What's the maximum capacity of hard drive that AC68u can run?

[stebrick]

I am about to purchase a 4 bays hard drive enclosure (with one USB plug), each bay could support a max 8tb hard disk. I wonder whether the captioned router would support it if I put four 8tb hard drives into that hard drive enclosure, i.e. a total of 32TB. I am planning to format those hard disks as ext4 system.

I have done a bit research elsewhere and found this page: http://event.asus.com/2009/networks/disksupport/
http://event.asus.com/2009/networks/disksupport/

From this page, it seems that I may have to divide the 4 hard disks into 8 partitions as the Maximum Partition Size that the router could support is 4TB. However, I am not sure the total maximum capacity of hard drive that such router could support.

Any prompt advice would be much appreciated as I am going to buy the said enclosure tomorrow. Thank you.

 

[L&LD]

I would highly advise against this plan. Any current consumer/prosumer router is just not capable of what you're asking for. Even if it seems to work for a little while, initially.

Put your cash and time into a real NAS (Synology or QNAP preferred) instead and save yourself countless hours of frustration.

Not only is the RT-AC68U woefully underpowered for such a setup, even the most powerful Asus routers today (RT-AC88U, RT-AC3100, RT-AC5300) would also fall flat.

With that kind of storage capacity, you need a GbE connection or higher to properly run it, not the (always) inadequate USB protocol (v2.0 or v3.0/v3.1 as implemented in any current router available today).

 

[stebrick]

I would highly advise against this plan. Any current consumer/prosumer router is just not capable of what you're asking for. Even if it seems to work for a little while, initially.

Put your cash and time into a real NAS (Synology or QNAP preferred) instead and save yourself countless hours of frustration.

Not only is the RT-AC68U woefully underpowered for such a setup, even the most powerful Asus routers today (RT-AC88U, RT-AC3100, RT-AC5300) would also fall flat.

With that kind of storage capacity, you need a GbE connection or higher to properly run it, not the (always) inadequate USB protocol (v2.0 or v3.0/v3.1 as implemented in any current router available today).

Does it make a difference if I change the plan a bit, say either by connecting to the router (1) a 4tb external hdd (no power required); or (2) 2-bay 16tb (8tb each) hdd enclosure?

The reason I do not use nas is mainly because most functions of nas are redudent to me as I only use its cloud and ftp service for files storage, and I can't find a suitable machine for 8tb hdd.

thank you for your help.

 

[L&LD]

Does it make a difference if I change the plan a bit, say either by connecting to the router (1) a 4tb external hdd (no power required); or (2) 2-bay 16tb (8tb each) hdd enclosure?

The reason I do not use nas is mainly because most functions of nas are redudent to me as I only use its cloud and ftp service for files storage, and I can't find a suitable machine for 8tb hdd.

thank you for your help.

What may possibly change my advice is the intended use of such high capacity storage? USB based and 'router attached' is for sharing PDF files of a few kilobytes each for a handful of people in my opinion. Not TB's of storage of greatly increased file sizes and (possibly) users.

 

[RMerlin]

This is a bad idea. First, the router doesn't even have enough RAM to properly cache the metadata from such a large volume, or run any filesystem check in case of a problem.

Get a NAS. It's not about redundancy of feature, it's about having the right tool for the right job. Having a heavy screwdriver doesn't mean that buying a hammer would be redundant - it means your hammer will do a far better job at hammering things than using the heavy screwdriver.

 

[sfx2000]

I am about to purchase a 4 bays hard drive enclosure (with one USB plug), each bay could support a max 8tb hard disk. I wonder whether the captioned router would support it if I put four 8tb hard drives into that hard drive enclosure, i.e. a total of 32TB. I am planning to format those hard disks as ext4 system.

Many of these kind of enclosures do not work very well under linux - spent time working with another forum member trying to sort one attached to a Linux based NAS box (Synology), and I think the conclusion there was to pass on it...

USB drive sharing on Router/AP's is more, for lack of better words, a casual convenience and perhaps a checkbox feature.

If one needs that much storage, one should seriously consider a 4 bay NAS unit with it's own dedicated processor and network focused operating system. Dedicated NAS units will have better performance, more fine grained controls over what is shared (or not), and generally a better overall experience.

