RT-AC68U USB Drive Questions

[twalls]

Hi everyone! I have a couple of questions about using USB drives with the RT-AC68U. I have a Western Digital My Book 3 TB USB 3.0 drive that is formatted with ext4 (1 partition). I'm running version 3.0.0.4.376_1663 of the stock firmware.

- For others who have drives hooked up, do you manually unmount the filesystem before rebooting the router (or flashing firmware, etc.)? I'd think any shutdown script would normally include this step, but I hate to just assume it. I read an old thread on here saying it didn't, but that was from last year and no one confirmed.

- I think it is cool that Asus includes a way to check the drive with a Disk Utility. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to do anything when the filesystem is ext4. Is there a way to check the drive manually using telnet (maybe the command is there, but the page needs an update to use it)?

 

[mromero]

- For others who have drives hooked up, do you manually unmount the filesystem before rebooting the router (or flashing firmware, etc.)? I'd think any shutdown script would normally include this step, but I hate , to just assume it. I read an old thread on here saying it didn't, but that was from last year and no one confirmed.

- I think it is cool that Asus includes a way to check the drive with a Disk Utility. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to do anything when the filesystem is ext4. Is there a way to check the drive manually using telnet (maybe the command is there, but the page needs an update to use it)?

I would also like to know the answer to this. I have a 2 TB external Seagate coming in and am thinking of attaching it to the RT AC68R. One would think a router this expensive would have the smarts in the firmware to unmount the drive at re-boot considering the many reboots it goes though with the still very flaky firmware.

If not, perhaps Merlin could include it in one of his builds, along with a one click option for a script to automatically reboot the router every day.

I would also like to know if there is any advantage to using an SSD instead of an HD to prevent corrupting the drive by rebooting without unmounting or if the router freezes and crashes.

 

[twalls]

Guess no one feels like chiming in on this one... Yes, I did use the search function. Only thing I found was for a shutdown script in Merlin's builds. I found an old post (using Google) from December of last year saying it didn't unmount cleanly, but gave no evidence of how this was determined.

In the meantime, I have checked my drive manually from an Ubuntu box, and it was fine (though I'd hope a journaled filesystem would hold up okay). There are no commands for making or checking ext4 on the stock firmware, yet they still seem fine with supporting it. Go figure. I guess I'll be sure to manually unmount from now on until I hear otherwise.

 

[gschlact]

related questions on USB 3.0 HDD on AC68

I have spent toooo much time on this already but am hoping for more speed!

AC68, WD Passport 1TB HDD.
Baseline: HDD connected USB3 on Lenovo, I get 90-100+MBytes/sec transfer

Testing using 1.4GB movie file. OR 200+ jpgs (8MB each)

I move the HDD to the USB3 on the ac68 and droppppps by 1/2. (This is after updating stock Firmware to 3.0.0.4.376_1663.
- wireless-> Pro-> Reducing USB 3.0 Interference = Disabled, LAN Jumbo Frame=OFF is better ==> Doubled my speed from 20-25MB/sec to the 40MB write/ 53MB/sec read (wired Lan connect at 1gpps).

CPU Temp = 81C and stays there. CPU loading and memory are low 42% for SMB and still 19% IDLE, and 19,000KB Free memory.

WHAT do I need to do to get back toward the 100MB/sec that the wired Lan can support as well as the USB3 HDD? Bottleneck appears to be the USB 3.0 support on the stock Firmware.

Recommendations would be really welcome whether DDWRT and other settings fix this issue. Again, remember, I am wired LAN at 1gps. WHY such a degradation by the Asus USB 3.0 HDD controller? There is still headroom left on the CPU, memory and LAN link.

SEMI RELATED: for the Samba share, I can only see directories under the root folder on the HDD. Why can't I actually share the Root level folder so that I can get at the files in that root folder? HOW can I do this? The asus stock firmware only points to folders below root for sharing. (My Cisco Linksys let me specifically navigate in Linux tree to select the directory to share, including the mnt point directory.

-Guy
gschlact

 

[twalls]

If you're going to post something that basically has nothing to do with my original questions (unmounting drives before rebooting and checking ext4 with built-in firmware tools), please open your own new thread...

 

[gschlact]

Twalls- I posted here based on your primary thread Title, which was a perfect fit for my question:
your title: "RT-AC68U USB Drive Questions"