👍

Cool, thanks!

Yes, Gary, or any Asus router with an USB port. You’ll find the GT6 on the performance chart in this post.

That’s correct.

So essentially the Crucial X9 Pro is just a really performant flash drive, eh? Then I would only need a USB-A adapter to be able to plug this PSSD into an RT-AXE7800.

You’re confused. The Crucial X9 Pro doesn’t have a battery and PoE has nothing to do with charging or USB port. As mentioned, the drive worked with all USB ports on a host, including USB 2.0.

As no ASUS routers (to knowledge) provide PoE PSE capabilities, a RT-AXE7800 router seemingly would only provide a 900mA trickle for its USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB-A port.

To correct for the router’s lack of PoE, is the best course to use a USB Y-adapter (USB-C female, a USB-A male for data, and another USB-A male with USB-PD capability) to keep the portable SSD charged? Or is there a better recommendation for dealing with constantly-connected SSD DAS’s power needs?

You can get a hardware RAID USB drive and use it with the router, Beany. Set up the RAID first with a computer before connecting it to the router. Still remember it’s a router, if you keep pushing it, something will break.

If you want a NAS server, get a Synology. You only waste your time with any other brand.

I’ve recently set up a little USB SSD as a backup for our documents, of course instigated by the already-lost SSD that fizzled out the other day on my wife’s computer…
I bought the RT6600ax this winter for exactly this purpose but didn’t start fooling around with it until now, and I honestly didn’t think it would be able to do much – as you mention, it is only a router.. But since I already had the drive plugged in, I took the liberty of starting a media server – which seems to work flawlessly! It streams blue-ray movies straight to my TV, no problem! It doesn’t seem to be too stressed either, looking at CPU/RAM usage. So, I’ve started dreaming just a little bigger..

Seeing as I bought the RT6600ax for this purpose, I honestly really don’t want to buy a “proper” Synology NAS, as that would render the router – and its hefty price tag – rather useless. But I’d really want some redundancy on our backup, so I’ve started thinking about getting some sort of external storage, but I feel the RAID1 WD-disks you’ve mentioned in this article are not safe/modular enough – and I’d really love to make a RAID5, even RAID6 if I find a capable box. I’ve seen Icy Box has some 4-bay boxes with internal RAID control f.ex., and I guess I’m wondering if the RT6600ax would manage that sort of “NAS”. Even though it’s just a router..

And also, if it’s not an entirely ludicrous idea: Do you have any other suggestions than the aforementioned Icy Box? I’m thinking 4- or 5-bay solutions should be plenty, but open to persuasion.

Thank you.