 

[Roy2001]

You can only use enclosure with ONE drive. 2 drive would not work. Although I have not tried on AC68U yet, I tried on Netgear R8000 and it does not work.

But I tried 5TB USB HDD on both R8000 and AC68U, it works well. I assume 8TB would work.

 

[Erdinc]

I would highly advise against this plan. Any current consumer/prosumer router is just not capable of what you're asking for. Even if it seems to work for a little while, initially.

Put your cash and time into a real NAS (Synology or QNAP preferred) instead and save yourself countless hours of frustration.

Not only is the RT-AC68U woefully underpowered for such a setup, even the most powerful Asus routers today (RT-AC88U, RT-AC3100, RT-AC5300) would also fall flat.

With that kind of storage capacity, you need a GbE connection or higher to properly run it, not the (always) inadequate USB protocol (v2.0 or v3.0/v3.1 as implemented in any current router available today).

I certainly agree with that!

Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using Tapatalk

 

[TonyH]

Does it make a difference if I change the plan a bit, say either by connecting to the router (1) a 4tb external hdd (no power required); or (2) 2-bay 16tb (8tb each) hdd enclosure?

The reason I do not use nas is mainly because most functions of nas are redudent to me as I only use its cloud and ftp service for files storage, and I can't find a suitable machine for 8tb hdd.

thank you for your help.

Is the reason you want to consider USB enclosures a budget problem? If not don't even bother wasting time. I've been there done that. Now I use 2bay NAS with 2x4tb WD red drives with external b/u plans.

 

[stebrick]

I am really appreciated with all the above advice, mostly based on their real experience and professional knowledge.

Yes, you guys have had me and I have retreated my plan. Now I simply upgraded the capacity of the hard drive attached to the router by buying a 4TB My passport in replacement of my old 1 TB.

Budget is an issue for a NAS as my style is to buy the as much advanced product as possible (like I already picked Synology 916+ 2G/ 8G Ram). So I will use the 4TB my passport as a buffer for me to save a bit money for buying that NAS.

Thank you for strongly advising me against my plan. I probably would not regret from my this decision

 

[sfx2000]

Is the reason you want to consider USB enclosures a budget problem?

Not sure if this is a budget problem or not, but it can be a definite issue with Linux and the chipset and driver in use...

Some work better than others, and USB3 will be a challenge there as vendors do tend to be more Windows oriented...

 

[sfx2000]

From this page, it seems that I may have to divide the 4 hard disks into 8 partitions as the Maximum Partition Size that the router could support is 4TB. However, I am not sure the total maximum capacity of hard drive that such router could support.

Getting back to OP's post...

4TB is probably the limit - and there it can be risky depending on the number of files on the filesystem - this, like @RMerlin mentions is a memory limit perhaps - esp if there is a dirty shutdown, and the OS needs to do a disk check on the file system itself...

 

[Dave281]

Getting back to OP's post...

4TB is probably the limit - and there it can be risky depending on the number of files on the filesystem - this, like @RMerlin mentions is a memory limit perhaps - esp if there is a dirty shutdown, and the OS needs to do a disk check on the file system itself...

I have been using a 4TB portable Seagate Backup Plus portable drive attached to the USB3 port on the AC68U router. The only way to get the drive was to work was to reformat it with an allocation unit of 64 kilobytes. The standard allocation of 4096 bytes was too much for the router. I basically use the drtive to store very large files, so I don't think that I'm losing too much space by using a larger allocation size

 

[TabascoJoe]

Add my 2 cents...
I had a 5TB drive connected to my AC68U. I think it was formatted EXT4 (or it could have been EXT3). Zero issues. Replaced it with a 10TB drive. At first I formatted it EXT4. The AC68U would see it, but never mount it. Reformatted it with EXT3 and all works. The AC68U reports the correct GB's and file transfers work just like before.

Also the drive has 5TB's used already (upgrade from the old that was full.) Error checks run just fine.

Not sure why I keep seeing a 4TB limit, as that is not the case.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Not sure why I keep seeing a 4TB limit, as that is not the case.

It's because people are always referring back to this document. It doesn't appear to be based on any particular hard or soft limit, so I suspect it's just a "safe" size that Asus are willing to support. As Merlin alluded to, very large disks usually contain at lot of data and the limited memory of the router becomes a problem.