Idiots guide to using ASUS NAS (AC56U)

[chapel]

could someone give me a run down of how I can use the NAS feature.
I have a 1.5TB Toshiba USB 3.0 drive
I'm wondering if this router provides enough power to run a standalone USB 3.0 HDD (no power supply needed for drive)
and I was also wondering if this allows the drive to be mapped via Windows.

 

[lwizard]

It provides standard 500mA power so the usb 2.5" HDDs work.
Yes is possible to map samba shares in windows assigning a drive letter.

The setup is very simple. Just open the instruction booklet or search the internet and you are there.

 

[chapel]

It provides standard 500mA power so the usb 2.5" HDDs work.
Yes is possible to map samba shares in windows assigning a drive letter.

The setup is very simple. Just open the instruction booklet or search the internet and you are there.

oh, so, that's what Samba is?

 

[chapel]

so, my problem is I can't find any documentation that explains how I can connect to this drive from my windows PCs.

I've formatted it for EXT4 as suggested by a few on here.
It's mounted to the router.
I've enabled all the various stuff on the router...
but how the hell do I get my PCs to see it as a drive on the network?
\\192.168.1.1 from explorer doesn't do me anything except give me a blank window.
I wanted to start copying files from a 3TB drive to this 1.5TB drive and then set it up as a network drive on all my laptops here.

*edit
oh, apparently I needed to create my first folder using the webUI and now it shows up and I can map it.
There it is now
lovely

 

[keratos]

It provides standard 500mA power so the usb 2.5" HDDs work.
Yes is possible to map samba shares in windows assigning a drive letter.

The setup is very simple. Just open the instruction booklet or search the internet and you are there.

Jeez, whats the point of joining a forum to tell people to search the internet.

Chapel mate,...:
Is there a specific reason you need to share as a SAMBA/CIFS share? NFS is best but this router has FTP out of the box; FTP is better so far as I am concerned. here is a resource: http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=5393.0
doubtless windoze users will love SAMAB ; I dont for reasons I shall avoid so as to prevent unwarranted windoze lovvies trolling this thread !

FTP share is easy to setup as an FTP share, windows 7 should detect it automatically, other clients will need configuring.

what you need to do is ensure the USB drive is <=500GB - there are issues with larger drives.

gointo router settings using a web browser enter 192.168.0.1 into the address bar or whatever the address is of your router. I think the default is 192.168.0.1.

enter admin password (its in the manual) defaults to "password" I think

change the admin password - Adminstration screen

you also need to gointo settings on the router and enable FTP server. you will see the USB drive connected. make sure you share by account. the default is to use the admin account (and password).

then from your laptop/PC/client , browse the network by entering the following in the windows folder location/address bar: ftp://192.168.0.1

you should see the USB drive and will need to enter login credentials, use those as above, for example "admin" and your new password you entered above. the USB drive should now be visible , usally as "sda1" which is a linux naming convention for a hard drive - linux is the operating system (firmware) used in the ASUS router - its open source so reduces production costs for OEMs.

the above is the basics, you can make it more secure by improving/adding accounts, but the above should get you working.

*** TIP ***
first off before attempting the above, navigate through all your router setup screens to observe the page titles, screen layout, options, current option values and so on. It will help.

Manuals are okay , but there is no substitute for human interaction and guidance.

EDIT: Im not a windoze guru and have just wondered whether windoze will even recgonise EXT4 through FTP, I'm not sure? In which case you will need to setup a SAMBA share; the process is almost identical to above albeit on a different settings screen in the router. You'll see it!

 

[baggyrinkle]

Before upgrading to latest Merlin, I used to see the 2 attached usb drives. Now only the folders are shown. How can I map the individual drives now?
thanks
Hal

 

[RMerlin]

Before upgrading to latest Merlin, I used to see the 2 attached usb drives. Now only the folders are shown. How can I map the individual drives now?
thanks
Hal

Whole disk sharing is not available when using account-based sharing. I suspect Asus now switches to account-based sharing automatically after upgrading to the latest firmware for security reasons.

 

[keratos]

Whole disk sharing is not available when using account-based sharing. I suspect Asus now switches to account-based sharing automatically after upgrading to the latest firmware for security reasons.

agreed. but you can turn this off baggyrinkle in the settings. I use Merlin's excellent image and have USB sharing at the root level. Not secure, but then my network cant be seen from the WAN ! although this comes at a slight disadvantage in that I cannot access it either (outside the home LAN). But then again I have no need to.

Use account sharing and just create a root (top-level) folder to share as a virtual NAS.

How do you find performance as reported by something like FileZilla when reading/writing to USB3 disk - not a scientific lab based test , but gives a rough arse guess as to level of throughput speed . Mine flatlines at 6MBps on 802.11n at 12 inches from router (!). I've been struggling with this for weeks and the only firmware that gets better is OpenDDW-RT which flatlines as 18MBps. Still crap for USB3. I tried a synology box NAS with a super good 7200 SATA drive and could manage 25MBps which is more like it as a 802.11n at 400mbps is more like 200mbps "real world" which is around 25MBps

Trouble with OpenDDWRT is the radio performance was crap so I changed back to Merlin. Probably a setting rather than firmware but I couldnt find a sweet spot for settings. Merlin's just works out of the box although the USB performance is different - but I guess he will argue otherwise and blame the "environment"

I've heard crap about routers not having terrific USB interfaces as they are not supposed to be NAS. Crap! I'm a software engineer (alebit fast fighter jets embedded systems , not networks) but I do know that the linux kernel and drivers for USB are the same across two devices (assuming same kernerl/drivers). Even across kernels, the chages are minimal unless one gets into a major kernel branch. In fact thinking about this, the kernel for this router is based on a v2 (if I remember correctly) and the latest linux kernel is v4 - so we need Merlin to roll his sleeves up at night and crack on backporting the v4 kernel and drivers