Ubuntu – How to access an external hard drive plugged into the router

external-hddhard driverouter

I am running Ubuntu 11.10 and I own a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router with a USB port built into it. Naturally, the router came with instructions on how to mount and view this drive with both Windows and Mac, but nothing about Linux. I have an WD Elements 1 TB external HDD that I would like to plug into the router and share across my home network. However, when I plug it in, absolutely nothing happens on my desktop.

I checked on two different machines and nothing seems to indicate that the drive has been mounted (or is even seen at all) on either machine. I am fully aware that it may not be possible to do this with a Linux system, but I was hoping someone might have a suggestion.

Best Answer

I have this same router and just figured out how to access an external drive via Ubuntu. I wrote a blog post with the details but here's the short version:

Install the smbfs package (sudo aptitude install smbfs).
Create a directory in which to mount your external hard drive (e.g., sudo mkdir /media/public).
Add a line to the file /etc/fstab (gksudo gedit /etc/fstab) - at the end of the file add this line: //192.168.1.1/USB_Storage /media/public smbfs guest 0 0
Save your newly updated fstab file then remount your drives (sudo mount -a); you should now be able to see your new external drive at /media/public.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Why is the external USB hard drive sometimes completely inaccessible

To determine whether the problem is the drive or the enclosure, remove the drive from the enclosure, install it in a desktop with sufficient power and check the smart status.

For a deeper test, you can check every sector of the drive utilizing tools like ddrescue. ddrescue will report error size during the process and you can attempt data recovery at the same time as in: sudo ddrescue /dev/sdb2 /path/to/recovery.image logfile. List the partitions with sudo lsblk or classic fdisk -l.

If you truly have no interest in the data you can force the output file to /dev/null as in:

sudo ddrescue --force /dev/sdc /dev/null logfile

and you'll still get a report on any error size on stdout

Tested on Ubuntu 14.04 with GNU ddrescue 1.17 as follows inthis short example using /dev/sdb2 (a 1MB swap partition)

$ sudo ddrescue --force /dev/sdb2 /dev/null logfile


GNU ddrescue 1.17
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
rescued:      1024 B,  errsize:       0 B,  current rate:     1024 B/s
   ipos:         0 B,   errors:       0,    average rate:     1024 B/s
   opos:         0 B,    time since last successful read:       0 s

Ubuntu – Change or Assign a Drive Letter to an external hard drive (or any drive)

All you need to do is use fdisk (in linux) to change the partition id to 7. In your case the partition id 83 (linux partition) or something else which windows considers the volume as hidden. When the partition id is 7, windows will automatically recognizes the partition volume as NTFS and assigns a drive letter whenever the FDD was recognized. Drive letter is a mount point which is windows specific. In linux some directory, mostly /mnt/dir is used for mount point. Linux can successfully mount NTFS volumes with partition id 7 and hence you will be able to use the partition from both LINUX as well as windows.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Why is the external USB hard drive sometimes completely inaccessible

Ubuntu – Change or Assign a Drive Letter to an external hard drive (or any drive)

Related Question