Help me access my external hard drive through my wireless router

July 22, 2011 3:49 PM

Why is my wireless router WZR-HP-G300NH not mounting my USB External HD? I'm trying to access my Western Digital My Passport SE external hard drive through the wifi connection on the router. I have it plugged into the USB port on the router and it is powering on, but not mounting. What have I done wrong? How can I get this to work? Does anyone know how to go about accessing the hard drive files once it is mounting properly? I'll be using my MacBook to access the files and would like to stream my movies wirelessly from the external HD.

Firmware: DD-WRT v24SP2-EU-US (08/19/10) std

--- /dev/discs/disc0/disc
Block device, size 931.5 GiB (1000170586112 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 931.5 GiB (1000170585600 bytes, 1953458175 sectors from 1)
Type 0xEE (EFI GPT protective)
GPT partition map, 128 entries
Disk size 931.5 GiB (1000170586112 bytes, 1953458176 sectors)
Disk GUID BC8C37B5-06EA-B54D-9871-90F0A8FF4D31
Partition 1: 200 MiB (209715200 bytes, 409600 sectors from 40)
Type EFI System (FAT) (GUID 28732AC1-1FF8-D211-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B)
Partition Name "EFI System Partition"
Partition GUID 514C0FA9-D177-2A48-89E7-16EE5BEB8E5E
FAT32 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
Volume size 196.9 MiB (206472192 bytes, 403266 clusters of 512 bytes)
Volume name "EFI"
Partition 2: 931.2 GiB (999826612224 bytes, 1952786352 sectors from 409640)
Type Mac HFS+ (GUID 00534648-0000-AA11-AA11-00306543ECAC)
Partition Name "Untitled"
Partition GUID F88965AE-5A17-1F42-BC9D-0AC715DF3588
Partition 3: unused
Status: Not mounted 

These are the options I have enabled and disabled.

USB Support
Core USB Support
Enable
USB 1.1 Support (UHCI)
Disable
USB 1.1 Support (OHCI)
Disable
USB 2.0 Support
Enable
USB Printer Support
Disable
USB Storage Support
Enable
ext2 / ext3 File System Support
Enable
FAT File System Support
Enable
Automatic Drive Mount
Enable
Run-on-mount Script Name
Disk Mount Point
/mnt

posted by thatgirl1985 to technology (9 answers total)

"DD-WRT doesn't have any tools to format an HDD, so you must have an preformatted HDD in a format that DD-WRT can understand (FAT32, EXT3, etc.)" (link)

I'm not sure what "etc." entails, but I suspect the file format of your drive (Mac standard HFS+) is not compatible with sharing. OS X can read/write FAT32, however, if you decide to reformat.
posted by sharkfu at 4:00 PM on July 22, 2011

Can you post the contents of your /etc/fstab, and the output of "df -a"?

Your router clearly sees it, it might just not have mounted it.
posted by pla at 4:00 PM on July 22, 2011

Wait... On a closer re-reading, have you enabled HFS support? If not, do so; If it doesn't have HFS support, you may just need to reformat the drive as FAT32 or EXT3 (getting anything you want to keep off it first).
posted by pla at 4:02 PM on July 22, 2011

sharkfu beat me to it. :)
posted by pla at 4:03 PM on July 22, 2011

Yeah, DD-WRT only reads either ext2/3 or FAT32.
posted by sharkfu at 4:04 PM on July 22, 2011

The problem is that the drive is formatted with Apple's HFS+ filesystem. You'll have to reformat the drive as FAT32 to use it with your router (it only supports FAT and ext2/3 filesystems). If you have files on the drive already, you'll have to move them to another location such as on your computer before reformatting. To reformat, in Disk Utility, erase the drive with the MS-DOS (FAT) volume format.

As for accessing the files on the drive, you have the DD-WRT (Professional) firmware installed, and getting drive sharing set up on DD-WRT isn't exactly easy. You're probably better off installing the "Buffalo (User-Friendly)" firmware (available here). Then in that firmware you can enable sharing on the NAS tab in the router's web interface (manual). Then your router should show up as a network computer in your Mac's Finder.
posted by zsazsa at 4:04 PM on July 22, 2011

Thank everyone for your help.

