RT-AC66U external HDD read/write speed

[jonnym]

Hello all.

I'm going around the houses trying to decide how to attach storage to my network.

It requirements are for a small fanless HTPC to record directly to the storage, there maybe some other traffic simultaneously, such as photos being archived. There may be simultaneous downloads from it as well such as a recording being watched and a film.

I realise a NAS setup would be king, but my budget is being squeezed. My original thought was just to plug an external HDD into the USB port of the router, would this be able handle that kind of data over its some what cheap USB 2?

The second thought was just the plug the HDD into the HTPC and make sure it has USB3 and share the drive on the network, which isn't as elegant nor does it have the same functionality so a poor second choice.

Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks
Jon

 

[jonnym]

Any help would be appreciated as I would like to buy the setup asap
Thanks

Jon

 

[jonnym]

I'm guessing I should have bought a 68u rather than the 66u with USB 3.

What is the read write speed of the USB3 port with a HDD attached?

Thanks for any help

Jon

 

[enr00ted]

Ac68 has dual core processor (one dedicated for file transfer i think) and that usb 3.0 . I think it will be alot better. On usb 2.0 and single core i think it maxes at 11 MB/s. I don't own one but I think it will be at least the double.

 

[huotg01]

I'm guessing I should have bought a 68u rather than the 66u with USB 3.

What is the read write speed of the USB3 port with a HDD attached?

Thanks for any help

Jon

That's for sure that having a usb3 port would be a plus. That said, even if the usb3 port is maybe 100 times faster than the usb2, and your question is really a good one : what is the real speed ? There are many opinions, but at best it could be equivalent to the speed of the cheapest NAS (compare to the 68u). One of the reason is the architecture of the device and lack of CPU power (and probably of memory). That said, I have a 4TB hooked to the usb3 port of my 68u, but I use it mainly for backing up all the home disks. Each time I tried to use it as a file server, it was not very good. So be careful.

 

[huotg01]

What is the read write speed of the USB3 port with a HDD attached?

Some indirect but recent information here: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=22169

 

[enr00ted]

Some indirect but recent information here: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=22169

I get around 80-85 with my dedicated Synology NAS via gigabit from PC -> NAS and more or less the half NAS -> PC due to a quite cheap SSD I have, so this is still impressive for a router.

Any help would be appreciated as I would like to buy the setup asap
Thanks

Jon

Keep in mind this wich is important. There are two types of transfer:

PC -> Router/USB (I think it depends on the conection and the Router's power)

Router/USB -> Pc (Apart from the conection the internal hard drive sets your reading limitations).

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

I'm going around the houses trying to decide how to attach storage to my network.

It requirements are for a small fanless HTPC to record directly to the storage, there maybe some other traffic simultaneously, such as photos being archived. There may be simultaneous downloads from it as well such as a recording being watched and a film.

I realise a NAS setup would be king, but my budget is being squeezed

First of all, here's a NAS for $65 dollars.
http://www.amazon.com/NSA310-Network-Attached-Storage-Server/dp/B005TJLU24

Too much money? You can get perhaps 11 megabytes per second through the Asus AC66u USB port with Merlin firmware.

Please consider getting the NAS.

 

[System Error Message]

actually the ac68u will read and write at full hard drive speeds but its the application like SAMBA that slows it down. The ARM CPU has controllers so it doesnt need the CPU to pass data around but the application isnt well coded because SAMBA,ntfs and fat32 are microsoft property. For linux to use them it is kinda hackish especially for ntfs. Try using a native linux file system like ext2 or ext 4 without using SAMBA.

The same goes for any other linux based router.