NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.

Forum Discussion

ShankarHokie's avatar
ShankarHokie
Apprentice
Dec 26, 2020

Best way to connect USB 3.0 external drive to Orbi ethernet post

Hello,   Update: The new house was hardwired with Cat 6 cables in every room. Have the Orbi in the basement paired with a Netgear CM100 modem from Costco and an unmanageded Netgear Gigabit switch. ...
CrimpOn's avatar
CrimpOn
Guru - Experienced User
Dec 26, 2020
ShankarHokie wrote:

The question I am here for is to get a recommendation to make my Seagate 8TB external hard drive into network drive. I would like to connect this to an ethernet port to increase data transfer speeds and also make it a shared network drive.

 

What type of adapter can I get and does Netgear make one?

It is frustrating to have a $150 USB drive and not be able to "put it on the network" when there are open ports on a gigabit ethernet switch just sitting there waiting to be used.  Bear in mind that connecting the USB drive to ethernet does nothing to increase the speed or throughput of the drive.  That is very much limited by the rotation speed of the hard drive and the USB 3.0 interface.

 

The USB drive is just a storage device with no "smarts".  It has to be attached to something with intelligence (such as a PC or a router with software like ReadyShare - which Netgear did not include in the Orbi product line.)  My Google searches do not turn up rave reviews for "USB NAS Adapters". 

 

I think FURRYe38 is correct. The solution is an actual "Network Attached Storage" (NAS), and preferably one that features data redundancy. (more than 1 hard drive and the ability to recover from single drive failure).  What is the plan when (not "if") that 8TB drive suddenly stops working and YEARS of family history die with it?