ReadySHARE Media Drive constantly disconnecting

Hi all, I just made this account so that I could post an issue and it's fix. I have the Nighthawk X4 AC2350 (R7500v2) and for a while now the media hard drive I have connected via USB using ReadySHARE just vanishes from the media server list all my home devices (TV, Xbox, Playstation, Phone etc...) about 5 to 15 minutes after setting it up or rebooting to get it to work.

 

So basically I connect a hard drive, set it all up via ReadySHARE and it's there, visible on all devices for a VERY short amount of time. Then it vanishes, I can't find it on any device. I can however connect to the shared folders on it with my PC. It's had me stumped for ages. So much so I had just completely stopped using it for the last year. But I got a new hard drive and wanted to start using it again so I spent a long while trying to figure it out. I checked a lot of pages on here and noticed a lot of people had a similar, if not the exact same issue.

 

After a lot of messing around I found a fix that seems to be working perfectly. I downgraded my firmware back to R7500v2 v1.0.3.40 (from 2019) and amazingly this fixed the issue. ReadySHARE is working perfectly again, So somewhere along the way Netgear basically broke it via one of the firmware updates (the latest version being: R7500v2 v1.0.3.50 Hot Fix).

 

So this is a PSA; if you have this issue, downgrade your firmware to an earlier version from here: https://www.netgear.com/support/product/r7500v2#download (again R7500v2 v1.0.3.40 being the version that worked for me). If you have a different router and have this issue it might be an idea to try find an earlier firmware for your router too, something from around 2019.

 

If anyone from Netgear reads this please FIX THIS ISSUE IN A NEW FIRMWARE UPDATE!

 

Hope this helps someone. Cheers! 🤘