Whats are Pro and Cons connecting a external hardisk to wireless router

[azazel1024]

I really can't speak to that. I haven't personally seen any issues with different versions of windows or license level.

Home/pro/ultimate have all worked fine for me with Win7 and on Win8/8.1 home/pro have all worked well for me both setting up and accessing SMB shares. Really no issues at all. No issues with credentialing either.

I can't speak much to Vista as I never setup a share on Vista, though accessing wasn't an issue with the Vista Home copy I had running on a laptop a couple of years ago. XP...well XP is a bit of a different beast. I have had issues setting up shares and accessing them with much later versions of windows. However, I think I retired my Windows XP server about 5 years ago so I can't really speak to Windows XP and 8/8.1, but with XP and 7 I did encounter some interesting issues here and there, though not really with credentialing.

Its much easier to do everything with Enterprise and domains, but I don't happen to own any enterprise licenses to run it in my home.

I have heard of some issues with Mavericks and SMB. I haven't seen any, but I also don't own anything running OSX, just limited experience with my Dad's stuff (he is the Apple guy in the family). He personally runs SMB on his mac mini with OSX server (no clue what flavor) and doesn't have an issue with his mac pro or iMac. No idea what OSX itteration he has running on them.

I do know that my iPhone 4s/5 and iPad 2 have no issues with SMB really running the File Browser app to access shares. There is a minor issue with speed that you have to do a registry tweak for because File Browser is, as far as I know, running SMB 1. Not even 2. Sigh. Its is in the Apps FAQs (finally, after I emailed the company about it for awhile and a couple of other people did). Something I had resolved after much testing and troubleshooting way back when I had an iPad 2 (now only my wife does) and leaned on the app a lot. Basically it took performance from ~3-4MB/sec down to 500-700KB/sec. A quick registry tweak and performance is at a 3-4MB/sec level (depending on device). The tweak doesn't impact anything else. I'll grant not intuitive, but it is something they have in their FAQs.

I do wish that iOS (and I guess Android) would have true native support to access file shares on a network. Its annoying to have to load apps specifically to access that kind of stuff. Of course if we are going to go there, I wish iOS had a least a limited file browser built in. Even if it is going to limit what kind of media it works with, simply "compatible" video, music, books and images would be real spiffy. Can always lock it down to preven executing anything and I bet even simple users could master and appreciate it pretty quickly.

 

[htismaqe]

"Home" versions of Windows up to Windows 7 (I have no experience with Win 8) don't have the ability to map drives and have them be persistent (e.g. they don't re-establish correctly after a reboot). There's an amount of scripting (or 3rd-party software) needed to create parity between Home and Professional. It all boils down to the fact that Microsoft has assumed that "home" users don't require that particular type of functionality, which is silly. That's one example of what I'm talking about with Microsoft. Not that Apple and others aren't guilty as well.

Again, for those of us "in the know" it's relatively easy to work around, whether it means buying the correct licenses in the first place or writing the necessary scripts to make it all work. Unfortunately, the average home user (which was originally central to the topic of this thread) doesn't always have this knowledge at his disposal.

As for OS X and SMB, Apple re-wrote a large portion of the SMB code for Mavericks, set the default file sharing protocol to SMB (over AFP), and defaulted the SMB protocol version to SMB2. In particular, one of the biggest issues is with large file transfers. If you're not working with files in the 10-12GB range or larger, you likely won't ever see the issue. I'm not sure if previous versions suffer from all of the same problems but older SMB implementations suffer their own issues on OS X.

 

[azazel1024]

Probably why my father doesn't see any issues. I doubt he is moving files bigger than 1-2GB.

I can't speak to Vista and XP was so long ago I don't remember, but at least in 7 I didn't have any issues with mapped network drives being restablish on home versions. Nor on 8/8.1.

I do see an issue where mapped network drives are specific to each user. I don't know that there is a way to set a global registry entry so that mapped network drives work across all users and for the system account.

