How do I access an external hard drive plugged into my router?

Question

I am running Ubuntu 11.10 and I own a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router with a USB port built into it. Naturally, the router came with instructions on how to mount and view this drive with both Windows and Mac, but nothing about Linux. I have an WD Elements 1 TB external HDD that I would like to plug into the router and share across my home network. However, when I plug it in, absolutely nothing happens on my desktop.

I checked on two different machines and nothing seems to indicate that the drive has been mounted (or is even seen at all) on either machine. I am fully aware that it may not be possible to do this with a Linux system, but I was hoping someone might have a suggestion.

Solution 1

I have this same router and just figured out how to access an external drive via Ubuntu. I wrote a blog post with the details but here's the short version:

1. Install the smbfs package (sudo aptitude install smbfs).
2. Create a directory in which to mount your external hard drive (e.g., sudo mkdir /media/public).
3. Add a line to the file /etc/fstab (gksudo gedit /etc/fstab) - at the end of the file add this line: //192.168.1.1/USB_Storage /media/public smbfs guest 0 0
4. Save your newly updated fstab file then remount your drives (sudo mount -a); you should now be able to see your new external drive at /media/public.

Solution 2

As of 10/23/2012
You need CIFS not SAMBA :

1. sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
2. Add //192.168.1.1/USB_Storage /media/public cifs guest 0 0 to your /etc/fstab

I would not have gotten this far without the original answer so thank you.

Solution 3

Do you know your router's IP address? (usually 192.168.1.1, but it may vary).

Open a File Browser (Nautilus) window, then press Ctrl+L and in the location bar that appears type

smb://192.168.1.1

that may give you access to the disk, which is usually published to the network via the SMB protocol.

Solution 4

Good instructions above to make the disk visible, but however, if you want to make it writable for the user, you have to define it with the uid & gid options in your mount command. To find out the uid (numerical User ID) & gid (numerical group ID) of your user, you can use the command:

id <user>

Then note the values in uid= and gid= -fields. Once done, you can test it by giving the following command:

sudo mount -o nosuid,uid=<insert uid here>,gid=<insert gid here> //192.168.1.1/USB_Storage/ /media/public/

If your disk is now writeable, then you can add the same permissions in the fstab entry:

//192.168.1.1/USB_Storage/ /media/public/ cifs guest,uid=<insert uid here>,gid=<insert gid here> 0 0

EDIT: Confirming that this works on a hard drive plugged with USB into a D-LINK DIR-868L (ubuntu 14.04). Instead of USB_Storage you should use the device's name, which can be found on web GUI of the router (Setup -> Storage ->Device). Dont forget to check the IP address as well (it may not be 192.168.1.1).

Solution 5

I have had similar issues with router a year ago. "roadmr" has a great potential solution, but there is a slight chance you might be on 192.168.0.1

in which case you would enter smb://192.168.0.1 (or other depending on your ip)

...although the most common would be 192.168.1.1 as "roadmr" suggested.

Apologies if you have already tried this, but... enter the terminal and type ifconfig.

---

This will display your IP information

I'm fairly new to Linux, but have worked with networks for a bit, so I just wanted to throw it out there to you that 192.168.1.1 might not be your IP, as I set my router to a more ambiguous IP, or I hide the network altogether.

View more solutions

Comments

[Bruno Pereira]

Can you add some commands to your question describing the instructions give to mount the drive under Windows?

[Medya]

I do exactly what you said and I get this error "mount: unknown filesystem type 'smbfs'", to fix it I had to use cifs instead of smbfs

[Medya]

Thank you this is the correct answer to this question, since cifs replaced smaba !

[answerSeeker]

Hello, my home computer has a guest user with no password. If i wanted to exclude that user from seeing my Network drive what should I do? Im using a similar router with 2TB of storage. Should've bought 4TB one :(

[answerSeeker]

sudo mount -o nosuid,uid=<insert uid here>,gid=<insert gid here> //192.168.1.1/USB_Storage/ /media/public/ won't mount under public but under media

[John Rose]

I don't understand the 'Unable to find suitable address' below: john@Desktop:~$ sudo mount -o nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000 //192.168.1.1/ExternalHDD/ /media/Public/ Password for root@//192.168.1.1/ExternalHDD/: Unable to find suitable address. Any ideas why? PS I get this message irrespective of the password that I type.

[minto]

In my case USB flash drive patch is visible via smb URL smb://192.168.1.1/USB_Drive_Storage_Media, but can not be opened (inactive).

[m4l490n]

how would you do this without modifying fstab? I mean, what's the complete mount command?

[Admin]

This worked for me to connect to the drive, a normal USB SSD connected to a Linksys router, but (X)Ubuntu drops the connection every minute or so. Getting really tired of Ubuntu lately, Why will it not maintain a connection during file transfer from the external drive???