Asus RT-AC68U router and Western Digital My Book Essential 4TB USB 3.0 drive attached to the USB 3.0 port of the router.
At some point I copied about 500GB (2GB to 20GB files) to the disk over wired connection. For some reason I decided to calculate md5 hashes of the files I copied and compare them to the files I had on the local hard drive. The hashes were different for one file and diff showed a 32 byte difference.
This I was able to reproduce several times. Each time there were 1 to 2 files corrupted, each difference was 32 or 64 bytes, different files corrupted each time.
The WD drive is 100% OK (passed extended test in WD diagnostic software and has no problems when copying files to it when attached directly to two separate computers).
Also reproduced the issue with different a USB 2.0 disk (attached to the USB 3.0 port).
It did not matter if disk was formatted with NTFS or EXT3 file system, both experienced corruption. Also it did not matter if SMB or FTP was used to copy files, both had corrupted files.
When md5 hash was calculated repeatedly for a corrupted file, then the same value was always returned, this means the corrupted file is written to the disk and the corruption does not occur while reading the file.
Data corruption happened with both latest Asus firmware and with asuswrt-merlin (whatever versions were the latest in the beginning of September).
At this point I returned the router and about a month later received a new one (new unopened package with a different serial). The fun story is that the new router has the exact same problem.
To be sure that the problem is the router not something else I replaced the network cable with a new one and even tested with a different wired network card. Still corrupted files.
Only with an Edimax AC1200 wireless USB 3.0 card there was no problems, tested two times.
My guess is that there is something wrong with the lan ports on the router.
Any suggestions? Am i really that unlucky to have two defective devices in a row? Anyone willing to test their routers? Google finds no similar cases.
At some point I copied about 500GB (2GB to 20GB files) to the disk over wired connection. For some reason I decided to calculate md5 hashes of the files I copied and compare them to the files I had on the local hard drive. The hashes were different for one file and diff showed a 32 byte difference.
This I was able to reproduce several times. Each time there were 1 to 2 files corrupted, each difference was 32 or 64 bytes, different files corrupted each time.
The WD drive is 100% OK (passed extended test in WD diagnostic software and has no problems when copying files to it when attached directly to two separate computers).
Also reproduced the issue with different a USB 2.0 disk (attached to the USB 3.0 port).
It did not matter if disk was formatted with NTFS or EXT3 file system, both experienced corruption. Also it did not matter if SMB or FTP was used to copy files, both had corrupted files.
When md5 hash was calculated repeatedly for a corrupted file, then the same value was always returned, this means the corrupted file is written to the disk and the corruption does not occur while reading the file.
Data corruption happened with both latest Asus firmware and with asuswrt-merlin (whatever versions were the latest in the beginning of September).
At this point I returned the router and about a month later received a new one (new unopened package with a different serial). The fun story is that the new router has the exact same problem.
To be sure that the problem is the router not something else I replaced the network cable with a new one and even tested with a different wired network card. Still corrupted files.
Only with an Edimax AC1200 wireless USB 3.0 card there was no problems, tested two times.
My guess is that there is something wrong with the lan ports on the router.
Any suggestions? Am i really that unlucky to have two defective devices in a row? Anyone willing to test their routers? Google finds no similar cases.
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