Asus RT-AC68U as file server / very humble media drive connection?

[schelry]

Hi, I have had my Asus RT-AC68U forever, but am only realizing I'm only using like 10% of its capabilities. That said, i'm also learning that perhaps all of the additional functionality is closed to me either because my asus aimless network is not the official source of internet coming into the home. Or that because of this, many of the necessary settings options are closed to me. For example, because my internet provider owns the modem, and does not permit any hanky panky with its settings, I cannot do things like use DDNS settings, port forwarding, DMZ or other zones.

All of that said, I'm hopeful that i will be able at least to use the USB 3.0 port for file service and potentially the rare but occasional media stream.

I have a Transcend StoreJet SSD that I have been trying for that purpose, and I'm struggling. Using it straight, like plugged into the USB and then mapping it as a network drive to my mac, i can access it just fine for read only purposes. Setting up credentials in order to access r/w privileges proves untenable for any purpose, because either ASUS or Apple is breaking the function of authentication. I've tried authentication with Apple Finder, Nimble Commander and DCommander. Finder, the result is no connection whatsoever. the two commanders will just automatically attach it as a read only drive, no option to authenticate. (these connection issues are for ftp, smb, http, https are not available)

I am able, with FileZilla, to connect with authentication to achieve read/write access. However as far as I know, mapping to FileZilla for ftp will only support use through filzilla for file management actions. Ie, no I cannot use my storeject as an active use alternative drive. Unless there is some other software I can buy to make a mount point possible, the drive option seems out. Keeping it only as a dumb drive for read only seems a complete and utter waste of a terabyte drive.

I have dicked around with the various ASUS drive options, but they all seem to require that I own the modem into the home, which I don't.

Also, aidisk seems to be a very, very kludgy kind of navigation option, but again using it is like going back to the stone age, even just to navigate to single file takes like 3x the effort and is likely to cause a disconnection anyway. Even with patience, its still not going to achieve a mount point.

I have tried the iPhone and mac asus apps for accessing the drive (aidisk, File Flex), but perhaps because of my lack of ddns, they do not recognize that the drive is even plugged in.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I am open to upgrading (my router is perfectly fine right now as far as speed) if doing so will accomplish both an increase in wifi speed (6E or 7) AND making a drive available to me.

I have been looking into NAS options but if the USB port on an aimesh router can serve as a both active file storage and 1-2 streamed episodes per month, all on the home lan (no remote streaming) that really looks like its all that I would need. a NAS would really be some serious overkill.

The hardware involved:
company modem, off limits
Asus RT-AC68U on 3.0.0.4.386_51733
Asus RP-AC1900 on 3.0.0.4.386_51733
i am running a Surfshark openVPN off the 68U

Apple MacBook Air connected via Wifi 5 802.11ac only
home lan has 8 devices

I have been testing the use of tailscale both for home lan and remote lan access, but so far any capability i gain doing so deprecates my internet access either because of the vpn (i can turn it off) or other unknown reasons that are kicking my behind.
Similar issues wanting to use lulu network filtering.

it would be nice not to need to purchase anything, and just configure the 68U for drive access and mounting. If purchasing new equipment, i'll need a whole new post because i have so many questions. My initial thought, again for budget reasons and because i'm not needing a server for multiple people to drive a lot of streams, is that i'd get the asus drive usable, then maybe upgrade to a much larger ssd.

 

[bennor]

Apple has depreciated the AFP protocol. Ensure you are using SMB in Mac Finder to access the USB drive attached to the router.

smb://

You may also have to use the IP address of the router not it's name when mapping a Share in Mac Finder.

As always, if you want a NAS then get or build a real NAS. The router and it's limited hardware is what it is and may struggle when used as a NAS. Can it work? Yes but it is liable to be slow.

Edit to add: Also make sure to set the Samba protocol version to SMBv1 & SMBv2 on the router's USB Application > Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk page. You may want to post screen shots your settings, redacting sensitive information, for others to review as well. Due to the age of the router, avoid using any feature that opens up remote access to that router.

And note that the RT-AC68U is End of Life/End of Support by Asus.

End-of-life product list

 

[JoeHz]

How big of a drive are we talking about? I did this briefly with unused SSD's that had initially shipped with laptops and discovered the more storage I had attached to the router, more memory was used by the router to manage it, and on an RT-AC86U, it was noticeable enough for it to NOT be a viable long term storage strategy.

 

[schelry]

Apple has depreciated the AFP protocol. Ensure you are using SMB in Mac Finder to access the USB drive attached to the router.

smb://

You may also have to use the IP address of the router not it's name when mapping a Share in Mac Finder.

