Connecting 3 drives to the router

[Turgut Kalfaoglu]

Hi there.. Is it possible to connect 3 or more drives to an AC68, perhaps by using a USB 3.x hub?
Many thanks, -t

 

[OzarkEdge]

Hi there.. Is it possible to connect 3 or more drives to an AC68, perhaps by using a USB 3.x hub?
Many thanks, -t

It may be possible, but storage on routers isn't reliable enough, imo, so x3 would compound the issues. I suggest you trial one drive first, if you intend to proceed.

OE

 

[Crazy]

I have 2 500gb drives and 1 32gb USB stick on a USB 3 hub on my rt-ac5300 for awhile now with no problem. The hub have an extra power input.

 

[Turgut Kalfaoglu]

I have 2 500gb drives and 1 32gb USB stick on a USB 3 hub on my rt-ac5300 for awhile now with no problem. The hub have an extra power input.

Many thanks.. I thought I'd ask before investing in a new USB hub.

 

[Deldarius]

A few years ago I did just that.

Stuck a USB 3.x hub (with it's own PS) with 6 hdd onto an AC68. 3 WD Mybooks and 3 Seagate FreeAgents. All of them are spinning rust, each drive had their own power supplies.

Now I did try both the USB 2 & 3 ports on the router. Performance was slightly better on the 3.x port, but at the cost of worsened 2.4ghz wifi performance. While technically it was a success, the performance was sub par for several reasons.

1. They were always on, no sleep or standby mode. The settings for that on the router did not work because the drives went through the hub and not straight into the router. That is a big power draw 24/7.
2. Read/write speeds were less than stellar. The router was being pushed...HARD. The entire network slowed down every time you moved data and the AC68 got hot. The more r/w's in the queue the worse it got. Potential to fry something.
3. The network also became more sensitive to power fluctuations, despite everything being on UPS's. Data corruption becomes a real concern.

Forget doing backups with a setup like this. I would not try this with hub powered drives, nor would I use ssd's. They would choke on a single USB port and the AC68 just doesn't have the balls for the task. With a newer router may have better luck. You would be better better off putting that money into a NAS.

With a NAS you could then hook up a hub with those drives and a whole lot more.

 

[sfx2000]

Hi there.. Is it possible to connect 3 or more drives to an AC68, perhaps by using a USB 3.x hub?
Many thanks, -t

Depends on the Asus Router Model/FW - generally though, not recommended as it's not reliable overall across applications.

 

[Crazy]

As mention above you will have issues with 2.4ghz if you run on usb3. I have never tire to buy better shielded USB 3 cables so I don’t know if the solve the problem in USB 3. Right now I have a usb3 thumb drive that run my scripts on the USB 3 port and the hub is in my USB 2 port. I have a USB 3 cable that is shielded connected to my thumb drive and it have not given me problem so it is possible to use USB 3 without 2.4ghz issues. You might have to play around with it.

 

[Deldarius]

I agree with sfx2000.

I had an AC68R rev A1 when I did this. The later revisions had shielding for the USB ports and a better processor. The hub might actually work with one of those.


After mine died due to a power spike I got an AC68P. Never tried the USB hub project again though, I went NAS and never looked back. Working with a AC86U nowadays.

An RT-AC5300 is yet another level of beast altogether.

 

[wouterv]

I agree with sfx2000.

I had an AC68R rev A1 when I did this. The later revisions had shielding for the USB ports and a better processor. The hub might actually work with one of those.


After mine died due to a power spike I got an AC68P. Never tried the USB hub project again though, I went NAS and never looked back. Working with a AC86U nowadays.

An RT-AC5300 is yet another level of beast altogether.

Source of that table:

RT-AC68U / RT-AC68P / RT-AC1900 / RT-AC1900P

This post is a little wrap up of lot of post regarding the RT-AC68 and RT-AC1900 series router. Below tables are compiled from currently available information I have: FW => .380 indicates 3.0.0.4.380 or higher with an updated SDK is required. For further reference, here a comparison of...

www.snbforums.com

 

[Deldarius]

Thank you wouterv. I was remiss in giving credit where credit is due for that table. I apologize sir.

 

[Turgut Kalfaoglu]

Thank you all for the feedback. I gave up on the idea of 3-drives to the machine. I am now examining NAS solutions..