It is an issue for tasks run as system or when a user isn't logged in (though with the user permissions) that windows won't recognize the network share, you have to use the fully qualified netbios name (or IP). Though that issue applies at least up to Enterprise and I think includes enterprise.

 

[stevech]

It's not that difficult to setup Windows workgroups for sharing, no. It's not really that difficult to set them up to use in a mixed OS environment, either.

It's also not necessarily going to work, whether it's a limitation of the protocol, the client OS, or whatever. .

I've never had a failure or big issue with SMB sharing among windows XP, 7, 8.1, Linux on RPi, Linux on PCs, my NAS with Linux, my ancient one-drive NAS, my Android tablet, my iPad using NAS apps.

 

[htismaqe]

I've never had a failure or big issue with SMB sharing among windows XP, 7, 8.1, Linux on RPi, Linux on PCs, my NAS with Linux, my ancient one-drive NAS, my Android tablet, my iPad using NAS apps.

I've had minor issues with Linux VMs and actual Windows shares but never with SMB on my NAS.

SMB on OS X is flat out broken though, that's really my issue. If I didn't have AFP support on my NAS, I literally wouldn't be able to use it for file sharing, at least not for backing up disk images which is the #1 thing I use it for anymore.

Furthermore, most of my file sharing is with Apple products anyway, so I have little to no use for SMB. Out of 34 devices, only 4 now run Windows and one of those will be retired before EOY and likely replaced with a Chromebook.

 

[Nerre]

At least IMHO, it was easy to setup a network share in windows without home groups. You simply go in to network properties, advanced sharing settings, enable network discovery and file/print sharing. Then right click on a folder/drive you want to share, properties, sharing, advanced sharing and click the box to share the drive/folder. Done.

If I don't recall wrong that doesn't work on Windows 7 Home.

 

[azazel1024]

If I don't recall wrong that doesn't work on Windows 7 Home.

Nope, it works just fine on Windows 7 home.

 

[stevech]

Nope, it works just fine on Windows 7 home.

I agree. But as said above, where/how to skip past HomeGroup is not obvious

 

[Nerre]

So, my note about

Use regedit and edit the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Lsa
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Lsa

under those 2 keys, add the following Value (or modify it if it already exists)

Type : 32-bit DWORD Value
Name : LmCompatibilityLevel
Value: 1

then your Windows 7 will communicate with SAMBA or previous versions of Windows Share without problem.

is completely unnecessary?

 

[azazel1024]

I've certainly never needed to modify the LAN manager compatibility level to get it working. That said, I also don't have any really old NAS.

Most recent versions of windows (Vista+) support NTLMv2 and are set to level 3, which means they'll only connected with NTLMv2, though doman controllers will accept LM and NTLMv1 connections.

The issue is that SMB1 is generally LM/NTLMv1 only. So very old NAS and routers won't allow connections to newer OS, because they are trying to "speak" LM/NTLM and the client, say a Windows 7 machine, is trying to speak only NTLMv2.

Probably any NAS newer than about 2010 is going to support SMB2+ and NTLMv2. Probably most non-super budget NAS are going to speak SMB2+ from mid 2000's for that matter.

Maybe a few routers from 2010-2012 or so might be SMB1 only.

I can't even think of when Samba last shipped with SMB1. 10 years ago? Longer? So any version of linux, short of embedded, should not be running something so old that it doesn't support NTLMv2.

 

[AcostaJA]

Pretty long thread, interesting, I've not enoug time to read all, anyway here are my 2cnts:

Attach storage on a router, as read it's polemic, most due intrinsic OS limitations than hardware capabilities (while some older hardware actually is not adecuate for file serving).

Ive been using USB storage on my router since my Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH (my 2nd buffalo router) with DD-WRT as os, now I have an WZR-1750DHP running DD-WRT too (beta).

