RAXE500 using readyshare cause router to malfunction and causes PC net adapter to give weird errors

[cybot]

firmware version: Firmware Version V1.0.10.86_2.0.40

I have a new RAXE500 that i have hooked a USB 3.0 4Tb drive upto for use in backing up my PC. I am able to access the drive over the network through both windows network neighborhood and the backup software, as well as Windows File History. That is..... when the router is working properly.

there is a bunch of super abnormal things happening as long as i have readyshare activated. I don't even have to unplug the drive to stop the abnormal state, simply pressing safely disconnect USB device does the trick.

on the router side here are a list of the symptoms:

router will not allow any logon by any device. if the feedback on the devices is to be believed it is getting fed the wrong password - which it is not. sometimes you ARE able to logon briefly onto the router, only to have the router unit perform some sort of reboot where all th lights on the router go out for a few seconds and the networks disappear. the few time that the router does NOT reboot and you are able to logon during abnormal operations, the router will say there is no active internet signal (which is wrong.) attempting to access routerlogin.net when connected to the router causes a dns probe error or connection timeout during this time. However accessing router setup through the routers ip address works depending on if the router decides to reboot when the address is accessed.

on my PC's side there are a few very weird error messages generated by my connection attempts to the router during it's abnormal operations. 

Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9560 160MHz : The network adapter has returned an invalid value to the driver.

WLAN Extensibility Module has stopped.

Module Path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\IntelIHVRouter08.dll

WLAN AutoConfig detected limited connectivity, attempting automatic recovery.

Recovery Type: 4
Error Code: 0x0
Trigger Reason: 7
IP Family: 0

one might suspect the net drivers or even the hardware on my PC, but they would be wrong. I have another duplicate system, and it is also generating the same errors. And the errors only occur during the routers abnormal operations. no errors are generated when the router is behaving itself

[FURRYe38]

What is the brand and model of this USB drive your using?

Has the Intel adapter drivers been updated? What version is currently loaded for it? 

Does this happen if you disable the wifi adapter and connect the PC via ethernet? 

[cybot]

the HDD I am using is a Seagate Freeagent GoFlex Desk Backup 4tb drive. it looks like the drive pictured here: Seagate_4TB_FreeAgent_GoFlex_Desk_1322655862_832329.jpg

The Intel Adapter drivers have been updated and are at V. 22.180.0.4 released on 10/18/22

the last question is a really good one. the router and modem are located at a midway point in the house, chosen by the phone company when they installed the ADSL in 2018. Unfortunately, that location is not amenable to hooking up anything via ethernet and working on it. I can hook up a laptop to it, but I am left there holding the laptop in one hand and trying to operate it with the other. not an easy situation as you might imagine. the router, modem, phonebox  (device attached to the modem to provide digital phone service) and the UPS, and most recently the USB drive sit on some shelves in a cubby like area in the hall of our home. I do have a very long ethernet cable i can string out to the living room, so i can hook up to the modem, but i don't know how 75 - 100 foot length of cable would perform. not sure how or where we got a cable that long. I can try that if you want me to.

[cybot]

i have located the ethernet cable and will be switching over for testing later today. If my mom suddenly tells  me to say she can no longer get onto the network, I will know the router is misbehaving again. of course if i suddenly no longer have network access via ethernet, the same will be true as well. here is hoping for results either way.

[cybot]

now that i seem to have the ipv6 tunnel situation sorted out, the router seem to be behaving itself, at least for now. Is it possible that trying to use now disallowed 6in4 settings on the 6to4 ipv6 page was the cause of ALL my issues?

[Razor512]

Hard to say, though from the way that readyshare is implemented, it may be worth doing a local test on the external hard drive.

Basically if you have another drive with around 4TB or more of free space, then moving 4TB of data to or from the drive, and seeing if it hangs for some time.

One limitation with some routers, is related to how long they will wait for a drive to respond to an IO operation. For example, if a drive if having issues where at certain points, it will struggle to read or write data, the router may not wait long enough for the drive's ECC to respond with the data, especially in cases of drives that do not have a time limited error recovery.

I currently use my RAXE500 with a cheap SATA to USB 3.0 dock, and a 4TB WD Red (CMR) hard drive, and it has worked well with windows backup, as well as copying many large files, and even launching programs saved on the network storage (great for games that store their gamesaves in a subfolder, so far, it has handled tasks like that really well.

[cybot]

I actually tested the drive before hooking it up, since it had been sitting a while unused. the tests came back with zero errors and no bad blocks

[cybot]

the drive itself had no issues, it was the router that was misbehaving, and then only when readyshare was in use. the drive i am using is essentially a 3.5 sata HDD put into an enclosure by Seagate, and the dock portion of the unit provides the sata to usb. Seagate had various connection docks that could be purchased for the drive such as firewire, thunderbolt, etc. the USB 3.0 dock it came with was always enough for me. 

now that the ipv6 issues i was having have been corrected, the router seems to be behaving itself. I spent the day hooked up to the router via ethernet, which meant stringing a cable half way across the house. I can't keep it that way because it presents a trip hazard. my mom keeps complaing that if she trips she will break her hip, so i am going to call the current round of tests done. the wifi portion of the router seems to have stabilized as well. no more of the weirdness described in my op.

