On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 at 08:41, Bob Goodwin <bobgoodwin@fastmail.us> wrote:


On 2020-06-20 22:48, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 2020-06-21 10:15, Cameron Simpson wrote:
>> On 20Jun2020 16:28, Bob Goodwin <bobgoodwin@fastmail.us> wrote:
>>> Fred, my objective is to use the drive as an NAS. The drive began life
>>> as a WD Mybook, it had two 2GB partitions for whatever reason and I had
>>> been using it to save NFS files etc. [...]
>> Since the ASUS will be mounting the drive and sharing the data, the ASUS
>> may require particular filesystems (I'm imagining exfat or fat32).  What
>> filesystem is on the drive at present?
>>
>> Also, is it a DOS partition table or GPT? Might also be relevant.
> Thanks for beating me to this.  :-) :-)
>
> FWIW, ASUS doesn't seem to keep their compatibility charts up to date.
>
> I found  https://event.asus.com/2009/networks/disksupport/ but this is from 2009 and the RT-ARCH13
> isn't listed.  But the similar product RT-ARCH15 is.  And it shows that ext4 is NOT supported.


https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/RT-ACRH13/E11649_RT_ACRH13_Manual.pdf says:

The wireless router works with most USB HDDs/Flashdisks (up to 2TB size) and supports read-write access for FAT16, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, and NTFS

https://www.asus.com/supportonly/RT-ACRH13/HelpDesk_Knowledge/

You can download the source code (but latest source isn't current, so you may need to search for patches).

https://www.asus.com/supportonly/RT-ACRH13/HelpDesk_Download/

https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/about:

Asuswrt is the name of the firmware developed by Asus for use on all their recent routers. It was originally based on Tomato, and got extensively modified by Asus over the years as they added their own features to it.

Asuswrt-Merlin is an alternative, customized version of that firmware. Developed by Eric Sauvageau, its primary goals are to enhance  the existing firmware without bringing any radical changes, and to fix some of the known issues and limitations, while maintaining the same level of performance as the original firmware. This means Asuswrt-Merlin retains full support for NAT acceleration (sometimes referred to as "hardware acceleration"), enhanced NTFS performance (through the proprietary drivers used by Asus from either Paragon or Tuxera), and the Asus exclusive features such as AiCloud or the Trend Micro-powered AiProtection.  New feature addition is very low on the list of priorities for this project.


When I look at the drive on this computer with I gparted I see:

[root@Workstation-1 bobg]# gparted /dev/sdc

WD My Book 25EE  ext4 /run/media/bobg/bbdb9a5e-5003-4d4e-a18c-fb30a248

Perhaps I need to change the file system to vfat, gpt, or whatever samba
wants? ASUS appears to be using a version of DD-WRT with their own gui,
I believe the hype mentioned WRT? One reason for getting this router was
to try the USB attached hard drive using an unmodified router, I always
buy a router that is listed compatible with DD-WRT or preferably
Tomato-USB, the latter preferred since it logs daily usage per ipaddress
so I know what is hogging my b.w. allocation. I had similar, probably
the same, problems withe router I've been using for the last year which
I reworked for Tomato-USB, a DD-WRT related program.

You do need to change the filesystem, NTFS is probably the best choice, but
you have to deal with the 2TB limit.  Some elderly PC systems refuse to deal
with 4TB drives, and some will accept a 4TB drive with a 2TB partition.

--
George N. White III