From my experience, here are my recomendations and Why:

If you want have something downloading large torrent files, get an Industrial Pendrive with SLC NAND, will cost about twice or a bit more than an std pendrive with MLC NAND but worth for the purpose since bittorrent frequent small writes wear so quickly MLC NAND based flash, and while an std Flashdrive could last about two months receiving torrent download, an Industrial Grade Flash Drive whith SLC nand will last at least two year until it wear make it unusable.

Another option maybe and external HDD Case with integrated fan and a NAS HDD inside, and havin an exterlan UPS backed power supply (as the router), this maybe cheaper than having a SLC NAND flash drive but consider that this drive will last about a year before fail, since routers (asuming no OS inestabilty) do not provide sleep signals to hard drives when not accesing data, basically the HDD wil run at top all time 24/7/360.

The downside serving files with an router, are the OS limitations, since an good router capable to load an stable DD-WRT compiation have good and stable implementarions of Samba3, FTP, Transmission, and Mini-DLNA will neve be as stable and well featured as its counerparts from an NAS appliance, period.

If you want to serve a large library (more than 500GB) Get an NAS, one with dual disks (for Raid 1 redundancy, or 4 Disks for Raid 6 dual redundancy), and with full cloud features (as I plan with an 4 Disk Nas), while if you only want to have some appliance just downloading Torrents, then get an SLC nand Pendrive and share your large files to other family members with your pc (or the family pc) file sharing feaures leaving it on when large file sharing is required, that whats actually I do rigth now, later when my NAS arrives it will take the role of central file sharing appliance but powered only when required, the router will kept the Torrent Download role, and few file shares (I'm not using mini-dlna, coz I cant find an DLNA client that didnt sucks), I ve a 32GB SLC pendrive.

Transmission when well confiured on DD-WRT is impressively competent downloading, also I think it's faster too, but some manual configuration is required since actualy it never come usable from the box (ussualy need to edit file location parameters, max P2P, file space pre-allocation (very important with flash storage).

 

[stevech]

So, my note about



is completely unnecessary?

I didn't edit registry in any WIn OS in order to use ordinary SMB

 

[htismaqe]

Another option maybe and external HDD Case with integrated fan and a NAS HDD inside, and havin an exterlan UPS backed power supply (as the router), this maybe cheaper than having a SLC NAND flash drive but consider that this drive will last about a year before fail, since routers (asuming no OS inestabilty) do not provide sleep signals to hard drives when not accesing data, basically the HDD wil run at top all time 24/7/360.

I have a 1TB WD drive that is in a Rosewill enclosure. It's been running without sleeping for almost 4 years and hasn't failed. It doesn't even show any errors.

 

[azazel1024]

It wouldn't matter if the router or a NAS or a full computer sent a sleep signal. If it is USB, you cannot pass disk spin down commands to the drive unless you have proprietary drivers and a drive that supports it specifically in firmware (most/all WD USB drives do, I think Seagate does as well, but it is through a utility in Windows, maybe OSX). Some USB enclosures' controllers will autopark the drive if there has been no disk activity for a period of time.

My 640GB USB2 WD drive does this. If no activity for 10 minutes, it'll park the drive.

A drive constantly running isn't that big an issue so long as there is adaquete cooling and low vibration. What wears a drive out is prolonged seek intensive workloads and constant parking of the drive heads (like if you had a disk spin down time of a minute or two and were forcing the drive to spin up and down all day long by erratic access patterns).

What the heck kind of torrenting are you doing that would wear out an MLC based thumb drive in a couple of months? A lot of thumb drives are TLC flash with very low endurances...so I could maybe see that...but even there you are talking about at least a few hundred P/E cycles.

On something like a 16GB thumb drive that is in the region of 1-5TB of writes depending on the write patterns. On an MLC based thumb drive you are looking at a couple of thousand P/E cycles, which translates in to more like 20-50TB of writes depending on patterning (IE is it mostly full and you are constantly writing to just a small portion of the volume, or if the drive being emptied, then filled, then emptied, then filled so that writes can be done over a large portion of the volume).