[cybot]

it has been several weeks now, and the readyshare seems to be stable as well as the router. no issues to report. switching/correcting the ipv6 tunnel settings seems to have solved all of my issues.

[FURRYe38]

So what did you do exactly to fix the IPv6 6to4 Tunnel problem? 

Be aware that there is new FW available for the 500:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-Routers-with-WiFi-6-AX/New-Firmware-for-RAXE500-1-0-11-94...

[cybot]

i switched the ipv6 setting from 6to4 to 6rD. the settings needing to be entered are a little different, but luckily i had a working example of what was needed from an obscure blog post that i stumbled across. fortunately, hurricane tunnels support 6rd or i would be SOL

[cybot]

tonight, suddenly the router started wigging out again. was not able to get the router webpage to come up long enough to inspect my router settings. i discovered that during the 'wigging out' of the router all status lights EXCEPT the power light would go out. this was accompanied by loss of internet connection to the router, during which the router reported there was no cable connected. this is not correct, and there is nothing wrong with either the modem or cable. also, the wifi radios (access points, whatever you want to call it) would cycle on and off. both the 2ghz and 5ghz would resist allowing a connection. everytime it looked like i was successfully connected, and i would proceed to the router web page, the radios would turn off then on again. rebooting the router with the external HDD disconnected and then waiting 10 Minutes till after the router was fully 'booted up' before plugging it in again seems to have calmed the router down for now. I just wish i knew what had precipitated the whole incident. all that was going on internet wise was watching hulu.

OH. one last thing. the weird errors i was seeing coming from the net adapters on my system were unrelated to this issue. turns out the cause of that was the Epson drivers not using windows 11's new preferred way of sending printer traffic to PC. i had to do a registry hack to re-enable the old way of doing things for the network printer communications. Epson needs to get their a$$ in gear and send out drivers that use the new method. i spent countless hair pulling and head banging while searching for the answer. which i eventually found on the M$ site in an obscure article describing printer stack changes in win11 22h2. never would i have guessed a weird error like that was caused by a printer.

[FURRYe38]

Please make a new post as what your experiencing doesn't seem to be relegated to ReadyShare that you had posted about. 

Also there in new FW available for the 500:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-with-WiFi-6-AX-and/RAXE500-New-Firmware-1-0-12-96-release...

[cybot]

I found that disabling the AX mode and the OFDMA settings has stopped the router from spazzing out while I have the routers readyshare feature in use. However, the router is still repeatedly dropping both the internet and wifi connections every 30 seconds or so.

[cybot]

just found this this support document that was released in 2022. although the RAXE500 is not listed specifically, the drive I have is listed for all the models in the list, so it is a supported drive. the only thing that **might** be the cause of the issue according to the document, is that the readyshare connection only supports up to 2Tb of drive space. i need the full 4 Tb of drive space on the drive. and a New drive i got that i intend to hook up to the other USB port is 8Tb and I need the space for backups for the system that is connected to that as well. Can anyone confirm or deny that the disk/partition limit is still 2Tb for RAXE routers? this size limit on disk/partition size seems severely outdated in this day and age where petabyte drives are already a thing. could using a larger than supported partition cause the symptoms i am experiencing with the router? this seems likely as it was also doing the same thing with my R8000P which was more or less stable (firmware issues aside) up until the end. I find it odd that it caused the routers (both RAXE500 and R8000P) to wig out in the manner they are from the use of a drive with a size over 2Tb.

Link copy: What are the USB drive requirements for ReadySHARE on my NETGEAR router? | Answer | NETGEAR Support

AXE11000 WiFi Router (RAXE500) 

[michaelkenward]

 

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@cybot wrote:

i need the full 4 Tb of drive space on the drive. and a New drive i got that i intend to hook up to the other USB port is 8Tb and I need the space for backups for the system that is connected to that as well. Can anyone confirm or deny that the disk/partition limit is still 2Tb for RAXE routers?

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I have got an 8TB Seagate and a 4TB WD drive working just fine in ReadySHARE in Windows 11.

ReadySHARE even supports two extra drives plugged into the Seagate's USB ports.

Did your research find this?

Solved: ALL Netgear USB Drive Mapping Issues ReadyShareCo... - NETGEAR Communities

[cybot]

I actually already have SMB 1.x enabled as i have a windows 98SE, a windows XP and a Windows 7 system on my network. the 98, and XP systems are isolated from the internet, but I do use them to transfer files back and forth over the internal network, so SMB 1.x is needed when my Win10 and win11 systems are involved. I don't even bother using netgears readyconnect software, as the drives are mappable from within windows (when things are working properly),=. maybe i should give it a shot? my only concern is if the software will work with my backup software ReBit Pro. Rebit software is able to find and connect to the drives over the network, until the router start wigging out. then of course, EVERYTHING loses it's connection to the router. if i turn off SMB 1.x in win11, how would i use filesharing, windows networking, and so on with the older systems?

one last note: after a recent firmware update I noticed i immediately started having internet issues. turns out for some reason the DHCP option on the router had gotten turned off during the update. turning the routers DHCP option back on immediately restored internet. don't know why the DHCP got turned off.

