Netgear Nighthawk R7800 - attached USB thumbdrive contents "vanish"

bxg

Distinguished
Nov 29, 2006
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18,510
Hi, have a new Netgear Nighthawk R7800 router with which I am generally VERY pleased, but I have two questions. I have attached a generic USB "thumbdrive" to one of the two router USB ports and a powered Seagate Free Agent hard drive to the other USB port. The Free Agent holds tons of files that my wife and I want to be able to access from our individual computers, including Quicken data files. The thumbdrive is small, and is just there for the Quicken backup files, which I want on a separate media in case the Segate Free Agent should fail. I used the NetGear ReadyShare app, and I mapped both drives to reconnect automatically (Windows 10)

Two questions:
1) Everything is golden ….. then, after a while, the plain old thumbdrive "vanishes". Rather, it shows connected in Windows File Explorer, but none of the folders/files are accessible. If I reboot the router, they show up again, and are usable, but only for a while. By contrast, the Seagate drive goes weeks and weeks and (after some latency to power up when accessed) always works. Instead of a thumbdrive, do I need something that is smart enough to "wake on LAN" or something like that? (I have tried 2 different brand, different size thumb drives, with the same result)

2) Does anyone know if I can attach a powered USB 3.0 hub to one of the router USB ports and have ReadyShare be able to see all the connected devices? Reason, I would like to connect 3 devices to the 2 USB ports on the router: 1) printer, 2) the Free Agent powered hard drive, and 3) a second USB drive for the Quicken backup files

Any thoughts/suggestions are most appreciated
bruce
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Thoughts and suggestions:

This - " If I reboot the router, they show up again, and are usable, but only for a while"...

Any sense of the time involved with respect to "a while"?

You may be able to discover the time involved via Reliability History/Manager logs on one of the computer's set up to access the Router USB drive.

Some informational event or even an error code or warning that occurs with respect to the old thumb drives vanishing act?

Just for the record: is that drive set up to be remotely accessed via the internet?

Do you have the User Manual for the Nighthawk R7800?

If not, I found this link:

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/R7800/R7800_UM_EN.pdf

Take a close look at Chapter 8 (Page 101) regarding USB drives, requirements, sharing, etc. Could be something in the proverbial "fine print" that is causing the problem.

And the router's logs may be helpful (Page 94 of the User Manual).