Using ASUS AX3000 V2 with USB 3.0 hub

[Marus]

Hi !
I want to buy an TUF-AX3000 V2 router and I need some information from those who have already tested it.
I want to connect to it's USB 3.0 port, the weel known TP-Link UH700 USB Hub (with external power supply), and plug in it 4 HDDs. Will it works ?
I asked ASUS about this and they said: "We don't recommend connecting to the USB hub for the drive sharing option". But I find it hard to believe that such an advanced piece of tehnology like this router from ASUS cannot work with a simple USB hub. The hub I want to use does not require drivers to work.

 

[bbunge]

Sure it will work. But using a router for file sharing is not a great idea. Much better to use a NAS. Even a Raspberry Pi makes a better NAS than a router.

 

[MartinF]

Sure it will work. But using a router for file sharing is not a great idea. Much better to use a NAS. Even a Raspberry Pi makes a better NAS than a router.

It seems like that statement is a little rash for a general rule. While I'd agree that it's not very convenient to try to use multiple drives on the router, or have lots of users, connecting one drive for file sharing with a few computers seems like it should be fine. Personally, I don't need a full-scale NAS; I want to connect one drive to the router for media files, that I can access whenever and wherever I want. So for that use case, I don't see why using a router isn't a great idea. And I must not be alone, because almost every test I see compares the USB file access times between competing routers.

 

[Marus]

@bbunge, I don't have any knowledge about what "Raspberry Pi" is, and a NAS is a more expensive solution. And I don't need SCSI, I just want simple drives...

@MartinF, I am the only user who will access those drives connected to the router (most likely one at a time).

 

[MartinF]

@bbunge, I don't have any knowledge about what "Raspberry Pi" is, and a NAS is a more expensive solution. And I don't need SCSI, I just want simple drives...

@MartinF, I am the only user who will access those drives connected to the router (most likely one at a time).

A Rasberry Pi is simply a very small single-board computer, mostly for techies. It comes with an HDMI port for a display, USB ports, networking (wifi, I believe) and runs off a USB power cord. It can run various OSs, including Linux variants. They are pretty popular to use as special purpose devices, like NAS, weather stations, security, etc. I've always been intrigued by them, but never had enough of a real need for one to spend the money, being a bit of a miser. They aren't really that expensive, but a few hundred dollars is still more than I want to throw at a solution in search of a problem.

I believe it will run some NAS software written for Linux. But as a Linux user, I've played with at least one of these, and found it to be way more complicated than I needed. I'm probably more like you, wanting simple access to media files and backups.

I suspect Asus might just not recommend hubs due to power requirements being unknown. I haven't tried a hub so far, although I can see a reason for them; I have several medium sized USB drives from various sources, some of which I got from laptops and installed in USB cases. I currently have a couple connected to an old laptop that I set up to be always on, running Linux of course, and so far it's actually worked out well. It also runs a Plex server which I mainly use to listen to music using their excellent Plexamp players.

 

[Tech9]

and plug in it 4 HDDs

This is an entry-level router with 100MB RAM left after boot with TrendMicro components enabled. The moment you start pushing a bit more with NAS-like transfers it will start crashing. May corrupt your drives as well. USB shares is available feature in Asuswrt mostly for marketing purposes. Most users learn from own mistakes only and after they lose data. If you want to try your luck - go ahead. This is the worst device to plug your HDDs in.

 

[Marus]

It has 256 MB Flash and 512 MB RAM.

 

[Tech9]

Most of the RAM is taken by the system and is not available. Check how much RAM 4-bay NAS devices have and what CPU. I can crash any Asus 512MB RAM router in under 5min just doing file transfers. They all run out of RAM and start terminating core services. Swap file doesn't help. Some other brands have better SMB implementation and may go forever, but slowly. Asus routers crash Wi-Fi, disconnect WAN, fill syslog with errors. Sometimes recover, sometimes you need to reboot manually to recover. And you want to run backups there? Bad idea. You're not the first one though.

 

[Marus]

I can crash it too, with a hammer. But why would I do that ? I try to do anything I can to protect my equipment...
Have you tested this ASUS router with a usb hub and a few HDDs and it didn't work ? That's what I need to know.