Zsazsa, I flashed the router with user-friendly firmware, but I was unable to get it working. The firmware was very glitchy. I will revert back to the professional DD-WRT firmware. It's easier to make sure my settings are all correct on it.

I found easier instructions for the Samba configuration here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Buffalo_WZR-HP-G300NH

To reformat the hard drive, all i need to do is open it with Disk Utility, Erase the drive with MS-DOS Fat volume format and that's it?

How do I access the samba configured drive on the network using my Macbook?

Thank you so much for your awesome advice. You're the only person who explained everything.
posted by thatgirl1985 at 6:46 PM on July 22, 2011

Once you have Samba set up, the router will show up in Finder under "Shared" in the left sidebar, like this. In that screenshot, "portola" is the name of my samba server, and it has a share called "media" on it.

Good luck! Those Samba instructions look much better.
posted by zsazsa at 9:27 PM on July 22, 2011

Got it mounted.

See below:

--- /dev/discs/disc0/disc
Block device, size 931.5 GiB (1000170586112 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 200.0 MiB (209735168 bytes, 409639 sectors from 1)
Type 0xEE (EFI GPT protective)
Partition 2: 931.3 GiB (999958773760 bytes, 1953044480 sectors from 411648)
Type 0x0B (Win95 FAT32)
FAT32 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
Volume size 931.1 GiB (999714684928 bytes, 30508871 clusters of 32 KiB)
Volume name "TGM"
GPT partition map, 128 entries
Disk size 931.5 GiB (1000170586112 bytes, 1953458176 sectors)
Disk GUID D7021D24-C063-3E4E-B7C3-F26BEF649EEC
Partition 1: 200 MiB (209715200 bytes, 409600 sectors from 40)
Type EFI System (FAT) (GUID 28732AC1-1FF8-D211-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B)
Partition Name "EFI System Partition"
Partition GUID CC479182-240F-1E46-A8F5-D36BD3CCBBA9
FAT32 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
Volume size 196.9 MiB (206472192 bytes, 403266 clusters of 512 bytes)
Volume name "EFI"
Partition 2: 931.3 GiB (999958773760 bytes, 1953044480 sectors from 411648)
Type Basic Data (GUID A2A0D0EB-E5B9-3344-87C0-68B6B72699C7)
Partition Name "Untitled"
Partition GUID 652685D6-869B-5148-8ED2-D46EE3C0A1C1
FAT32 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
Volume size 931.1 GiB (999714684928 bytes, 30508871 clusters of 32 KiB)
Volume name "TGM"
Partition 3: unused
Status: Mounted on /mnt


BUT...I still cannot see the Samba share under Finder on my Mac.

This is the Samba config I copied and pasted into the startup script window on my router GUI.

# Stop samba service
killall smbd
killall nmbd
sleep 2

# Configure samba
mkdir -p /tmp/etc/samba
echo "
[global]
netbios name = DD-WRT
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = DD-WRT
syslog = 10
obey pam restrictions = yes
socket options = TCP_NODELAY
preferred master = no
os level = 20

security = share
guest account = nobody
invalid users = root, mail, deamon, reboot
null passwords = yes
guest only = yes
map to guest = Bad User

private dir = /tmp/etc/samba/
lock directory = /var/lock/
pid directory = /var/run/

unix charset = UTF-8
dos charset = UTF-8
map archive = No
map hidden = No
map system = No

[Share]
path = /mnt/
read only = no
create mask = 0700
directory mask = 0700
" > /tmp/etc/samba/smb.conf

# Add user for samba
# guest user
grep -q nobody /etc/passwd || echo 'nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/mnt:/bin/false' >> /etc/passwd

# Start samba service
SMBOPTIONS="-s /tmp/etc/samba/smb.conf"
/usr/sbin/smbd $SMBOPTIONS
/usr/sbin/nmbd $SMBOPTIONS

What could be the problem?
posted by thatgirl1985 at 8:26 AM on July 23, 2011