E3000 Storage Problems

[Freddy Apple]

I have just recently purchased a new E3000 so that I can run my hard drive through the network and watch videos on my Xbox 360 and my Playstation 3. After setup I continued to plug in my brand new 500gb (NTSC Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) hard drive to the router, when I went into the router and enter Storage>Disk it tells me that I can "Claim" the "Blank Disk 1" I click it and nothing happens, it still is giving me the make and model, then the physical space along with this "Claim" button. I have read other threads saying I should try another storage device so I used my other 500gb (NTSC Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) hard drive and it gives me a different make and model but still the same claim button that does not work, I have tried using safari to access the router to see if it would give me a different result and still no luck.

Help.

Fred.

[quack]

What is the File system on your USB storage device?

Routers with Storage Link only support FAT32 and NTFS file system formatted USB storage device.
If it is not, the USB storage might not work unless you reformat or convert the file system.

Follow this link for Quick USB Storage Setup Guide for Linksys E3000.

[Freddy Apple]

I have reformatted to FAT32 and still nothing i do not get the image in step 5, it still gives me the option to "claim" the drive with its specs, nowhere does it give me the choice to create share

Fred.

[quack]

If you are still unable to get the Option "Create Share", then you can connect the Harddrive to your computer and delete the partition which you have created and then connect the Harddrive to the router, and then login to the router setup page and under the storage tab you can click on Claim Disk and then check.

[obrun]

There are subtle differences in flags, partition maps and segment counts for both FAT32 and NTFS drives generated on different platforms on different drives with different ulitilities. Different versions of Windows. Pre Vista and Post Vista. etc. We need to understand which OS and disk format utilities have been tested and are known to work as it appears people are having difficulties with a number of situations trying to format the drives in a way which the E3000 accepts. I am also having the same problem as above and it was also a problem that some product reviewers had from what I have found online. Is there any information on from which OSes, and with what formatting options the testing with the E3000 was done? What are the supported methods of creating/formatting such a drive from OSX, XP, Vista, WIndows 7 etc? What options need to be selected?

[obrun]

The problem seems to be with new, unused hard drives. After what XP refers to as 'activating' the drive with disk management (Run compmgmt.msc) and then partitioning it with NTFS primary partitions the router was able to recoginize them. Before this the drive could not be claimed by the E3000. The E3000 should be able to create a partition but possibly it needs the partition map creating by the 'activation' process. I don't know if the equivelent process under OSX would be sufficient but the initial default map created by Seagate doesn't do the trick.

One of the undeclared issues is that the media server functionality is really PC only. It doesn't get mentioned in the system requirements of the E3000 packaging or the list of features. In reality the router only supports FAT32 and NTFS and it doesn't seem to be possible to write to the shared drives even to put the content onto the USB drive from a Mac. Neither does the UPnP AV technology work with iTunes, Apple TV, Boxee or on the Mac. The only thing that is possible is to ftp files to the router (Which is a clumbsy slow process) and then be able to use the content as files. It isn't fast enough to play back HD video in real time to Boxee as a file share. Instead it stutters and breaks. Given that most home purchasers are using Macs this seems to be a major failing of the E3000 that really needs to be indicated on the packaging. A waste of $100 over the E2000 at Best Buy just to find the only useable functionality over the E2000 for most users is as an ftp server.

In short the E3000 is for PC only home networks. Those with mixed networks or Mac or Boxee setups are better off saving their money and time by using the E2000

[obrun]

It is also possible that the reason we can't claim the drives is because the E3000 can only format a partition with FAT32 and it may be imposing a 32GB limit. The E3000 can also read but not format NTFS. Given that the drives are larger than 32GB this may explain why they can't be claimed in which case an error message needs to pop up or it needs to go ahead after confirmation and just create a 32GB partition. In the interim it is possible to create a series of 32GB FAT32 partitions which should be sharable across both PCs and Macs. Of course a better answer is for the E3000 to support Mac file systems natively.

[obrun]

So I now have the E3000 with FAT32 partitions and can read and write to them from a terminal on the mac but am unable to write files from the Finder from any Mac. The error is "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items".

This is possibly related to file locking as I have found reference to changing the samba config on the server (In this case the E3000) to not require posix locking. It could also be UID confusion between the E3000 and Mac but I'm not sure if we would expect these problems to be occurring from the Finder while it works from a shell terminal.

Does anybody have a writable file share from the Mac working with an E3000? At present my options for getting video onto the E3000 drive are to take it off and directly plug it into the Mac or to use ftp.

