RT-N56U - unable to use any USB app

[tritrek]

Hi, I want to share some files on my nw, primarily photos (as files) so I figured I'll attach my HDD to my router and add an USB app, be it AiCloud 2.0 or a media server.

The router sees my HDDs, but if I try to use the cloud or the MS app, it always fails with " The remote server is not responding."
The firmware has been updated to the latest: Firmware Version: 3.0.0.4.380_7378
What am I doing wrong?
One HDD is an IcyBox 2-bay RAID enclosure, with 2x2TB disks in RAID1, the other is a IB-120CL 2-bay docking station with 2 HDDs. The router detects all 3 disks, it just fails on installing any of the USB services... Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[L&LD]

Do not use any USB attached storage on that old router and firmware. A NAS is what you need, not USB attached storage (even on a brand new router).

I don't think that @john9527's RMerlin fork supports your router, but it may be worth considering flashing to the newest firmware available though.

(1) Release - [Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374 LTS release 46E8 | SmallNetBuilder Forums (snbforums.com)

 

[KsWoodsMan]

I've

Hi, I want to share some files on my nw, primarily photos (as files) so I figured I'll attach my HDD to my router and add an USB app, be it AiCloud 2.0 or a media server.

The router sees my HDDs, but if I try to use the cloud or the MS app, it always fails with " The remote server is not responding."
The firmware has been updated to the latest: Firmware Version: 3.0.0.4.380_7378
What am I doing wrong?
One HDD is an IcyBox 2-bay RAID enclosure, with 2x2TB disks in RAID1, the other is a IB-120CL 2-bay docking station with 2 HDDs. The router detects all 3 disks, it just fails on installing any of the USB services... Any ideas? Thanks.

I've had one of those and I'm pretty certain it doesn't support hard drives of that size.
To get it to work you'd probably need to transfer the files to a smaller drive.

L&LD is correct though , even though that is the most recent firmware offered by ASUS for your router, It is a quite old version.
There have been a lot of security vuneabilities discovered in some of the apps used to run that router. Support for it was dropped.
I wouldn't consider using it to share files across the internet.

It might be upto the task of doing this from inside your own network, provided that the drive used is more compatable.

OpenWRT might have a newer version of firmware able to support the larger drive and raid arrangement.

You might get some recomendations of current (better supported) routers to use for this. They will still be routers first and storage second instead of being dedicated NAS boxes with emphasis on security and support of the shared files.

 

[KsWoodsMan]

It looks as though there has been a breath of new life to the Padavan fork for this.
Though, I didn't see where downloadable binaries were available. Maybe I should have looked a little harder
But it looks there are still more recent options available.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/padavans-custom-firmware.7857/page-72