's all they need...
 
I actually tried doing this (although I had a server) just because I could (or so I thought). I have the Asus N66u running TomatoUSB by Shibby. Basically it worked except that it seemed to cause the router to stop allocating IPs to new wireless clients - so I had to remove it.
 
Thanks all, I learn that its better to invest on NAS than a just a external hard disk. Can you suggest me a good NAS which can hold upto 4 TB disk space, capable of file server and streaming.
 

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