RAX80, Looking for a USB drive that's more than just "reported to work"

Hello michaelkenward,

I have made significant progress since yesterday.

Even though it was not necessary before, I had to map a network drive to the share created by the RAX80. Perhaps this is due to a Windows security update of some sort because I made no alterations to my Windows network security or firewall.

This Netgear site has had some problems in the past 24 hours and right after I did a ReadySHARE Backup, I lost all Internet connections and wifi in my house. I don't think the Netgear site issues are related to my LAN issues but it just adds one more layer of complexity to the problems I'm having.

Have you been able to see my uploaded screenshots?

I added a screenshot here of the drive now being seen by ReadySHARE on my Win10 machine. I edited out the backup name and nodename for security purposes.

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roszaimy wrote:
Well, for me, I at least managed to get my Seagate 8TB Backup Plus Hub for Mac to be detected by ReadyCloud and ReadyShare and appear as a login item everytime I log into my Mac.

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8TB is well outside the experience that anyone has reported here. It certainly does not appear in the Netgear "bible".

ReadySHARE USB Drives Compatibility List | Answer | NETGEAR Support

The only other report of humongous drives seen here was 6 TB, and that was a one off.

4TB USB drives are more common. (I have one connected to my R7800.) The bigger the drive, the more likely it is to need drivers for Windows, and that isn't something that you can replicate in a router.

BiigRich is in safer territory with their drives.

Grown up network drives depend on wired Ethernet. USB is a toy in comparison.

I hope I'm on the right track. My main complaint here was several drives I tried not working, and the "Netgear bible" only saying here's a list that are "reported to work". This is of little comfort since I have had some issues and it would make troubleshooting any issues going forward a lot easier if Netgear would provide a modestly inclusive "tested and approved" list rather than "reported to work".

I have just ordered a 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim drive (STHN2000400) and hope it works. I can't see being restricted to the extremely short list of mostly unavailable drives on the "reported to work" list. That's simply preposterous IMHO.

My new Seagate drive is literally on a slow boat from China so I won't be able to check its function for a few weeks at best.

Before you ask, no, it's not on the list of 12 drives on Netgear's list. Hard to believe that out of millions of different drive models across the USB drive market that there would only be 12 on the list.

Wish me luck!

Well, two things changed. The "slow boat from China" I referred to sank. The company went out of business. Such is life.

Due to problems with the Netgear Community site when I created my "Biig Rich" account I have been forced to abandon that monicker and I am now "Big-Rich", but I am the original poster.

 I have since ordered a Seagate drive model number STGX2000400, also 2 TB. 

I was able to see it on the RAX80 USB port and briefly on the ReadySHARE Vault software but I was not able to do a backup to it. After a reboot of the router I could still see it on the RAX80 but the ReadyShare Vault software went to its condition where it says there is no ReadyShare drive available.

I decided to try and end run around the ReadyShare Vault software and ran ReadyShare Connect.exe to map the RAX80 connected drive. Nothing changed except that now I see the drive mapped on my PC. I ran the same mapping software on my other PC.

Since the ReadyShare Vault was not seeing the drive at all, I decided to uninstall ReadyShare Vault and run AOMEI Backupper and use the mapped drive as the destination. It worked and I thought I had a workaround for my backup woes. Then I tried it from the other wireless attached PC and the network got slower and slower and the backup software got a write error and stopped.

I restarted the backup software and my entire network, both wireless and hardwired, grinded to a near halt. I aborted the backup and could not recover the network without rebooting the router.

Other problems seem related in some way but it's difficult to explain here. I had a problem a few weeks ago where my browser connections were ocassionally timing out and that was corrected by doing a factory reset. Well, those problems are either baack on their own or caused by trying to transfer data to the router's USB port corrupts something.

The whole situation is so conveluted now that I am not sure if I have a router hardware issue or configuration issue.

Since the last network bog down, I was not able to connect to one of my cameras, I deselected "AX" mode and selected "MU-MIMO" mode in the router and the camera came back. The other wireless nodes seem more responsive as well. I asked about this setting in another part of this forum but no one has replied. I have not yet done another factory reset but the issues seem connected.

I'm theorising that the corrupted area of the router's scrathpad was partially or totally overwritten by the change I made to AX to MU-MIMO configuration setting.

I need a GURU to get involved here and bring me back to planet earth or let me know what is going on with this router. I'm certain it will be a help to a lot of folks on this forum to clear this up.

Of course, just plodding around with these issues has let my phone support expire. 90 days phone support is a drop in the bucket for equipment as complicated as these routers are.

           Big-Rich