[cybot]

There isn't an issue with hanging. The issue is the router starts wigging out, as described in my previous posts. Unplugging the drive and then rebooting the router solves the issue. The drive is listed as supported on every other netgear router. however, the raxe500 was not listed on the support page. in fact, none of the 6e router models were. The secondary issue i mentioned in my op, was in fact, not caused by my system, or my router, but by my Epson printer. Microsoft changed the way network printing works in win11 22h2. There are support documents about it. Epson has not yet updated their driver software to accommodate the change. So every time my printer software or windows did a check-in with the printer to see if it was ready to print (or whatever) the net adapter error was generated. simply changing a windows registry entry or two so that windows reverted to the old way of doing things solved the net adapter error. Making the change also caused the printer to start working properly again (which i had not noticed it was not, until I actually needed to print something out).

[Razor512]

@cybot 

The RAXE500 can use drives larger than 2TB, and it has been that way for many older Netgear routers as well.
For many of those guides, it is hard to tell what they are basing the limitations on when trying to make more of a one size fits all solution. For drives that get their power from the USB port, capacities can impact power consumption, different routers can have different amounts of power available at the USB port. Many of the USB storage issues mainly applied to older drives, for example, non-standard 2.5 inch HDDs where they may double the number of platters and get them much thicker than normal, along with needing more than 1 amp. If such a drive is in a USB only powered enclosure, then some lower end routers will not deliver enough power to run them.

For example, a Netgear router designed around the use of a 12V 1.5 amp supply, will not give you USB ports that will deliver 10 watts, but they may do a max of 5 watts.

If using an external drive that has its own power supply, then USB output doesn't matter anymore.

As for storage size, the largest I tried was an 8TB WD red drive on a USB 3.0 SATA dock that has its own separate power supply, though I ultimately ended up replacing the 8TB drive with a 2TB SATA WD blue SSD, for silent operation, as well as faster performance, especially when copying over lots of tiny files.

Ideally, it would be good if Netgear would just list the max output of the USB port on each router.

[cybot]

I am using a Seagate Backup+ Desktop 4Tb drive. The list provided by Netgear has the drive listed as compatible for many of their more recent routers, such as the RAX80, RAX120 and RAX200. This is as close (but not really) to the RAXE500 the list has. The drive is also listed as compatible form my WNDR4700 which is the oldest router i have. oddly the list shows the R8000 router, and other Rx000P models, but not the R8000P model. so, its compatibility list is also unknown (the R8000P was the last router i owned, which also threw a fit when i plugged in the drive into that router.)

The drive I use does not function without having the power supply plugged in, so USB power supply issues are not relevant to me.

the link to the list is here: https://kb.netgear.com/18985/Which-USB-drives-are-verified-to-work-with-NETGEAR-ReadySHARE

here, once again, is the drive requirements for some of their most recent routers: https://kb.netgear.com/24059/What-are-the-USB-drive-requirements-for-ReadySHARE-on-my-NETGEAR-router...

[cybot]

I think i got the readyshare working properly without the router wigging out. I know that just by posting that is tempting fate, so that the router will start acting up again.... but here goes...

I discovered that apparently the router software really, really, really does not like it when you do not turn on the password protect for readyshare. I am only accessing the drive i hooked up from with in my local network, and i am the only one on the network using a PC, I have the remote "cloud" feature deliberately turned off. So why would i need a password. there is not anybody else who would access the drive. well appearently not activating the admin password protection feature feature will cause the router to start wigging out. its a very strange quirk of the netgear router software. why give us an option to not use a password, if the software starts causing the router to wig out. VERY STRANGE.

OH.... and i also confirmed that the same issue i had with my R8000P was also solved by putting a checkmark into the admin password protection box.

AXE11000 WiFi Router (RAXE500) 

AC4000 WiFi Router (R8000P) 

my other issue with this solution is that you are using the admin password that is used to login to routerlogin.net to access the readyshare drive. So, if i had someone else who i wanted to have access to the drive, but not access to the router setting page, i would be sunk. please correct me if i am wrong, but would it not be safer security wise to be able to set a separate password for the readyshare stuff?

[michaelkenward]

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@cybot wrote:

So why would i need a password. there is not anybody else who would access the drive.

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Could be a Windows thing. I see similar password policing when using NAS devices on a Windows network.

Strangely, ReadySHARE is less strict on that front.

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 I have the remote "cloud" feature deliberately turned off.

If by that you mean ReadyCLOUD, Netgear is about to kill it.

Support for ReadyCLOUD feature ends spring 2023 | Answer | NETGEAR Support