As always, if you want a NAS then get or build a real NAS. The router and it's limited hardware is what it is and may struggle when used as a NAS. Can it work? Yes but it is liable to be slow.

Edit to add: Also make sure to set the Samba protocol version to SMBv1 & SMBv2 on the router's USB Application > Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk page. You may want to post screen shots your settings, redacting sensitive information, for others to review as well. Due to the age of the router, avoid using any feature that opens up remote access to that router.

And note that the RT-AC68U is End of Life/End of Support by Asus.

End-of-life product list

Thank you for your reply.

I am using the ftp protocol because that is what the asus drive instructions tell me to do. AFP and FTP are not the same protocol... I know that in an upcoming os release the afp protocol will be deprecated, so i have been paying close attention to this.

Mac finder really, really does not perform well with SMB. I have other drives attached to my computers that I mount that way, and they drop all the time. So, it's not ideal for two reasons, it drops, and the drive attached to the router is in the basement, so troubleshooting will likely be a major pain if that starts happening and i need to troubleshoot the physical connection.

Asus does support SMB connections, but my router at least also supports FTP.

I also, appreciate what you are saying about if you want a NAS get a NAS. But, i honestly do not want a NAS. That's, in my mind, kind of like telling someone they want some wheels for the simple task of getting to work, and getting the recommendation for at minimum an F250. My needs do not in any way require the processing power, speed, or investment of a full NAS. If i cannot stream at all ever period, that's ok. i'm only doing that once or twice a month anyway.I do not need to provide anyone screaming transcoding for multiple users at a time, or any kind of remote access at all.

I am happy to upgrade the current hardware if it's necessary. But, since I don't need fancy functionality or faster speeds, upgrading just because my existing router is old doesn't really make sense. If it breaks, and i dont have customer support, of course that would move my replacement timeline up from someday to right now.

For the initial question, though, any replacement option I choose will need the answer of whether or not an ASUS router usb port can be used for file server purposes would still be an open question. Because I'd need to know, can i buy a new ASUS or do I need to buy a new some other company router? If i go whole hog and spend oodles of money and configuration time on a solution i dont really need, when I plug it in to my router, will it even work? or, will an expansion drive attached to the new routers usb port, even work?

 

[schelry]

How big of a drive are we talking about? I did this briefly with unused SSD's that had initially shipped with laptops and discovered the more storage I had attached to the router, more memory was used by the router to manage it, and on an RT-AC86U, it was noticeable enough for it to NOT be a viable long term storage strategy.

Thank you. currently, it's a 1TB drive. I have smaller ones I could use for the purpose, but i was hoping for those to be backups and the asus attached one to act as basically an extension of my hard drive. (more space = better). I did see someone on here talking about I think it was 24TB. that's not my scenario.

 

[JoeHz]

Thank you. currently, it's a 1TB drive. I have smaller ones I could use for the purpose, but i was hoping for those to be backups and the asus attached one to act as basically an extension of my hard drive. (more space = better). I did see someone on here talking about I think it was 24TB. that's not my scenario.

1TB will be more than enough for you to notice the behavior. I am not certain, but I believe I was doing this with 250GB drives. Keep an eye on in-use memory. I found myself never very comfortable looking at how much free memory it had, and having to reboot the router about once a week due to that creating a problem -- enough that I eventually went and got a Synology NAS for the purpose and discovered a zillion other needs/use cases I had for the thing.

 

[bennor]

Mac finder really, really does not perform well with SMB. I have other drives attached to my computers that I mount that way, and they drop all the time. So, it's not ideal for two reasons, it drops, and the drive attached to the router is in the basement, so troubleshooting will likely be a major pain if that starts happening and i need to troubleshoot the physical connection.

To clarify are the "other drives attached to my computers that I mount that way", drives directly connected to the Mac's USB port or are drives connected to devices elsewhere on the local network?

To further clarify, are you having issues while connected to the local network? Or are you having issues while remotely connected to the local network using VPN?

Perhaps it would be wise, if you haven't done so already, to investigate the cause of why connected drives are all dropping at the same time.
Are other devices on the local network experiencing a WiFI issue or network Share drop a the same time?
Is it a WiFi connection issue?
Is it caused by some other issue like network or WiFi extenders?
What does the router log show around the time of the drop?
Is the Mac connected to the main router (RT-AC68U) or to the repeater (Asus RP-AC1900)?
VPN is being repeatedly mentioned, does the issue happen when all VPN is disabled (on both router and network clients)?
If the Mac can be directly connected, using Ethernet, to the router, does the drop issue persist?

