Advanced Easy Share Guide?

I couldn't find much that would match what you were looking for as closely, so I decided to make a basic guide. I embedded a few images as well but they may take a while to show up.

For this guide, I will start a basic setup of getting a single network share working, and gradually move to multiple shares with a mix of password protected shares and non-password protected shares. This guide will assume you are using a PC running windows, but Linux and Unix based systems can access it as well with no issue. For this guide, I set up a secondary router behind main one, thus the IP became 10.0.0.1, but for the vast majority of users, it will be 192.168.1.1, other than that the screenshots seen should apply to pretty much anyone running windows 10 or windows 11.

Extremely Basic: getting a single SMB share up and running.

• Connect a USB flash drive or USB external drive to the router’s USB port.
• The router will automatically create a network share, and you can access it via Windows explorer by typing in \\router IP In the address bar, or by clicking on the network folder in windows explorer, and then clicking on “READYSHARE”.

Entering \\router IP address into the address bar

• If you want to map the smb share as a network, drive, you can them simply right click on the network folder within the smb share, and map it as a network drive.

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Password protecting the smb share:

1. Use a web browser to head to the router’s web UI (simply type the IP address of the router into the address bar, (often 192.168.1.1), and then enter in your admin password.
2. Click on “ReadySHARE”.
3. Click on “Edit”.
4. Scroll down if needed to get to the “Available Network Folders section”.
5. Click on the “Edit” button.
6. Change the “Read Access” setting from “All – no password”, to “admin” (this will also change the write access to admin).
7. Click on apply.

The next time you go to access the network share, it will now require that you have to use admin for the user name, and the password for the router.

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Creating multiple network folders with some being open to all on the LAN and others being password protected:

1. Open the default network share via windows explorer, by heading to \\router IP, for example if the router is on 192.168.1.1, then you will enter in \\192.168.1.1
2. Open the folder that the router created for the root of the USB storage.
3. Create one or more new folders (you can also use existing folders if you want). For my example, I created 2 new folders. One named “Public Stuff”, and one named “Private Stuff”, though the folders can be named anything you want.
4. Once the folders you want are created, and then head to the router’s web UI via your web browser (often 192.168.1.1 or it can be 10.0.0.1 if you are on a double NAT).
5. Click on “ReadySHARE”.
6. Click on “Edit”.
7. Scroll down, and then click on “Create Network Folder”.
8. Click on “Browse”.
9. Select one of the new folders that you made, and then click on “OK”.
10. Give the share a name (you can name it anything you would like).
11. Select the type of access you want (password protected or no password protection).
12. Click on Apply.

The new share will now show up when you head \\router IP (e.g.\\192.168.1.1) on your file explorer.

You can then map the new share as its own network drive letter.

PS, if the new share is password protected, then you will have to check the box that says “Connect using different credentials” and then entering the admin for the user name, as well as the admin password that you set for the router.

Limitations:

Since Netgear does not offer an option to create multiple users, the network share function will not scale well if you want to have multiple different users each with their own password protected network folder, and each having a unique username and password, thus given the limitations, it is more suited for setups where you have a private folder, e.g., one for more personal stuff just for the family, and a “public” one where you can dump a bunch of anime and other general content that you would be fine with guests who visit, seeing. For example, allowing guests visiting the home to view your anime collection but not your windows backup going to the password protected share.

HTTP, HTTPs (via internet), FTP, FTP (via internet):

This section provides more rudimentary access to the network shares. The HTTP access is fine for providing read only access via a web browser, which is useful for smartphones that can have horrible file explorers, (mainly an issue for iphone and ipad users), FTP can allow for read and write access, though it is not as flexible as the smb share that it makes, which behaves more like an internal drive to a point where you can literally copy a DRM free game install folder to the network drive, and have multiple PCs launch the same game from the same network share.

The “(via internet)” options, allow for the network shares to be accessed over the WAN. I highly advise against enabling them. There are a massive number of bots out there that will automatically brute force, launch dictionary attacks , as well as run through every related CVE in the metasploit framework automatically against such shares. It is not worth having that attack surface.

If you need to access your smb share when away from home, then set up the VPN server that is built into the router, and then VPN into your home network first; it is far more secure.

I couldn't find much in the way of newer guides, so I tried making a basic one covering a few of the share options.