Archer A20 : USB Sharing Drive Detection
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I have searched and read several posts on several sites about the Archer WiFi Routers not detecting an attached USB drive.
I just resolved this problem for myself recently and wanted to share how I resolved it, in the hopes it helps someone else.
My Solution: Change the drive label to a shorter name.
OK, I am not 100% sure if this was the problem or if I just got lucky. The drive is not detected once again, and I am not going to risk losing the detection with more experimentation.
Details if you care...
My drive: Seagate Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 ( 7.27 GB formatted )
File System : NTFS.
Externally powered.
For a long time I had this drive connected to my router. I wrote to it regularly with nightly back up routines. Everything worked fine.
I then disconnect the drive to connect it directly to my laptop to copy files off another USB drive and do it more quickly.
I then reconnected the drive to the WiFi router and it could no longer detect it.
I tried: Reboots, different power-up sequence, reconnect to PC and run DSKCHK / repair errors, ...
I tried a different cable.
TRULY STRANGE: My Seagate has a USB connection in the rear, and two USB ports on the front to attach additional drives. So... I connected a 1.5TB Western Digital "My Passport" which get the power through the USB cable. The AC20 detected the Western Digital drive, but not the Seagate. I concluded the cables, both of them, must be good.
I then reconnected the Seagate back to a PC, and scanned for errors again. Confirmed it was NTFS. Confirmed the AC20 supported NTFS. It does and I did not reformat the drive so how would it have changed. I then noticed the drive label looked much longer than I remembered. Did I change it when I first connected it to the laptop? I don't know, but I may have. I changed it again to 11 characters and reconnected to the AC20. Logged into the router and viola, the drive was detected.
So my question to TP-Link is : "What is the maximum drive label length supported by the Archer AC20 for an NTFS drive?"
I am not sure what you have done, changes, or even talking about?
Not trying to be rude, but I never had a label on the Drive itself?
I am now on my AX55, but the A20 I have (disconnected now) looked about the same. This is what I see for the USB drive:
There is NO label per se. It will show as a PARTITION on the Share of the router. For instance, this is my NET VIEW (I'm on Windows):
===============
C:\>net view
Server Name Remark
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\HP7855 Samba 3.0.37
\\IRVXPS8940 Irv's XPS8940
\\TP-SHARE samba server
The command completed successfully.
===============
The TP-Share is the Router Name on the LAN.
Now I look into TP-Share to see what is on it:
===========
C:\>net view \\tp-share
Shared resources at \\tp-share
samba server
Share name Type Used as Comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
G Disk
The command completed successfully.
==============
No DISK label I can see?
So, this is why I don't understand what you saw and/or changed?
Could you be talking about the SHARE NAME?
Quite possible if you made that an INVALID Windows FileName it could cause you problems?
I'm wondering if connecting the WD reset the Share Name on you, and somehow that was altered when you first put back the Seagate?
