External Harddrive as Home Server (Newbie question)
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I tried to select "Archer C5", but apparently that option isn't available.
Anyway, I'm new to this stuff. I plugged a Toshiba 2TB external hard drive into my Archer C5 v4 00000004 router. I could access everything just fine from my computer and other devices. Then I installed FileZilla and went in and renamed a few folders, created a few others, and uploaded a few photos and videos from my phone into those folders. None of my devices are seeing the updated content.
I can login to the router via tplink and see all of that content. I can connect with filezilla and see all of the content that I added. But my VLC player doesn't see it. My Videos app on my phone doesn't see it, and when I open the Home Server folder on my computer, it still looks as it did before I made any changes.
I could only find one post online about this, and they said that they discovered that it would create a cache image, and that until that was deleted or updated, it will continuously be used instead of a direct reference to the content on the drive. I don't know if that's true, but I can't find any way to locate this image to delete it.
Does anyone know what can be done about this? I don't want to continuously plug the hard drive into my computer to keep resetting it, when the entire purpose of plugging it directly into the router was to avoid having to use my computer. Is that cache stored on each individual device, and none of them are updating? Or is it something that is stored on the router, or harddrive?
Sorry for the newbie post.
Usually the USB drive has a 'catalog' on it. That should be updated as files are added/changed.
My Archer A20 has these folder on the USB drive connected to it:
The .TPDLNA folder should have a timestamp for the last update. Note that folder is a Hidden folder.
If it isn't updated to match the last change to the drive, remove the drive (safely via the Browser GUI) and plug it in again, it should rebuild the catalog files.
Two other possibilities I guess:
- You might need PERMISSIONS using Windows Credentials to access the media
- If you have a PASSWORD required for the drive, application, line VLC can't handle that and the drive is to have no password on it. I had to do that so I could use VLC as the DLNA client on my iPad. On my Windows PC I have a Windows Credential for the router IP Address and I can use VLC on it even if the drive was Password protected.