Comments on: Top Five Best Router NAS Options: Turn Your Wi-Fi Machine into an Easy Network Storage Server Today!

By: Dong Ngo

Dong Ngo — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 05:36:31 +0000

In reply to Andrew. That's the limitation of 32-bit OS, Andrew. You need 64-bit to go beyond 2.2TB in a single partition. No home router I'm aware of uses 64-bit OS. You can use larger discs, but you'll need to make multiple partitions.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 04:53:30 +0000

Are you aware of any routers that support large (20TB) hard drives via USB? both Synology and Asus AX3000 seem to have a limit on the size hard drive they recognize.

By: Dong Ngo

Dong Ngo — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 01:40:27 +0000

In reply to Bob. Some routers support eSATA, Bob, but that's not the point of the paragraph -- I meant I could have used slow HDD-based portable drives for the testing, which I didn't.

By: Dong Ngo

Dong Ngo — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 01:37:11 +0000

In reply to Bob. It's a router you're talking about. There's a lot than just the USB port.

By: Razz

Razz — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 01:07:04 +0000

In reply to Bob. USB 3.0 is faster than the USB 2.0. So if you connect a USB 3.0 SSD to a router's relatively slow USB 2.0 port, then the overall speed is by the speed of the router's USB 2.0 port.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:48:41 +0000

I’m surprised… The Asus GT 11000 Pro (10G) WRITE is almost exactly as fast as the GT 16000 (10G); but the 11000 is almost 50% faster at READ.
Any idea why this might be? And what then might be the reasons that one might prefer the 16000 even if using it for Nas?

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:38:04 +0000

“portable SSDs, which are much faster than the router’s USB ports”…
I don’t understand. How do you connect the portable SSD to the router, if not by using the routers USB port?

By: Razz

Razz — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 16:02:33 +0000

In reply to Leon. Spinning-down may be a function of the HDD's firmware rather than a DD-WRT setting. Not sure. I keep a 4TB USB-powered Toshiba Canvio HDD attached to my ancient ASUS RT-N66U (Merlin firmware). My router's (firmware) does not have an option to spin-down the HDD, but the HDD spins down when not in use. That's great because that HDD uses 3.4W when spinning and 0.3W when not-spinning (so spinning down saves me about $9/yr in electricity cost, as well as reducing environmental damage (including carbon footprint), and wear & tear. I vaguely recall that my old 1TB USB-powered Western Digital Passport HDD also spun down automatically, but back when I had an AC-adapter-powered USB HDD (maybe LaCie?), it never spun down. As an experiment, I'd suggest attaching your USB HDD to a USB charger only (i.e. with no data-connection to tell it to stay spun-up). If it never spins down, then the issue is probably the HDD's firmware, not DD-WRT's firmware.

By: Razz

Razz — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 01:07:26 +0000

In reply to Dong Ngo.

Thanks Dong! Despite having to do a few workarounds, I’ve been VERY happy with the media server performance of my ancient ASUS RT-N66U (256MB RAM) ever since I added external swap-file space 3.5 years ago. I guess that a new RT-AX86U (1GB RAM) wouldn’t even require external swap-file space– which would be a huge selling point for me. I don’t know.

Do you know if some brands tend to be better than others for media serving? Or do they all use the open-source MiniDLNA project? I read that ASUS is still using a 6-year old version of MiniDLNA (v1.2.1) even though the open source project is at v1.3.3. I’d expect Synology to have better media-serving software on their routers, but I don’t know.

By: Dong Ngo

Dong Ngo — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 19:28:13 +0000

In reply to Razz. No router can do the network storage services you want at the degree you want, Razz. It's a router. More here.