Latest black router USB file share

[Ianbryant66]

Hi I have the newer large black router which is good day to day and have a WD MyCloud running on the network. I want to replace the WD MyCloud with a hard drive plugged in the router as only need local access to the files and more of a place to back up to.

the issue is I have been playing around and can get drives to be seen on the network but non of the files I have placed on these drives are able to be seen. It seem to just find the route of the drive. I have created new folders and then I can not see these off the router?

what am I doing wrong? I have tried USB sticks as exFat hard drives as exFat and even a SSD drive.

Could someone explained how to get this working please.

thanks

[Jayach · Accepted solution]

When you do get it working you may be a bit disappointed as the USB ports seem to be only USB 2 so speeds will never be very fast. Probably more suited to printer sharing than files.

The way I got it to work was to create a drive letter in Windows (I assume you are using Windows).

Go to Sharing in the router and you should see your drive under drives. click on it and copy the path shown.

Mine is \\vodafone.broadband\Teclast_CoolFlash_1_048d .

Paste that into File manager and you should see the contents of the drive.

For some reason a couple of my PC's couldn't see the drive using it (probably DNS related) and I had to replace the "vodafone.broadband" with the routers IP address.

If you are using backup software then that may be all you need to know, but if you want a drive letter in Windows for it then once you have it showing in file manager follow the network icon on the left until you see the drive and right click on it and choose "Map network drive..".

That's how I did it, possibly not the correct way, but it worked for me.

Edit. I'm pretty sure my stick is NTFS formatted.

[Ianbryant66]

Thanks the issues is I want this for iPhones/iPads smart TV’s as well as Windows and Mac laptops.

I wasn’t able to see exFat discs but go back one step further to Fat32 and now all works but with both file size and naming issues so not going to be a simple copy the files onto the drive to share locally. 

as for speed as the key here is to be able to share films and it seems to be fast enough for this currently but only on a USB stick so will now sort out the 2TB drive in a USB 3 caddy. But I will load through my laptop first.

[Ianbryant66]

I just saw you say you were using NTFS so I will try this but as my go to is exFat so works on both Mac and PC didn’t try this?

[Ianbryant66]

NTFS looks to be the way to go as I have a network drive that I can seen and use from iPad, iPhone, windows laptop just need to test with Mac but sure it would work.

thanks for the help.

[Jayach]

I believe that by default Macs can only read from NTFS, but you can get a driver that allows them to write also.

[ferny2222]

Hi,

it doesn’t mention anything about username and password on that.

i need the username and password to map the driver on my windows PC or anywhere else really. 

[Jayach]

See my reply earlier:

Solved: Re: Latest black router USB file share - Community home (vodafone.co.uk)

(Did you also post in network queries?)

[ferny2222]

Hi, 

yeah, I have done that already… however when I paste the USB path on file explorer it still asks me for a username and password to access the folder. 
What should I do?

[Jayach]

Strange, it doesn't do that for me. Try copy and pasting the USB path into the windows run box.(win key+r)