USB drive support

eghuff wrote: The G10 has 2 USB 3 ports.  I had a 2T NTFS drive attached to one port and it seemed to work OK.  I tried to attach an additional 6T NTFS drive and the router UI becomes unresponsive.  I can hear the 6T drive seeking, so something is going on.  What are the restrictions on the drive size and formatting supported.  The manusa just says it supports NTFS as a file system, but says nothing about MBR versus GPT style format support. Also does the G10 support USB hubs attached via the USB ports?

The specifications don't include any specs or limitations on drive size/capacity. Formatting/partitioning type should make no difference, since the interface between the router and external drive is USB, so anything like AHCI, RAID, etc is not communicated via USB. Whatever format the source drive data is, it is converted to USB's packet format, and transmitted to the router. Since the external drive's enclosure/system is converting the disk's format to USB, the requirements of the external drive system would be the only limitation.

Regardless, this router supports exFAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3 and EXT4. exFAT or EXT2/3/4 is recommended for the best performance.

Do your external drives have their own power supplies, or do they draw power from the USB port?

Nothing in the specs state anything about USB hubs. All a hub would do is provide multiple USB inputs, but I would expect the USB 3.0 specs for one USB 3.0 port would be the maximum IO capability.

The 12V 3Aamp (36 Watt) power supply for the router, which is shared with the router circuitry and not strictly available to the USB ports, will limit the power available to connected USB devices. Meaning I would not expect the router to be able to power higher power usage USB devices by itself.

There are several firmware updates for your router, that include improved external HDD compatibility. Have you ever updated the firmware?

https://www.asrock.com/Networking/G10/support.html#Firmware