How to connect an external hard drive to my Orbi AC 3000 system

[plemans]

The Orbi has an usb port but it doesn't have usb hard drive support for them. 

You can buy a cheap device like a raspberry pi and setup a nas with it. Or a cheap nas enclosure that supports ethernet connection. 

[michaelkenward]

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@plemans wrote:

Or a cheap nas enclosure that supports ethernet connection. 

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Easier said than done.

NAS and "cheaper" don't usually go together. At least, not if you are looking for something in the same price bracket as USB enclosures.

[plemans]

You can make a raspberry pi work as a nas device 🙂 

[CrimpOn]

It is really annoying that Netgear continues to release Nighthawk models with USB 3.0 ports for ReadyShare and simply abandoned the effort on the Orbi product.  It was clearly part of the "plan" back in 2016 and (as usual) there has never been any statement from Netgear explaining why they didn't follow through.

Buying a Raspberry Pi and setting it up will cost more in time and money than many USB drives cost, plus the effort is not trivial.  Plugging in a USB cable is about as non-technical as it gets.

Life is full of disappointments, and using USB drives on Orbi is one of them.

[michaelkenward]

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@CrimpOn wrote:

It is really annoying that Netgear continues to release Nighthawk models with USB 3.0 ports for ReadyShare and simply abandoned the effort on the Orbi product.

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It makes absolutely no sense to do that.

You have to wonder if they hit a technical brick wall.

The annoying thing is that Netgear's non-Orbi routers seem to be increasingly capable on the USB front. Whereas we one warned that 4TB was rthe biggest drive that anyone had attached, many of us now have 8TB drives.

And USB hubs were a "no no". My 8TB USB happily hosts 2 "satellite" drives. In effect I now have getting on for 20TB of USB storage. And that is without trying to push it.

And that is without faffing around with strange options like Pis. (Must be careful about saying things like that or Eben Upton, or his misses, might shout at me.)