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Forum Discussion
RAX80, Looking for a USB drive that's more than just "reported to work"
This is my second Netgear router with a USB port that is supposed to support backups using ReadyShare. The first one, a R6250, worked for quite a while before simply no longer being able to see the a...
BiigRich wrote:
I tried another USB drive that I had and it was not recognised by the router even though it works fine on other PC's.
How are you approaching this USB device?
In Windows on a network? With ReadySHARE? Something else?
Does it show up in the browser graphical user interface?
Hi michaelkenward,
I connect the USB drive to the router's USB port and attempt to connect and use it with ReadyShare software. The results are varied as I described. I have used a number of drives and this is my second Netgear router.
I have repurposed several of the drives and I returned the brand new WD drive so I could get a refund. I don't want to buy another drive just to have it fail or get trashed if that is what happened to my most recent attempt.
I gave up on this out of frustration and uninstalled ReadyShare from my Win10 PC.
I have a 55GB USB drive that I can troubleshoot with and I can reinstall ReadySHARE Vault but I need to feel confident that I can buy any decent 1TB USB drive and have it work.
It's not rocket science, it's a USB port and drive ('U' stands for Universal) and the software is ReadySHARE. I also have a "ReadySHARE" command on the RAX80 router under both Basic and Advanced which I should be able to use for the ReadySHARE Vault if I reinstall that software on one of my PC's to test I prefer to start with my main PC which is connected to the RAX80 port directly via RJ45.
I attached a screenshot of the ReadySHARE command from my RAX80 just for information purposes at this point.
I cannot be the only person having these issues. Your thoughts?
- The trouble with ReadyShare is that it is a basic and poor altenrta8ve to [roper network attached storage (NAS). There are just so many ways in which it can go wrong.
This one, for example:
Solved: ALL Netgear USB Drive Mapping Issues ReadyShareCo... - NETGEAR Communities
From your picture it seems that the router can't even see the drive.
Unfortunately, even Netgear's list of compatible devices is less than great:
ReadySHARE USB Drives Compatibility List | Answer | NETGEAR Support
I was slightly amazed when I succeeded in getting a 4 TB WD Elements USB 3 drive to work on an R7800.
There are various tings to bear i8n mind. ReadyShare is picky about formats and hates partitioned drives.
You may also find that different firmware shows different behaviour.
Hello again michaelkenward,
I'm sorry if I was misleading. I had not yet attached the 55GB drive. I just wanted to show the current configuration. I said that I have a 55GB drive available if someone wanted to work with me.
I have just attached the drive (see new screenshot attached). The drive shows up as drive letter 'T' and has been assigned a name of \\ReadySHARE\T_Drive . I have not yet installed the ReadySHARE Vault software.
If I/we get this working I will need to buy a much larger drive (1TB just for the constantly changing data) to do my backups.I do regular FULL backups offline and monthly. I only want the network drive to store things change all the time while using a PC. I would also like to direct my security cameras to store on it but I wouldn't be upset if that didn't work. It should but I don't know if I could actually "expect" it to.
I didn't want to buy a drive until I felt as though I wouldn't just be wasting my money. I'm not happy that the list of so called "tested drives" is so short and it is near impossible to find an exact model doing a search engine search on the Internet. The search tends to ignore most of the exact model information and assume you just want a "1TB USB drive" because that is what was 'basically' searched for. The other issue is that even if I find a drive that is on the tested list, I cannot get it for a good price unless I simply luck out. I mentioned when I opened this issue that I am not happy with the way Netgear "words" the list. They simply list as "Reported to work". Not a very confidence inspiring message. It should say tested and supported by Netgear.
I believe the latest failure I experienced may have something to do with the way WD Passport drives present themselves. I believe they are autoencrypted. I can and will buy a NON encrypted drive if I feel comfortable that a normal drive will work for my environment.
Oh, one more thing. I did not, nor do I intend to partition the drive. I need to have a lot of folders on it though.
I tried 3 different drives which all worked - all Seagate's - New 2T without external power worked after reformating to NTFS, Older 3T and New 4T both with external power all worked. Of course only after mounting the readyshare drive on Windows 10 (2PC's) and Win 7 (my just replaced older PC) I never used the ReadyShareConnect.EXE software, in fact only found it today and trying to find out it's purpose.
My problems with the RAX80 are however:
a) It looses the connection to the drive - reported by many - (the reason I tried all 3 of them) after some idle time and only a router re-boot brings it back on line (both with firmware V1.0.1.70 and V1.0.2.76) so my automatic backups from two PC's doesn't work. I read here that someone some time ago fixed this by reverting from V1.0.1.70 to an even older version and that that positive result was relayed to the powers to be. So it's disappointing that the problem was not corrected in V1.02.76. I assume the drive goes eventually to sleep as usual when not used but the RAX80 is not able to wake it up when needed.
b) The other problem I have is that files above 280MB are corrupted when they arrive from my two PC on the readyshare drive (on any of the 3 I tried), not so when I attach the drives to the PC. I have done numerous tests doing byte for byte comparison. And of course opening, say a larger Excel file ends up with reported errors not fixable by Excel. This applies to using any of the 3 drives.
I never had any of these two serious problems with my R7000 and had no choice but to revert back to my R7000 which works again perfectly. I tried the Router/modem from my ISP and while it has an USB port, I am now told that is only for attaching test equipment not a USB drive. Otherwise that Technicolor router/modem worked perfectly.
Trying to get help from Gearhead a Netgear company ended up when taking over my PC with stealing data and corrupting the PC's Killer Network card probably by someone pretending to be a Gearhead employee after having found out about my Case #, or a bad employee.
What really happend is up to Netgear Security people hopefully finding out. I just posted more detailed infiormation on that break-in as I was unable to find any info (e-mail or Telephone # for an appropriate party in Netgear) as they obviously should be interested in fixing the security issue they have. I am trying to help Netgear here by reporting this.
