External HD Storage

boofredlay

I have a Linksys E3200 wireless router that has a USB port for a printer or storage device. A friend came over this weekend with a spare TB drive he was going to give me so we plugged it in and the router would not recognize it. We then plugged it into my XP machine which it recognized but my Win7 machine would not. Odd but ok, it is an older storage device.

So we did a search to see what was compatible with the E3200 wireless and found this list.
That is a short list considering what is available on the market! I was hoping for more options.
However this site I just found suggests it only has to be formatted FAT32/NTFS.
So could we reformat that drive? I have to ask him how it was formatted, we did not check.

I was going to use the router's USB for a backup on our two machines (and eventually on my daughters laptop). Now I am not so sure due to the limited options with that router. What if I get a new router a couple years from now and it is not compatible?

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

MtnArch

I formatted a generic TB drive that I put in an external USB case through my Linksys (E3000) and had nothing but problems - it wouldn't connect, it would say it was full (of WHAT?), etc. I finally plugged the drive into my computer directly and reformatted it. Plugged it into the Linksys, brought up the Linksys configuration page and shared the drive - read it correctly (size, etc.), can read and write to it, etc. I think I did reformat it in NFTS - but don't recall (and I'm not at home to check it right now).

Gaieus

Now I may be a complete computer illiterate but as far as I remember, if you format it in FAT, it is compatible with Mac and stuff (so for a mobile HD it may be good if you end up at a buddy's that is a Mac user) BUT that system cannot handle large files (I think over 2Gb so a DVD iso file would already be too big to copy).
This is the time when it reports that there is no space on the drive (just did to me the other day with a friend who had a HD crash and I was helping with saving data)

If you format it in NTFS, it will be Windows only but can handle anything you throw at it.

boofredlay

Thanks guys.

MtnArch

I just powered up the USB external drive and I DID format it in NTFS. That should make things a little easier for you now, Eric!

boofredlay

Thanks Alan. Unfortunately my friend took it back with him as we did not think it would work. He will be out of town for a week or so before I can try to reformat.