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How to Make External USB Storage Available on Network

Version: SFVH (SFOS 17.0.3 MR-3)

Is it possible to attach external storage via USB and make it available to the LAN?

I've demoted my Linksys WRT1900AC to a bridge to gain the added security of having an XG firewall.  The only feature I appear to be 'losing' is the ability to attach my USB RAID storage and make it available to internal network users.

I've done some due diligence in searching the forum (and Google) for ways to make this available under the XG OS, but it would appear that this is not a feature that is currently available.  Can someone please confirm?  ...or let me know if I've missed an option somewhere.

As mentioned above, I'm running SFVH (SFOS 17.0.3 MR-3) on a Dell desktop...so I have available USB ports.

Thanks in advance.



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  • Have a real file server (or nas) makes more sense i think. You can get it cheap with raspberry pi and your exist usb storage. Or you can buy a smb nas like synology/qnap/readynas

  • Hi,

    yes, all very good, but to get a good performance on those NAS devices you need to spend about $1000 on just the chassis. I have a NAS which was so so slow it wil not even format the disks when I tried to upgrade it as the disk array for my fileserver (MS2012 SMB). Ended using using USB 3.1 disks. The NAS cost about $400 without disks and its throughput with many functions disabled was abysmal.

    You already have the equipment, stay with it.

    Ian

    Update:- I reviewed the raspberry PIx things and they all seem to come with a 100mb/s interface, not good for file sharing or multi-user environment.

  • If you buy a smb nas and expect to run as a san, then you definitely will run in problems.

    Device like DS218j(170$) can sature 1GBE on large file transfer and will outperform WRT1900AC easily, and provide a easy ui to work with at same time.

    Added: pi is cheap and can provide reasonable speed if what you need is just share some small doc/mp3 files between devices.

  • And to your situation.

    SAN only make sense when you run HA EMC/3par or similar.

    What you need is DAS, like usb drive or SAS Enclosure

  • Sorry, it was a NAS (same as the DS218+) and the reviews all said the same thing. It was much more powerful than a PI, has dual 1gb NICs and would never go above 105mb/s on single user file transfer. I have reviewed a number of devices from different manufacturers all around the same price and have similar performance figures. My setup was as per recommendations.

     

    Ian

Reply
  • Sorry, it was a NAS (same as the DS218+) and the reviews all said the same thing. It was much more powerful than a PI, has dual 1gb NICs and would never go above 105mb/s on single user file transfer. I have reviewed a number of devices from different manufacturers all around the same price and have similar performance figures. My setup was as per recommendations.

     

    Ian

Children
  • Didn't that expected performance? To go beyond 1Gbps either you need SMB multichannel (which is a feature only avaliable in windows server since 2012 which cost a lot of $) and proper network gear and multi link from end to end. Or you need a 10Gbps network.

  • I think you miss read the performance 105mb/s, not 105 MB/s. The device is fitted with dual NICs but cannot feed them due to CPU limitations.

    Anyway the DS218+ appears to run rings around my qnap device.

    Ian

  • Do you mean you get 105mbps or 105MB/s on the device?

    it easy to find that DS218j (which is slower than your DS218+) can get 100MB/s or 1Gbps on large file transfer.

    www.smallnetbuilder.com/.../33160-synology-ds218j-ds218play-diskstations-reviewed

    Also if you only get 105mbps i think some thing in your network path is only 100mbps capable. A very common suprise cause of that kind of performance is a low end switch, which can't isolate unicast traffic properly and send traffic to every port on the switch, and add that with a 100mbps device you can only get 100mbps out of that switch, althrough it rated as a 1gbps one.

    The dual nic is mostly use for link redundant. The device is designed for 1gbps, and that is also the network environment in most smb situations can get.

  • No, my device was not a ds series at all and yes the network was capable of running at 1gb/s and was tested between devices on the same switch.

    Anyway we are way off thread.

    Ian