the format of your HDD is one of these: ntfs/fat32/exfat/hfs+?
does it have external power supply? if not, make sure power required is not over 500mA for USB 2.0 port.
may be a compatibility issue, contact tplink support to verify.

Yes, it is NTFS. And yes has external power.

The issue is that the HDD goes into sleep mode after 30 mins of idle and when it comes up again is seen as a new hdd by the router OS. So it changes it's letter - switches between sda1 and sdb1. And for some strange, stupid reason the share includes the drive name so the share name changes aswell. Which is very annoying.

For now i disabled the sleep mode and apparently it fixes the problem BUT it means that the hdd will be running 100% of the time. Not sure i want that. Any solution to NOT have the drive name IN the share name?

i don't know what names you are talking. But i know we change the network/media server name in the web interface. And it looks that we are not able to change drive name as there is no place saying that in the web page.

Shield101 wrote

i don't know what names you are talking. But i know we change the network/media server name in the web interface. And it looks that we are not able to change drive name as there is no place saying that in the web page.

I'm talking about the name of the share. Check the print screen, you will see an sda1 in the name. And that's exactly what i want: to change the name of the share so it doesn't include sdx1.

i don't know how to change it.
you may contact tp-link support for help.