@Kevin_Z 

I have the same problem with a brand new tp-link Archer A50 router.

When I connect my USB hard drive directly to the computer, I can see all 448 folders and video files. When I connect via the TP link router, over either SMB or FTP, it only shows 274 of the folders and video files.

@Kevin_Z the usb drive is Western Digital hdd: WD Elements 1078 (931.49 GB)

@Samh321 The problem is obviously not the HDD/SDD model. It is a router issue. I have an AC2300  and i can access all the actual files in the HDD via IP/mapped network drive in windows. The phone can see all the video files on VLC for android inside smb folder, but as Network location TP-Share i only see the initial files that were on the drive when i first plugged in the HDD after I bought the router; the main issue is my TV sees only that TP-link network location and so i cannot really use it on the TV which is quite sad. Hope you find a fix for this. I will keep searching in the meantime. What i have tried - reboot rooter, dismount/remount share/ rescan with web utility. None of those worked

@Armeanu 

What you see on your TV is that provided via the router's Media Server (DLNA)?

If yes, can you check if you have the same problem when you access the AC2300's Media Server (not the SMB network share!) via "Windows Media Player"?

As was mentioned before, via the Media Server you will only see files of the types that are supported by the Media Server and/or the TV. I think this is not the reason for your problems, but if you want to be sure, then just add some files of older common formats (like *.mp3 or *.mpg) and check if they show up on the TV.

Otherwise there could be a problem with the Media Server's file indexing. I don't have your router model, but on my TP-Link router there is a hidden folder named ".TPDLNA" on the USB disk that contains a file "files.db" that appears to be a media file database. You could try to delete that *.db file (or rename or move, if you want to keep it for later) and then replug the USB disk to your router and check if that makes any difference.

@woozle Thank you very much for the sugestion. I deleted it and after removing/reinserting the external storage it recreated id again, slowly but surely reaching a hefty size of 18 Megs- I have many photos and videos- i think that is why. It however did not solve the problem. But i did something else that i think actually revealed the real issue: select only a few items from the whole thing and it almost displayed all of them correctly :)). So i am almost certain it is an indexing issue. The router's media server reads only a limited number of files from that file db you mentioned. How i test : I have VLC on phone and access the media server storage after each change i do in the router GUI/ specific files; on PC i check as well as mapped drive : \\router ip\volume - on PC it alwasy displays the full list correctly. Hope this info helps devs figure out the problem and correct it if possible

@Kevin_Z Well , at first because of the many photos there were tens of thousands, but after i chose which files to share, even with less than 50 it had problems(it was clearly better than before, but still there were files missing)- only normal video files- no special files.