Sharing USB drive via router USB Port

SkidMarkKing · 23 Apr 2019 at 14:29

Hi guys,

as an idea because I am editing photos on two different computers (in the same house) it would be a good idea to store my data on a USB external HDD and plug this into my vodafone routers USB port.

When I plug the USB drive in to the router and login to the router it is saying unsupported. It is NTFS formatted.

Can anyone provide some advice?

Armageus · 23 Apr 2019 at 14:37

Routers generally only support fat32 formatted drives - they will also transfer pretty slow.

What you ideally need is a NAS

BigT · 23 Apr 2019 at 14:39

You'll need to reformat the drive to FAT32 and remember you won't be able to work with files in excess of 4Gb as a result.

https://deviceguides.vodafone.co.uk/vodafone/connect-router/connection/use-file-sharing/

SkidMarkKing · 23 Apr 2019 at 15:52

Armageus said:
Routers generally only support fat32 formatted drives - they will also transfer pretty slow.

What you ideally need is a NAS

Yeh, we use them at work. Thought I could maybe do it cheaper just for home use.

Any recommendations? I did look at the 2-bay netgear/synology ones but they work out over £300 with drives when I last looked.

As always, cheers for the replies.

BigT · 23 Apr 2019 at 15:55

Doing it with an old PC and your choice of stuff like OMV/Freenas/Unraid would be the cheapest if you have kit lying around but you still have to find the disks.

Or maybe use that USB drive on something like a Raspberry Pi which can probably be configured to use a filesystem other than FAT32.

pc-guy · 23 Apr 2019 at 15:57

Can’t you buy one of those one bay my cloud thing from WD. They are around £100 for 3TB more than enough for photo sharing and storage of your files and you probably can use it as a backup device.

Steveocee · 23 Apr 2019 at 15:58

SkidMarkKing said:
Hi guys,

as an idea because I am editing photos on two different computers (in the same house) it would be a good idea to store my data on a USB external HDD and plug this into my vodafone routers USB port.

When I plug the USB drive in to the router and login to the router it is saying unsupported. It is NTFS formatted.

Can anyone provide some advice?

Maybe try a little RTFM?
https://deviceguides.vodafone.co.uk/vodafone/connect-router/connection/use-file-sharing/

First line reads:
"You can share files with other devices on the network by connecting various USB storage devices (USB keys or external hard drives formatted to the file system FAT32) to your router. Remember, you need to establish a connection to the router web interface."

SkidMarkKing · 23 Apr 2019 at 16:12

pc-guy said:
Can’t you buy one of those one bay my cloud thing from WD. They are around £100 for 3TB more than enough for photo sharing and storage of your files and you probably can use it as a backup device.

Yeh, will look into one of those I think. I have a 1TB external HDD as well so I can backup to that also. (1TB will do me)

pc-guy · 23 Apr 2019 at 17:00

Overclockers don’t seem to sell the WD my cloud 1 bay NAS. But you can find them everywhere on the net. It starts at 1TB. You HDD won’t work as a NAS as it needs an OS to drive it. NAS comes with built in OS thus they can be attached to a network and be used as shared resources. Imagine NAS as a basic computer with only a HDD.