 

[Tech9]

Yes. For small occasional file transfers it’s okay. If you hit it with 20GB 20.000 files of different size it can’t complete the transfer to single HDD.

 

[Marus]

What USB hub did you use? I have studied a lot about USB hubs and many people complain about them disconnecting devices. But this one (TP-Link UH700) that I want to buy has a very good rating in my country... Maybe you used a poor quality hub.

 

[Tech9]

Drive connected to the router. No USB hub. I don’t test routers with not recommended devices attached.

 

[MartinF]

What USB hub did you use? I have studied a lot about USB hubs and many people complain about them disconnecting devices. But this one (TP-Link UH700) that I want to buy has a very good rating in my country... Maybe you used a poor quality hub.

For what it's worth, I have a powered USB hub made by Anker which I bought 3 years ago, at half the current price. It has always worked fine. But I have had several TP-Link products, and they have all worked well.

 

[Marus]

I found today this ASUS AX3000 V2 review and the test for the transfer from the USB port looks like this:

"In conclusion, the results of measuring the performance of the router as a Windows Share file server paired with a high-speed SSD-drive HyperX Savage Exo 480GB with USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, formatted in the file system HFS and NTFS. Looking at the results, it should be noted that the speed of work depends little on the file system, but is directly related to the type of connection of the client. When using a local network, you can count on 64-72 MB/s, while using Wi-Fi 6, the results do not exceed 21 MB/s."

This is very confusing to me... I just tested my Archer AX20 and I got 37 MB/s on LAN and 33 MB/s on wireless. I find it hard to believe that this old router is faster than the ASUS AX3000 V2. If so, then I'll buy an Archer AX55 which is cheaper and has a USB 3.0 port (and it might go even faster than now, because my AX20 has a USB 2.0 port).

I would like to ask, if anyone owns the ASUS AX3000 V2 router and can do a transfer test for me with a single HDD connected to the USB port, wirelessly and LAN, and tell me the transfer speed. Thank you !

 

[Tech9]

Max transfer speed won't tell you for how long it can do it and how reliably in a long run. Seems like you insist to learn from own mistakes.

 

[gk802]

I've used a 4-port non-powered hub for more than a few years on 2 different routers (RT-AC68U and RT-AX86U). I haven't used HDDs with it but I've used a mix of SSD and flash drives - currently with about 2TB of capacity connected. I haven't seen any issues, no R/W failures, drops, etc. Performance has been fine. Just one idiosyncrasy that I've found...the scheduled disk scan process available in the GUI does not work through the hub, so you do have to health scan things manually. As well, if your media files are spread across multiple mounts, you do need to direct where mini-DLNA builds its index file. I handle that with a bit of scripting.

 

[thedeor]

let me share my experience:
my goal was to share 512GB adata m.2 to my network

1/
I have bought Asus TUF A1 gaming enclosure,
first issue: no usb-c usb-a cable in the box, I had to buy one (it's not easy to find USB3.1 gen 2 cables).

2/
After connecting it to router, it did not work - led on enclosure was blinking - should be solid.
Router reported no usb device.
Note: it was working on both, my laptop and pc without any problem.
I have bought different cable - no change.

3/
Two cables later I have realized that its power issue.
power USB 3.0 hub to the rescue! I bought one.
I managed to connect both my enclosure and random pendrive, both detected and working on router!

happy ending? ha!
next day morning, I had NO wifi at all (wired connections where fine). Guess what the issue was.
Yup USB hub. disconnecting it magically fixes WIFI, connecting it back in causes wifi ping to die in 3sec.
photo shows that after switching ugreen usb3.0 switch to router connection drops)

FML, waste of time & money

my current "solution": pendrive works fine in router, disk connected and shared via raspberry pi

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router: ASUS AX3000 V2, 3.0.0.4.388_22525
enclosure: ASUS TUF A1 gaming
disc: ADATA 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe XPG SX8200 Pro
hub #1: UGREEN SWITCH KVM USB 2X4 USB 3.0
hub #2: Hub USB Ugreen UGR191
cable: MicroConnect USB C-A Gen2, 0,25m