Attached USB drives in 3.0.0.4.372.31

[tundrwd]

I've tried using the older Asus firmware to attach USB drives - and it was basically fruitless. Either wouldn't mount consistently, or would mount, but then unmount mysteriously, and the only way to get them back was to connect/disconnect the USB cable (rebooting wouldn't mount them, etc.) I've tried ext2/ext3 formats (even done within through telnet on the router itself to make sure there weren't funny issues with some incompatible format), FAT32 - nothing seemed to work right.

And when they did mount, I'd find that trying to copy files to them was pointless as well. Would simply "crash" and unmount after some sustained I/O.

1. With just installing Merlin - is the USB mounting of external drives (and keeping them mounted) drives more robust now?
2. What is the preferred format? ext3? I don't really do Windoze, so a FAT32 partition is ok, but I can deal with ext2/3/4 on my Mac, or my Raspberry Pi, or whatever else.
3. I've also had issues with Asus firmware with trying to set up users/access by user. Just flakey. Is this preferred? Or just run it with "anonymous/everyone" access?

 

[RMerlin]

The only improvement I did to USB mounting is I applied various kernel patch to allow mounting of larger hard disks and disks with 4 KB sector format (such as WD Caviar Green drives). Otherwise there is no other change.

Disk stability is kinda hit-or-miss with the router. Some disks are more stable than others. Preferably, use a disk that has its own power supply rather than one that relies on drawing power from the USB port.

I recommend going with ext3, for best performance and reliability.

I use per-user authentication here, works fine for me. Your mileage may vary when using a Mac however.