[rmsutton]

I have been able to successfully read and write to a 640GB Western Digital USB Powered Passport HD via the Samba protocol on the E3000 with both my MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and my HP Notebook running Windows 7.

After many failed attempts at attempting to utilize an NTFS partition, I finally decided to format the entire drive as one 640GB FAT32 partition using the routers web-based GUI. From there on it was really easy to get things up and running. I was able to read and write from the NAS from all machines on my network and all was good.

In Finder, I was able to connect to the drive by connecting to smb://192.168.1.1 and then selected the share I wanted to mount followed by entering the credentials I had previously configured via the E3000 web UI. Connecting to the NAS from Windows 7 was a break as it showed up as a network device.

Due to the limitations of the FAT32 file system I then decided to give NTFS another go. I created an ISO image of the drives contents using UltraISO and reformatted the drive as NTFS via Windows 7. I then extracted the contents of the ISO onto the newly formatted NTFS drive and [with my fingers crossed] plugged it into my E3000. Surprisingly, the E3000 recognized the drive immediately and I was able to pickup where I left off. I then realized that the reason why the E3000 wasn't recognizing my drive the first time around was because the drive was missing a crucial file that is used to define everything from users, groups, permissions and shares over Samba, UPnP and FTP. The critical file is titled '.storage_info' and it sits in the root of the drive. The contents of the configuration file must match the directory structure of the drive or the E3000 will complain so it's important to keep this file and the directory structure intact.

Having said that; I have since been struggling with my NTFS setup. Everything seems to be working well from within Windows, but for some reason strange things happen when I try to update my iTunes library (which is stored on the NAS) from my MacBook.

More specifically, when I try to download updates for apps that I have purchased, iTunes will download the new version of the app to the NAS properly, but immediately after it copies the downloaded app from the "…iTunes/iTunes Music/Downloads/..." directory to the "…iTunes/iTunes Music/Mobile Applications/..." folder the "Mobile Applications" folder disappears and all remaining downloads just sit in the "Downloads" directory and never get copied. Also, when I browse to the share via FInder on my MacBook or via Windows Explorer on my PC, I can see that the "Mobile Applications" directory is missing. It is only after I close iTunes, dismount (or disconnect) from the share and perform a manual 'Scan' from the E3000 web UI does the directory reappear.

This is really driving my off the wall. I have been trying to figure out what is causing this directory to disappear for the past few days and I'm really starting to wonder why I didn't just by an Apple Time Capsule to begin with. Ultimately, the total cost of the router and drive were (at the time) equivalent to the cost of a 1TB Time Capsule! 

If I can't sort this out anytime soon, I'll be forced to retreat to my prior FAT32 configuration which, seemed to work well, but prevented me from performing full a PC backup in Windows 7 due to the 4GB file size limitations of the FAT32 file system.

If anyone can shed some light on what exactly is going on here it would be greatly appreciated.

[maciiman]

I finally got my Seagate 1.5TB Freeagent drive to work with the E3000. However, it's not a work around that will be available to everyone and I'm not sure why it worked. Here are the steps I've attempted and what finally worked for me:

1. I reformatted the hard drive on Windows 7 using NTFS but it won't mount.

2. I tried updating the firmware with the Tomato USB GUI (http://tomatousb.org/start) but that didn't work either.

3. I tried reformatting as Fat32 and it still won't mount.

4. Finally, I reformatted it back to NTFS using a Mac running the Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X (http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/) software. (WIthout this software, you will not be able to write to a NTFS drive or reformat as NTFS on a Mac). After doing this, the drive mounted! I don't know why it worked but it worked!

(For those who just have a Windows computer, who knows, maybe it's the back and forth from NTFS to Fat32 and back to NTFS that made it to work. Give it a try anyway as it appears to have worked for the previous contributor.)

For Mac users, I suggest you purchase the Paragon software anyway if you have NTFS drives in the home. Without it, like I said, you will not be able to write to an NTFS drive. (For those who were successful getting an NTFS drive mounted, it's not the E3000's fault that your Mac can't write to it. It's because Mac OS does not have built in support to write to an NTFS drive.)

Also for Mac users, the drive did not auto discover so I had to manually connect (Go to Finder and type in Command + K) and type in server:

smb://192.168.1.1

As for the transfer speed performance, true it's slower. I tried a relatively large file and getting about 5.5MB/sec. In comparison, copying from a gigabit ethernet computer to a WD Media NAS drive connected to the router I was getting around 26MB/sec transfer rate. Nevertheless, it's fast enough to stream bluray quality movies to my WD Media Player connected through a Powerline Ethernet.

I hope this works for others.