RT-N66U not recognizing 3TB USB HDD in particular enclosure

[biznatch]

I have a 3TB WD Red HDD formatted as NTFS that I want to use in this Vantec NexStar enclosure which says it supports disks up to 4TB but I'm having problems getting it to mount on my N66U router. It works fine directly connected to my computer by USB.

GPT disk/3TB = doesn't mount
GPT disk/2TB = doesn't mount
MBR disk/2TB = mounts.

I have also tried ext3 instead of NTFS and that has the same problem. So the problem seems related to the drive being formatted as GPT.

I also have this other Vantec NexStar enclosure. I have RAID turned off (it's set to JBOD) and I just have the single 3TB drive in it. When I connect this to the router it mounts successfully.

So is there just some odd incompatibility between the first enclosure + GTP formatted disks + N66U? If I get a newer version of the first enclosure like this one will it work? While the second enclosure works it has a horribly loud fan and I don't want to use it as a permanent solution, also I just need one disk not two.

Log from router on unsuccessful mount with first enclosure:

Feb 12 16:06:55 kernel: usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Feb 12 16:06:55 kernel: usb 1-1.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Feb 12 16:06:55 kernel: scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WDC WD30 EFRX-68AX9N0          PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 1565565872 512-byte hardware sectors (801570 MB)
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel:  sdb: unknown partition table
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Feb 12 16:06:57 kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

Log from router on successful mount with second enclosure:

Feb 12 16:04:18 kernel: usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
Feb 12 16:04:18 kernel: usb 1-1.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Feb 12 16:04:18 kernel: scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WDC WD30    -WCC1T0371793      PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 5860533168 512-byte hardware sectors (3000593 MB)
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel:  sdb: sdb1 sdb2
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
Feb 12 16:04:20 hotplug[663]: USB /dev/sdb1(unknown) failed to mount at the first try!
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: ufsd: use builtin utf8
Feb 12 16:04:20 hotplug[665]: USB /dev/sdb2(ntfs) failed to mount at the first try!
Feb 12 16:04:20 kernel: ufsd: use builtin utf8 instead of kernel utf8
Feb 12 16:04:27 kernel: ufsd: sdb2 without journal
Feb 12 16:04:27 hotplug[665]: USB ntfs fs at /dev/sdb2 mounted on /tmp/mnt/New_Volume
Feb 12 16:04:27 rc_service: hotplug 665:notify_rc restart_nasapps
Feb 12 16:04:27 FTP Server: daemon is stoped
Feb 12 16:04:27 Samba Server: smb daemon is stoped
Feb 12 16:04:27 Samba Server: daemon is started

 

[RMerlin]

NexStar enclosures and 4KB-sector sized HDDs don't work with the stock firmware. They won't work properly with Linux kernels older than a year or so (I forgot which kernel version implemented a patch that allowed these enclosures to work, but I applied it to my firmware).