@SirDigital  well I had hoped to keep the router, but accessing USB storage on the router is more important than using a TP Link router. My whole family needs to access the storage. I hate to have to purchase yet another router, next time i'll check out USB storage while return policy is active. 

Agreed... also I now check to see if 3rd party firmware is supported as a lot of these big companies do not patch their firmware once the router gets to be a year or so old. That and I like to take control of my devices to see what is really going on. I was in IT for 1/2 my life so that might have something to do with it... or it's my OCD.. :-)

Well, I installed this 3rd party firmware DD-WRT v3.0 - r40559 std (08/06/19) and it fixed the issue.

@Supem unfortunately the Model: Archer C1200 does not work with any 3rd party firmware or believe me that would have been the first thing I did with it. 

@Supem what tp link router are you using that you were ableto load the 3rd party firmware?  I'm using Archer AX 50  ver. 1.0 with  TP link firmware 1.0.9 build 20200708 rel 55037(5553).  How did you back up TP link firmware?  I assume you deleted TP link firmware and installed 3rd party?  Or, is there a dual boot option? 

@Hawaii-5-0 My model is,

I think we can download the TP-Link firmware form their website if we need to re-install it.

  @SirDigital Have the same issue with my TPlink AC4000. Intermittent disconnections on USB drives. Always have to login to the router and do a re-scan, then the drives become accessible again for a few hours. Scheduled a weekly re-boot of router, USB 5TB drives lasted a day or so, then inaccessible again, had to re-scan. Really annoying, until I tried one last thing -- Disable the Media Sharing . And it worked! USB drives have been up a week and counting, drives completely accessible by my Kodi players across several devices (firesticks, chrome, pc's), plus file access across the network. The only thing you lose is if you are using those built in multi media players in some tv's , which are totally lame anyways(hence Kodi). YMMV but worth trying. Good luck.

  @ErehWon Thanks I will give that a try and will see how it works on my AX50!

  @ErehWon i can't believe it would be as simple as turning off media sharing, but hey, i've had this problem now for years, so might as well try it. I'll reply back here if it works. I will say, to date, with media sharing turned on, i couldn't even do a 'rescan' of the usb storage device. after a day or so, I'd lose access to the storage device and would have to unplug it for the router to see it again. Again, i'll let you know if this process fixes the problem.   thanks.