Member Avatar for sm.amudhan

I have one Wifi Modem router with 4LAN ports,1 USB ports and a Wifi antenna...I run Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit on one computer and Ubuntu 11.04 on the laptop..I want to use an external USB drive as my network drive.The make and model of the hard-drive is "Transcend storejet 25P(320GB)" I have accidentally deleted the storejet software and now i want to use that as a network drive...Plugging it simply into the modem's USB port won't work,I use the modem my ISP has provided me with..I want to use this network drive as i don't have a PC that is on 24/7.. I should be able to access this drive via Wifi as well..."HOW DO I ACCOMPLISH THIS??"

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!!

(P.S.--I don't want to spend any money on this)

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A few practical points to resolve the immediate question about password protection and to get the drive visible to both Windows and Ubuntu.

FAT32 itself has no user accounts or passwords; any access control must be provided by the network service that exports the filesystem (for example Samba/SMB or an FTP server). If your router's USB feature presents a network share and it supports user accounts, that service can require credentials. If the router only exposes an unauthenticated "guest" share, reformatting the disk will not add password protection — the share provider must do that. was right to point at router compatibility as the first thing to check.

If you can run a small always-on Linux box (an inexpensive spare PC, or a small single-board computer), the standard way is Samba. Minimal Samba example for an authenticated share:

[SharedUSB]
   path = /mnt/usb
   browseable = yes
   read only = no
   valid users = alice
   create mask = 0664
   directory mask = 0775

Add the Samba user with: sudo smbpasswd -a alice

Mount from Ubuntu:

sudo mount -t cifs //ROUTER_OR_SERVER_IP/SharedUSB /mnt/share -o username=alice

Map from Windows:

net use Z: \\ROUTER_OR_SERVER_IP\SharedUSB /user:alice

Troubleshooting checklist before reformatting or flashing firmware: 1) backup all data (formatting erases everything); 2) test the drive directly on a PC to confirm it spins up and does not require an external power source (many portable drives need more current than a router USB provides); 3) check the router admin UI and logs for any USB/storage options; 4) if the router lacks authenticated shares, your options are either to run a server that provides Samba/FTP, or to install compatible third-party firmware (only if the model is supported and you are comfortable with the risk). Also note FAT32 has a 4GB single-file limit and no permission model — fine for simple storage but limiting for large files or secure multi-user setups.

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Member Avatar for sm.amudhan

I have one Wifi Modem router with 4LAN ports,1 USB ports and a Wifi antenna...I run Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit on one computer and Ubuntu 11.04 on the laptop..I want to use an external USB drive as my network drive.The make and model of the hard-drive is "Transcend storejet 25P(320GB)" I have accidentally deleted the storejet software and now i want to use that as a network drive...Plugging it simply into the modem's USB port won't work,I use the modem my ISP has provided me with..I want to use this network drive as i don't have a PC that is on 24/7.. I should be able to access this drive via Wifi as well..."HOW DO I ACCOMPLISH THIS??"

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!!

(P.S.--I don't want to spend any money on this)

I also want to access the drive when the PC is off also..

Member Avatar for rubberman

What are the specs for this drive - size, partitions, formatting, etc? What do the modem/router's docs say about plugging in USB drives?

Member Avatar for sm.amudhan

The specs are:
Transcend storejet 25P
320GB
1 Partition(usable 297GB)
Formatting NTFS

There isn't anything about plugging in a usb harddrive in the modem's docs.

(P.S. I don't mind re-formatting the drive to a different file system)

Member Avatar for rubberman

My guess is that the router will not deal with NTFS file systems. Try reformatting to either fat-32, or ext2 or ext3. Most consumer routers run a variant of Linux, for which ext2, ext3, or possibly xfs or jfs support is built into the OS. So, try ext2. If that works, then try ext3 (more efficient, faster to recover from crashes). If either of those work, then try xfs and/or jfs. The ext3, xfs, and jfs file systems are journaled file systems that recover quickly from system failures. I have embedded systems that support jfs, and NAS arrays that support xfs. Anyway, changing the file system is a fast operation (relatively), so testing all of these to see what works should not be an unreasonable exercise, and informative. If all of the Linux-capable besides fat-32 don't work, then use fat-32, which while fine for simple data storage, doesn't support Linux user/group/permission metadata so you can't execute programs from it, for example.

Edited by rubberman because: n/a
Member Avatar for sm.amudhan

I'm planning to format it to FAT32 but will I be able to password protect the access and access it on Ubuntu(11.04 Classic desktop) and windows(7 Ultimate 64 bit)....

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