Clive wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The aim is to make my main storage device visible on my home windows
> network.
> I am having mixed results attaching a USB hard drive to a BT Home hub
> router
>
> The router has a USB A And USB B socket - intended for attaching a USB
> printer. However, I have had success attaching one of my USB hard
> drives (40GB) and see the drive through Windows XP network
>
> The parameters come up something like
>
> Windows network: BT
> Server name : Thomson
> Drive Name bt_7g
>
> I can map the drive to a drive letter (say S) and read and write any
> files to this 40GB device
>
> However, when I try other devices including a Western Digitial 250GB
> drive - none of the others are accessible from Windows XP - various
> dialog boxes come up with messages like "device not found" when I
> click through the windows explorer tree to get to the files on the
> drive.
>
> All the USB attached drives are formatted as FAT32 devices. I have
> tried making the FAT32 partition on the WD drive smaller (90GB).
> However the only drive that works is the 40GB drive (an iRiver H340
> mp3 player in fact). The notes I have read on attaching USB drives to
> the HOme Hub say that only FAT32 formatted drives are visible on the
> Home Hub router.
>
> I don't want to leave the iRiver H340 attached to the router - as it
> is a portable device. I want to attach the WD250GB drive to the router
> and leave it there so it is accessible from any device on the network.
>
> Anything else I can try to make the WD250GB visible on the windows
> network?
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Clive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Home_Hub
"Undocumented features
The Home Hub includes a USB-A port which has no documented function.
It has been found that some devices (such as printers and USB mass storage
devices) connected to this port can be shared on that Hub's network.
Storage devices (hard disks and thumb drives) must be formatted to
FAT32, and hard disk drives must have an external power supply. For
hard disks, simply map a drive letter to either \\192.168.1.253\bt_7g
on v1 and v1.5 hubs, or \\192.168.1.253\Disk_a1 on V2.0 hubs.
All versions of the Home Hub V1, V1.5 and V2.0 have the USB-A port
which can be used for hard drives, but the V2.0 no longer has a USB-B
port for connecting to the PC. Ethernet must now be used."
BT source code related to Linux inside the hub.
http://www.btyahoo.com/broadband/adh...s/gplcode.html
So there is no statement in the Wikipedia article, as to what the FAT32
limit would be.
Is there any way to access the internal Linux ? It is unlikely
to support Telnet, but maybe you could search around and see
if there is some way to hack into the hub.
If you want another way to do this, you can purchase one of the
NAS enclosures that are now available. They connect via Ethernet,
and they too have size limits. But this is a way to do something
similar with a separate box. At least one of these boxes, has
a 200GB or so limitation. So each review needs to be checked
for what people have determined is the size limit.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Subcategory=92
A local store was offering some no-name generic NAS boxes for less
than $40, but without reviews, it isn't worth the gamble on them.
The store made up their own brand name for them, and Googling
revealed nothing.
Paul
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