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[Elok]

Ok guys, I got a complex problem with my DIR-645 but basically, I have hard time connecting my external Hard Drive to my DIR-645.

First, the Hard drive. I've recently bought a Western Digital My Book Essential 3TB Desktop External Hard Drive. I've formatted the drive in NTFS and I got not problem using it on my computer and other device.

However, when I try to connect the drive in my DIR-645 router, odd problem occurs :

- If I put both the router and the Hard-drive ON and AFTER I plug the hard-drive in the router, my DIR-645 cannot find it. Even if I wait a couple minute, when I try to activate the DLNA (cheking the "Share media libraries with devices" option), I get "No storage Device!" error.

- If if power OFF the router, turn ON the hard-drive, connect the hard-drive on the router and AFTER I turn ON the router (so the router initialize with the hard-drive), The router doesn't boot at all. The wireless and the internet LED doesn't turn on (only the power LED is lid), I cannot access the router setting via 192.168.0.1 BUT the "wired" (not the wireless) connection work. Even the "RESET" button doesn't work! The only way I've found to repair the router at this point is to unplug the hard-drive and turn OFF and ON the router until it boot completely again.
(Important note, this method worked at some point and I was able to use this very hard drive on the DIR-645 and it worked without problem. But not for long and it doesn't work anymore)


Also, I've tried installing the 1.03 firmware and downgraded to 1.02 without success. I got the ver. A1 of the DIR-645 and it came with 1.00 firmware. Also, another very important detail, if I plug my 4GB usb, it work perfectly.

I'm wondering if my Hard-drive is starting to have too many files/folder for the DIR-645 to handle (About half of the Hard-drive is filled). So I've decided to come here for help about way to solve my problem.

Elok

[FurryNutz]

I called DLink support on a semi related issue last year regarding why Shareport doesn't work on Mac OSX with this router and my 2TB WD My Book 2008 when it works with several other DLink routers. They said that they were surprised that the 2TB was working at all in the first place as DLink officially only supports 500Gb drives connected to the USB port. IT's possible that my 2TB USB has 2x 500Gb drives and was set up using RAID and WD utility.  So it has been working. 2TB maybe an upper limit. There have been others with this router and other DIR model routers that there 3TB drives do not work on the USB port. I would recommend finding an alternate way of connecting the USB drive to the network. There maybe other ways to get the 3TB drive to work. Say a USB to NETWORK adapter or put it on a PC that you can leave on all the time and share it out.

DLink said that they would look into the Shareport and Mac problem with the 645 however I don't think we'll see any fixes or support for USB drives 3TB and beyond. An honestly, I prefer not to use a USB drive on the router as we've seen that the behavior on how the router manages to access the drive becomes slow as over time, if users add more and more files to the drive, and the bigger the drive is, the router has to be power cycled and the data on the drive has to be re-cataloged in to the router when files are added. It doesn't re-catalog when adding files for some reason. Having a smaller sized drive or using it for printer connections is preferred. Another reason not to use the USB connection on the router as performance on streaming videos could be affected by router processing and the bottle next of USB 2.0 might not handle the bandwidth of some video files, specially HD video. It would be choppy at best and probably cause video buffers to occur and not be seamless.

I use a dedicated file server to store my video files and it's connected via Gb LAN to my network and Boxee Box for seamless streaming.

Let us know what you decide to go with.