Solve the dropping issue on the Mac and move forward with using SMB to access any network Share.

 

[wouterv]

I use the Samba features of my RT-AC68U (like I did with the RT-N66U) with a 32 GB USB stick as temporary networked storage space, accessing it from windows PC's. This works quite flawless, but it does not have a spectacular performance at all.
Samba interpretation in different products and product versions can give troubles.
A few basics I do follow are:

1. Plug the USB storage device in the router.
2. On the Network Map page, open the USB storage device and Format it.
3. USB Application > Servers Center > Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk
   • Enable Share : ON
   • Allow guest login: OFF
   • Note or set the Device Name
   • The Work Group name shall be identical to that of your computers (Windows 10 or 11 default is WORKGROUP).
   • The Router Account is there (which you cannot remove).
   • You can make a new account (you better do to avoid the need to disclose the Router Account to others).
   • Make a new Folder and set applicable access rights for every account to the Folder.
4. From Windows you can access the USB storage device as: \\[Device Name]\
   • When accessing the USB device by its Device Name is troublesome, you can use the Router IP address e.g. \\192.168.1.1\
5. Sub-folders can be made with Windows File Explorer.
6. You can also make a mapped network drive.

Note: This setting is not available in stock firmware.

Also make sure to set the Samba protocol version to SMBv1 & SMBv2 on the router's USB Application > Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk page.

 

[bennor]

Note: This setting is not available in stock firmware.

Thanks for pointing that out. Double checked on a RT-AC68U running stock, your right, corrected my post above to cross out that sentence.

 

[KGB7]

Im attaching screenshots with settings that I have configured on my Asus AC68U router. Im able to access the HDD ( Sabrent ) from Mac, Apple TV 4K, iPhone, Android phone and Windows computer. Read and Write works with no issues.

For faster file transfer to the HDD from MacBook via Wifi, I use "Commander One Pro". See screenshot.

 

[bennor]

@KGB7, are you using Asus-Merlin firmware? Note the OP is using stock Asus firmware (3.0.0.4.386_51733) on their RT-AC68U. As such their Samba settings may be different compared to Asus-Merlin Samba settings. Edit to add: Example RT-AC68U stock Asus 3.0.0.4.386_51733 firmware Samba and FTP server screens attached.

 

[KGB7]

@KGB7, are you using Asus-Merlin firmware? Note the OP is using stock Asus firmware (3.0.0.4.386_51733) on their RT-AC68U. As such their Samba settings may be different compared to Asus-Merlin Samba settings. Edit to add: Example RT-AC68U stock Asus 3.0.0.4.386_51733 firmware Samba and FTP server screens attached.

I am using Merlin firmware, but it should still work with Stock Asus firmware. OP can also flash his router to Merlin firmware.

 

[bennor]

I am using Merlin firmware, but it should still work with Stock Asus firmware. OP can also flash his router to Merlin firmware.

The point is that several of the options on the Samba section in Asus Merlin are not available in the stock firmware. For example the stock firmware GUI page lacks the ability to set SMB version as indicated in the attached image in my prior post. While SMB read/write "should" work in either firmware, it appears the OP is having issues of it not working correctly, being unable to write to the drive, in their use case with their devices (at least with a Mac apparently).

Personally, with Windows years back when using a RT-AC68U I do not recall having any problems both with local network access and with remote access using OpenVPN server accessing a USB drive connected to a RT-AC68U using either stock Asus firmware or with Asus-Merlin firmware. Could read/write files to/from that USB drive. Didn't have a Mac so don't know if there was a issue specific to Mac/OS X with the file server portion of the RT-AC68U firmware.

 

[KGB7]

The point is that several of the options on the Samba section in Asus Merlin are not available in the stock firmware. For example the stock firmware GUI page lacks the ability to set SMB version as indicated in the attached image in my prior post. While SMB read/write "should" work in either firmware, it appears the OP is having issues of it not working correctly, being unable to write to the drive, in their use case with their devices (at least with a Mac apparently).

Personally, with Windows years back when using a RT-AC68U I do not recall having any problems both with local network access and with remote access using OpenVPN server accessing a USB drive connected to a RT-AC68U using either stock Asus firmware or with Asus-Merlin firmware. Could read/write files to/from that USB drive. Didn't have a Mac so don't know if there was a issue specific to Mac/OS X with the file server portion of the RT-AC68U firmware.

We won't know till OP tries the settings I have provided.