Best file system to use for USB HDDs on Asus Routers

[thelonelycoder]

I'm using 4TB WD My Book wih EXT4 for more than 1.5 years without one single issue, works great. Asus RT-AC68U

My experience also, on a disk ext4 is great, not so for USB keys. Here I still recommend ext2.

 

[sfx2000]

My experience also, on a disk ext4 is great, not so for USB keys. Here I still recommend ext2.

I think much of it is the quality of the USB thumbdrive itself - I've had pretty good luck with SanDisk drives - Lexar on the other hand, depends on the particular model.

Same goes with MicroSD/SD Cards in USB adapters - I've had excellent luck with SanDisk there, and Samsung is pretty close behind them.

 

[Eric Lieb]

I'm using 4TB WD My Book wih EXT4 for more than 1.5 years without one single issue, works great. Asus RT-AC68U

I gave up trying to use my AC68u via SMB as a media server.. It eats up way to much memory and cpu and still had incredibly slow transfer speeds (to the point some videos were constantly buffering). Was able to plug my USB HDD into my WD My Cloud NAS and it automatically mounted it on the NAS as additional storage.

 

[tallytr]

I gave up trying to use my AC68u via SMB as a media server.. It eats up way to much memory and cpu and still had incredibly slow transfer speeds (to the point some videos were constantly buffering). Was able to plug my USB HDD into my WD My Cloud NAS and it automatically mounted it on the NAS as additional storage.

Interesting. I do not have that experience. I get around 45MB/s via Gigabit Ethernet. OK with me when transferring files between PC and ext. HDD connected to USB-3 port on AC68U.
I think key is EXT4 formatting.
Media Server: I'm using Kodi on Android TV box for my media via TV.
This is fantastic. I stream movies (builds thumbnails) and also access Music that way, I simply backup my iTunes music library to the ext. HDD.
Having said that I didn't like the 4TB HDD restriction and just got a WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS with 12TB (recertified from WD).

 

[Mike808]

Reference for ASUS filesystem support on USB drives:
http://event.asus.com/2009/networks/disksupport/

And yes, no exFAT support due to Microsoft licensing burden.
Asus firmware options on the AC-68R are FAT32, NTFS, or HFS.

 

[Marko Polo]

Interesting. I do not have that experience. I get around 45MB/s via Gigabit Ethernet. OK with me when transferring files between PC and ext. HDD connected to USB-3 port on AC68U.

I can confirm this. I have something the same numbers on my AC68-U: 30-40 Mb/s during copying and 80-90% CPU load. Memory remains the same during copy. I consider this quite sufficient for SOHO use. The one thing I miss in my Samba server is a lack of SMB 3.0

 

[Marko Polo]

Having said that I didn't like the 4TB HDD restriction

Do you speak here about AC68-U? Does it really support HDDs up to 4Tb?

 

[Mike457]

I'll add my 2 cents to this thread. First of all, and this has been reported in other threads, drives larger than 4TB can be successfully connected to an ASUS router that officially only supports up to 4TB. In my case, the router is a GT-AC5300 and the drive is a Seagate 10TB drive.

I have now connected the Seagate 10TB drive to the router in HFS+ and NTFS formats. When the drive was in HFS+, I experienced two problems. The first problem was that I was not able to write to certain folders on the drive using the FTP function. I figured out that this was related to the file permissions on the folders. When I copied the data onto the 10TB drive from my previous 4TB drive, somehow the permissions were set to read-only. After browsing this and other forums, I found a post that suggested the file permissions were the problem. After I set the entire drive to read and write, the ability to write to any folder via FTP was restored.

The second problem is related to the media server. Oddly, newly-added files would not show up in their proper locations when I accessed them through my Samsung TV. They would show up in the main directory, but not in the subfolders to which they were added. I connected the drive directly to my computer and verified that the files were in the proper location. They also showed up correctly in the FTP. One way to fix the issue was to remove the folders from the media share list and then add them again (under USB application>Servers Center>Media Share>Manual Media Server Path). After doing this, the files showed up in their proper locations. Obviously, this is less than ideal. Disabling the UPnP Media Server and then re-enabling it did not fix this problem. I don't think that this issue is due to the Samsung TV's Allshare but rather a peculiarity of using an HFS+ drive with this router. However, I never tested it on another media device (eg. another TV) so I'm not 100% certain.

I've since re-formatted the 10TB drive back to NTFS and I have not had any problems. So, long story short, I think these routers work better with NTFS drives than HFS+ drives.

 

[Milan]

i have 2 drives attached to AX88U - SSD is ext4, there i have swap and entware. WD mypassport i left in NTFS, used as storage for torrents mostly. read write speed to HDD on router itself is on max limit for HDDs - 100 MByte per second - and CPUs are not saturated (minimal load.)

 

[Grisu]

You are in Merlin subfolder, AX92U isnt supported by Merlin so far.