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Need some help troubleshoot NTFS USB drive issue on Asus Merlin.

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chinese_ys

Regular Contributor
I have two portable USB drives connected on the Asus RT-AC68U which is running Merlin firmware v384.17.

Both USB drives are formatted as NTFS. But recently (since late last week) I started to find the USB drive on USB3 port is consistently disappear from the system...I had to reboot the router to have it show up but then some time later, it will disappear again... When this happens, I do not even see the drive listed of "fdisk -l".

How should I troubleshoot this? Bad drive OR software bug or some other mysteries...?
 
It looks like the drive Disk-1 doesn't come back online after it's gone to sleep. Disable the disk spindown feature for that drive.

EDIT: You could also try changing the port from USB 3 to USB 2.
 
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If there ain't any important data, just reformat/partition the problem flash drive in Windows, than swap both the flash drive/port. Run it a for awhile to observe.

1. If the problem persist on the USB3 port, than you know, you may have a faulty USB 3.0 port;
2. If the initial flash drive fail again on different port of the router, than you know, the flash drive is most probably going need to be replaced.

Provide I assume you have not changed firmware/config all this time? Regardless, if your problem is no1, you may want to change the USB 3 port on the AC68U to USB2 in the config as @ColinTaylor suggests. AC68U was one of the problematic routers at the time where vendors had issue of 2.4GHz wireless was interfering with USB 3.0, and simply a poor implementation. Back then, when I first setup the AC68U, I could easily get transfer speed of 60MB+ over wire, but one day, it dropped to 12MB and there was not solution to get it back at even at a decent USB 2.0 speed.
 
It looks like the drive Disk-1 doesn't come back online after it's gone to sleep. Disable the disk spindown feature for that drive.

EDIT: You could also try changing the port from USB 3 to USB 2.
Will try to exclude the disk from spin down. But this issue only started recently (maybe after the recent firmware upgrade...).
 
If there ain't any important data, just reformat/partition the problem flash drive in Windows, than swap both the flash drive/port. Run it a for awhile to observe.

1. If the problem persist on the USB3 port, than you know, you may have a faulty USB 3.0 port;
2. If the initial flash drive fail again on different port of the router, than you know, the flash drive is most probably going need to be replaced.

Provide I assume you have not changed firmware/config all this time? Regardless, if your problem is no1, you may want to change the USB 3 port on the AC68U to USB2 in the config as @ColinTaylor suggests. AC68U was one of the problematic routers at the time where vendors had issue of 2.4GHz wireless was interfering with USB 3.0, and simply a poor implementation. Back then, when I first setup the AC68U, I could easily get transfer speed of 60MB+ over wire, but one day, it dropped to 12MB and there was not solution to get it back at even at a decent USB 2.0 speed.
Good to know there is issue with 2.4GHz wireless and USB3...
I might try to exclude the disk from spin down feature and see what happens...A little bit difficult to format the disk...
 
The spin-up current spikes with mechanical drives may create router stability issues. Experience.
Situation dependent... I for one never believe spin down should cause an issue on almost any modern system, and myself do have a mechanical drive that I have a fairly what one would consider on the router an 'aggressive' spin down time, and never has any stability issue caused by spin up/down. But yes, one can consider this step for troubleshoot.
 
I think the issue is with the USB drive on USB 3 port. If the drive is excluded from spin down, then the issue is gone...the mystery part is I have been using the same setup for last three or four years without issue...

The drive was also scanned without any error under windows 10 though...Maybe the drive is dying...
 
Another power adapter. I had one failed in the past. 19V output but unstable. Electronics fail sometimes.
Donot have a spare power supplies works for the router...would hope that is not the cause. Would be easier to replace a hard drive...But if it was the cause, which model would be recommended as a replacement? Or I can just order a replacement power supply ?
 

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