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Best Hard Drive for RT-N66U?

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F250Ray

New Around Here
I purchased a Seagate 2 TB Backup Plus from Staples on black Friday. I cannot see my music files stored on the HD and backups to the drive fail. I'm able to do both functions with a 16 GB jump drive. Most jump drives are way too small for my needs. It appears the Seagate HD is not compatible with the Asus RT-N66U router.

Please advise of any HDs that are working well with the RT-N66U.

Thank you for any help or direction.

Ray
 
Is the hdd mounted? see on router ui.

8z4eb6.png


Best file system is EXT3
 
Yes, the HD is mounted. I can see the files if I go directly to the drive. Back up using Norton starts but does not finish. Router also has to be power cycled after backup fails. Router appears to be running in some type of loop. I will look at the suggested unit.

Thanks,

Ray
 
A Seagate "Desktop" 2 TB drive works fine for me. This is a very vanilla drive which I've formatted to EXT3.
 

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Quite a few users are having issues using larger HDDs with a router. Sometimes it's caused by the HDD using 4KB sectors, which aren't fully supported by the firmware. Sometimes it's caused by having an HDD that's *> 2 TB. Sometimes it's a compatibility issue between the disk enclosure and the router. Sometimes it's the HDD not getting enough power (especially with those 2.5" HDDs - those Y-shaped cables don't always work properly, even on a desktop computer).

Just too many variables when it comes to using an external USB HDD with a low-powered device like a router. I've seen similar issues with other devices like the WDTV, where some HDDs worked fine, but others were unreliable when plugged to the WDTV USB port.
 
Yes, the HD is mounted. I can see the files if I go directly to the drive. Back up using Norton starts but does not finish. Router also has to be power cycled after backup fails. Router appears to be running in some type of loop. I will look at the suggested unit.

Thanks,

Ray

I have exactly the same issue and when backing up, both Norton and Windows Backup have stalled. Am using a 1TB ext. USB drive.
 
My Toshiba Stor.e ALU 1TB 2.5 Extrernal USB powerd HDD is Perfect.

hdd.png


Never Failed even on FULL Backup via Samba for hours.....

If you can find it just take it.
 
My Toshiba Stor.e ALU 1TB 2.5 Extrernal USB powerd HDD is Perfect.

hdd.png


Never Failed even on FULL Backup via Samba for hours.....

If you can find it just take it.

That's good to know - What client do you use to back up with and what settings do you use on the router? Please excuse my ignorance!
 
What client do you use to back up with?

I've been using Oops!Backup to back up my 2 home PCs to the USB drive attached to my RT-N66U. It works automatically and quietly in the background, just the way I like my backup programs.
 
I've been using Oops!Backup to back up my 2 home PCs to the USB drive attached to my RT-N66U. It works automatically and quietly in the background, just the way I like my backup programs.

Thanks for the suggestion, I downloaded a trial and it looks great. Helped me identify the issue I have... couldn't create a directory... need to check parent folder permissions. Any suggestions for best way to do this? Again, please excuse my ignorance.
 
Thanks for the suggestion, I downloaded a trial and it looks great. Helped me identify the issue I have... couldn't create a directory... need to check parent folder permissions. Any suggestions for best way to do this? Again, please excuse my ignorance.

I have answered my own question... Stupidly I'd let a Mac create an iTunes library on the same shared drive. I just deleted all the small Mac files it left behind and hey presto, everything works perfectly again. Strange.
 
So it is recommended that the hard drive have it's own power supply?

Was thinking about picking up a cheaper 1tb passport drive but am worried it won't get enough power from the router.

Thanks
 
I use 2.5 inch laptop type external drive and the dual usb cable, one for power, y cable type thing.

Never have any trouble with "USB Power".
 
I have a 2TB WD My Passport running off USB power with no problems. No Y-cable either. It's hard to know which drives will work well and which won't, so just make sure wherever you buy from has good return policy.
 

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