Noob question

[DrumSTW3]

I have a AC68R and a MyBook external Hard Drive. I have several PCs, one is wired to the router, the others wireless. The wired one is running Windows 7 Ultimate, the wireless are either 7 or 8. I want to be able to see the my book from any of the pcs and assign it a drive letter. Right now the only way I have been able to get all of the pcs to see it is to assign it as ftp. I was under the impression this was how NAS worked, but I cant get this thing working the way I want.

 

[wifi_reef]

please make sure you are in the same Work Group with all PC/Mac

On the router go to:

USB application / Servers Center / Miscellaneous setting - end enter there Work Group name.

From now, with all the computers with the same "work group name" you will see autmaticly in the network surroundings router name RT-AC68U

Make sure you have proper settings on 2.4 and 5.0 Wireless / Professional
- Set AP Isolated -SHOULD BE - NO

 

[DrumSTW3]

Ok, got all of that. How do I get the drive to show up as a drive letter on the pcs?

 

[mtrains]

Assuming that you have Samba share turned on, this is not a workgroup issue. It is a firmware issue. This issue is fixed in the Asus 374.583 release and Merlin's 374.38_2 release. Which version of firmware are you running?

 

[wifi_reef]

mapping a network drive:

Windows 7
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-shortcut-map-network-drive#1TC=windows-7

Windows 8.1
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-shortcut-to-map-network-drive

 

[RMerlin]

Assuming that you have Samba share turned on, this is not a workgroup issue. It is a firmware issue. This issue is fixed in the Asus 374.583 release and Merlin's 374.38_2 release. Which version of firmware are you running?

It was fixed in my FW a few versions ago (forgot which exact version). Asus fixed it on their end in 583.

 

[mtrains]

It was fixed in my FW a few versions ago (forgot which exact version). Asus fixed it on their end in 583.

I knew that you had the fix in 374.36 Beta 1 which I was running for a while. Didn't know which version prior to that you fixed it in. So I decided to point at the latest 374.38_2 because of all the other fixes in 38_2

 

[DrumSTW3]

Assuming that you have Samba share turned on, this is not a workgroup issue. It is a firmware issue. This issue is fixed in the Asus 374.583 release and Merlin's 374.38_2 release. Which version of firmware are you running?

I have Samba Share turned on and my FW is 3.0.0.4.374_542

 

[DrumSTW3]

mapping a network drive:

Windows 7
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-shortcut-map-network-drive#1TC=windows-7

Windows 8.1
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-shortcut-to-map-network-drive

Mapping a network drive only allows me to choose a drive attached to one of the pcs, not one attached to the router... any thoughts?

 

[mtrains]

I have Samba Share turned on and my FW is 3.0.0.4.374_542

The problem is not fixed in 374.542. You need to upgrade to 374.583 for the fix.

 

[mtrains]

Mapping a network drive only allows me to choose a drive attached to one of the pcs, not one attached to the router... any thoughts?

Once you have the right firmware on the router, the router will appear like any other PC on the network with each partition on the router attached hard disk showing up as a drive. You can then do your mapping just like you would map to a PC attached drive.

 

[DrumSTW3]

Problem solved... Many thanks to all

 

[stormshadow]

Originally I had used mapping a drive to ensure the share was always available, but Windows will eventually time out on the connection, so I switched, find it works better. There may be some technical reasons people can advise me to not do this, but until then, seems to work well.

I have network discovery turned on all the win7 and 8 machines. The router will appear to each of them. So instead of adding a mapped drive, I used the add network place, let the computer search the internet and then added the router. I now see my network drive listed in Windows all the time and it doesn't appear to time out like mapping did.

 

[L&LD]

I agree with stormshadow.

Especially if the computer used is a laptop (used at various locations), mapping the drive is not the best way to do it.

Especially if you're mapping drives from multiple locations.

 

[ikoul]

I agree with stormshadow.

Especially if the computer used is a laptop (used at various locations), mapping the drive is not the best way to do it.

Especially if you're mapping drives from multiple locations.

I've found that Windows is pretty graceful about mapped drives when unavailable/on another network (the drive icon shows it's disconnected, but it doesn't pop up errors or anything).

OS X is another story. It'll pop up a message to complain as soon as it can't see a network drive, and forgets about them when you reboot.