An SLC based thumb drive should have a minimum of 10x the endurance of an MLC base thumb drive, and probably closer to 100x. That means in to the low petabyte range.

At just 20TB of writes on the low end for an MLC 16GB thumb drive, that is 300GB per day to only have 60 days of write endurnace.

Go to a 64GB thumb drive and you have 4x the theoretical write capacity (because much larger area).

 

[stevech]

External USB3 drives, in my experience, spin down only if the chipset in the USB3 enclosure enables such. Not the drive itself, not the PC or NAS.

I have a 1 bay NAS, old, from Airlink 101. 500GB in it. It's the 3rd-rank backup for encrypted VIP data. Sits in the garage. Has run for 5 years or more.

Internal drives in a NAS, I dunno. My DS212 2 bay NAS, I think, doesn't spin down the drives because I don't see the typical 5 second delay when first accessing them.

I'm in the camp that says drives last longer if you spin down only when the drive will be inactive for hours. So mine is set to spin down and sleep the entire NAS from 1AM to 7AM daily.

 

[AcostaJA]

My 640GB USB2 WD drive does this. If no activity for 10 minutes, it'll park the drive.


What the heck kind of torrenting are you doing that would wear out an MLC based thumb drive in a couple of months? A lot of thumb drives are TLC flash with very low endurances...so I could maybe see that...but even there you are talking about at least a few hundred P/E cycles.

On something like a 16GB thumb drive that is in the region of 1-5TB of writes depending on the write patterns. On an MLC based thumb drive you are looking at a couple of thousand P/E cycles, which translates in to more like 20-50TB of writes depending on patterning (IE is it mostly full and you are constantly writing to just a small portion of the volume, or if the drive being emptied, then filled, then emptied, then filled so that writes can be done over a large portion of the volume).

An SLC based thumb drive should have a minimum of 10x the endurance of an MLC base thumb drive, and probably closer to 100x. That means in to the low petabyte range.

At just 20TB of writes on the low end for an MLC 16GB thumb drive, that is 300GB per day to only have 60 days of write endurnace.

Go to a 64GB thumb drive and you have 4x the theoretical write capacity (because much larger area).

My previous experience Downloading Torrent Files with MLC Flash Drive, isn't close to that, the problems isn't the WRITE VOLUME, IS TH NUMBER OF TOTAL SMALL WRITES what drives high Wear on MLC NAND FlashDrive, thats why you need SLC Nand for bitorrent download (besides some configuration as pre-allocation, define bufers as big as possible).

Try to download a 1GB file w/o space pre-allocation, if the transfers ends w/o write failures, you are lucky or your thumbdrive is really new, repeat again if your thumbdrive is usable after 2 months, pleas share with us which brand of TLC/MLC thumbdrve you use.

Consider on a router you dont have TRIM, as well most thumbdrive dont implement very good wear leveling circuitry.

 

[speedingcheetah]

I just leave utorrent open on my Win Sever system. Use the Utorrent Remote feature to manage torrents.

 

[Nerre]

I didn't edit registry in any WIn OS in order to use ordinary SMB

Well all I know is that my daughters school laptop (running Windows 7 Home) will not find any of the samba servers in our home network (even if I explicitly address them with \\server\share), while my laptop (running Windows 7 Pro) have no problems finding them.

 

[speedingcheetah]

Well all I know is that my daughters school laptop (running Windows 7 Home) will not find any of the samba servers in our home network (even if I explicitly address them with \\server\share), while my laptop (running Windows 7 Pro) have no problems finding them.

Is the network location set to Home and not public?

Also, you have to enable discovery of devices and enable file/printer sharing. It gives a pop up or some notice that feature is disabled when you first load the Network page in explorer.

 

[Nerre]

It's been a while (several months) since I had a look at it but if I recall correct I didn't even find the options to enable file and printer sharing, only home groups. The settings screen looked completely different from the ones on my laptop, I had them side by side to try to mimic my laptops settings on her laptop.