USB Capacity and Format Limits?

[doofer]

I bought a 8800NL recently - it's been great so far, and gives a rock-solid connection on my ADSL line. I've had a 16GB memory stick in it that I use for backup/storage but I wanted to increase the storage.

I've bought a 128GB USB stick. This came formatted as ExFAT. When I plugged it into the router it didn't show as having any USB drive connected in the config pages. I then reformatted it as NTFS in my PC, and when I plugged it back in it was recognised, but it's now painfully slow - I'm talking about 200kB/sec write speeds, and Windows reported that the drive was missing at one point. I don't know whether this is just because of the low speed, or perhaps there's a more fundamental issue?

I've benchmarked the USB stick plugged into my PC, and it's clear that it's far faster with ExFAT than it is with NTFS. I understand that this is pretty normal, as NTFS has a lot of overhead involved in writing data (or even just reading it). But I now have a memory stick that won't work with my router, and I doubt it's returnable as it works perfectly fine with Windows.

The Windows format option only allows ExFAT or NTFS - not FAT32. I haven't yet looked at whether FAT32 could be an option - if so then I could use that, although that does give problems with large files.

Is there a way to get ExFAT to work with the 8800NL, or could this ability be added via a firmware update?

Is there an upper limit to the size of USB drive I can use, regardless of the format type?

Thanks very much - I'm otherwise extremely happy with your product.

[doofer]

This is the drive's performance formatted as ExFAT (red=write, green=read)...

Grixx-ExFAT.jpg

This is the same drive formatted as NTFS...

Grixx128.png

So you should be able to understand why NTFS isn't an option for this drive. It's a low-cost drive - I'd be perfectly happy with the ExFAT performance, but it really doesn't work nicely with NTFS. I don't know whether this is expected for a USB drive, or if it's a problem with the drive itself.

[doofer]

I found a free app that formats as FAT32, as Windows it seems won't do more than 32GB as FAT32.

After formatting, performance of this USB drive is still rubbish, so I'm going to return it. Either it only works with ExFAT, or it's just random, but it doesn't work reliably.

It still leaves unanswered questions for Billion though...

Will ExFAT be supported at some point?
Is there a maximum supported drive capacity?

Thanks.

[billion_fan]

I found a free app that formats as FAT32, as Windows it seems won't do more than 32GB as FAT32.

After formatting, performance of this USB drive is still rubbish, so I'm going to return it. Either it only works with ExFAT, or it's just random, but it doesn't work reliably.

It still leaves unanswered questions for Billion though...

Will ExFAT be supported at some point?
Is there a maximum supported drive capacity?

Thanks.

I'll have to check with our engineers and drop you a update in due course

[billion_fan]

I found a free app that formats as FAT32, as Windows it seems won't do more than 32GB as FAT32.

After formatting, performance of this USB drive is still rubbish, so I'm going to return it. Either it only works with ExFAT, or it's just random, but it doesn't work reliably.

It still leaves unanswered questions for Billion though...

Will ExFAT be supported at some point?
Is there a maximum supported drive capacity?

Thanks.

I'll have to check with our engineers and drop you a update in due course

Just got a update from our engineers, the 8800NL will not support ex-fat devices, I don't think we have any plans to implement this feature.

[doofer]

Thanks very much for the reply - as expected really, I know exFAT is a Microsoft-licenced thing.

In the meantime, I got a Verbatim 49189 128GB USB stick, formatted as FAT32 and it's working superbly. So I now have a huge in-house file server that uses no power, which is great.

[billion_fan]

Thanks very much for the reply - as expected really, I know exFAT is a Microsoft-licenced thing.

In the meantime, I got a Verbatim 49189 128GB USB stick, formatted as FAT32 and it's working superbly. So I now have a huge in-house file server that uses no power, which is great.

Thanks great news (power saving is a extra bonus these days)

[doofer]

Years ago, I had an old PC with hard disks chugging away in the loft to provide some network storage space. I think it actually had less space than I now have on a stick of chewing gum plugged into the side of the router! Progress is a very good thing.

On a related note - I've seen that filenames get changed to all lower-case. Is this a feature, or a fault? I haven't investigated in detail, but it only seems to happen with shorter filenames, not long ones. I can't replicate it manually though - I've just tried creating FileNAME.TXT, and it doesn't get changed. But all my photos get changed as they're copied - e.g.DSC04428.JPG became dsc04428.jpg. Any ideas?