upgrading from ac66u to ac5300 what happens with NAS?

[aross1976]

Ok so i am going to be installing a new ac5300 to replace my rt ac 66u_b1

Now i have a 4TB WD red drive in a 3.0 enclosure plugged into the USB 3.o port and setup as a NAS
it took me lots of fiddling to get this drive to work in windows , drive mapping and all
i found out that the drive is only able to be recognized and read from the router and not if i plug it into my PC

so what will happen when i upgrade the router?
can i just plug this drive in to the new router and expect it to work?
and if not and i have to enable the samba share and reset that up on the new router then can i expect the drive to be seen the same way in windows again or am i going to have to remap the drive in windows again?

it took me weeks to get the NAS to work and now i have files on it i need access to and i can not have the aggravation of trying to setup the drive again and have it not work or even worse get reformatted

so is there any procedure to make this as painless as possible? has anyone here been through this process before?

 

[EmeraldDeer]

Partitions? Filesystems? Entware?

 

[aross1976]

Partitions? Filesystems? Entware?

it has only one partition i set it up with the router so it i formatted to whatever filesystem the router uses i guess i already stated that the drive is not readable if i plug it into windows i formatted it with the router to be used as NAS
i just remember that mapping it in winodws was a huge PITA

 

[ColinTaylor]

The shared folders/users/permissions are stored in hidden files on the disk. So IIRC all of that will automatically be detected when you plug it into your new router.

However, your main problem is likely to be on the Windows side. Depending on how you set it up your mapping is probably something like \\RT-AC66U\Data. That would need to be changed to the new UNC, i.e. \\RT-AC5300\Data. You could probably change the Samba device name to what you had before (i.e. RT-AC66U) even though that would be a bit confusing.

 

[EmeraldDeer]

Samba version 1 is convenient but deprecated by Microsoft. I do not use it.
I use Samba version 2. I have the mount \\192.168.50.1 pinned in Windows 10 Quick access. It is as convenient as I need it to be.

I take it that you will not be using Entware/Diversion/amtm/Skynet.

What is the output of "tune2fs -l /dev/sda1"?

 

[aross1976]

Samba version 1 is convenient but deprecated by Microsoft. I do not use it.
I use Samba version 2. I have the mount \\192.168.50.1 pinned in Windows 10 Quick access. It is as convenient as I need it to be.

I take it that you will not be using Entware/Diversion/amtm/Skynet.

What is the output of "tune2fs -l /dev/sda1"?

i really have no idea what you just said , i never used any of that and am not familiar with any of it

how do i know which samba version i am using is that something that is on the router or on the PC? how would i switch from ver 1 to ver 2 ?

 

[aross1976]

The shared folders/users/permissions are stored in hidden files on the disk. So IIRC all of that will automatically be detected when you plug it into your new router.

However, your main problem is likely to be on the Windows side. Depending on how you set it up your mapping is probably something like \\RT-AC66U\Data. That would need to be changed to the new UNC, i.e. \\RT-AC5300\Data. You could probably change the Samba device name to what you had before (i.e. RT-AC66U) even though that would be a bit confusing.

yes it is named like that, but i am not sure how i would go about changing it to the old name ac66u...
it named that part automatically before so where would i go to edit it? in the router config or in windows?

 

[ColinTaylor]

yes it is named like that, but i am not sure how i would go about changing it to the old name ac66u...
it named that part automatically before so where would i go to edit it? in the router config or in windows?

Have a look on the router at USB Application > Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk. There is a field there called "Device Name". That name should correspond to the name used in your shortcuts/mapped drives.

You haven't given any details of the Windows mapped drives/shortcuts that you're currently using, like how many there any or how they're used. So it's impossible to know how onerous it would be to change all those to match your new router's Device Name.

 

[Dave Parker]

Just a though here but do you have any back up of your files anywhere, another external hard drive, nas, or a cloud backup service. If not you may be skating on thin ice assuming these files are important to you.