Archer A20 : USB Sharing Drive Detection
I have searched and read several posts on several sites about the Archer WiFi Routers not detecting an attached USB drive.
I just resolved this problem for myself recently and wanted to share how I resolved it, in the hopes it helps someone else.
My Solution: Change the drive label to a shorter name.
OK, I am not 100% sure if this was the problem or if I just got lucky. The drive is not detected once again, and I am not going to risk losing the detection with more experimentation.
Details if you care...
My drive: Seagate Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 ( 7.27 GB formatted )
File System : NTFS.
Externally powered.
For a long time I had this drive connected to my router. I wrote to it regularly with nightly back up routines. Everything worked fine.
I then disconnect the drive to connect it directly to my laptop to copy files off another USB drive and do it more quickly.
I then reconnected the drive to the WiFi router and it could no longer detect it.
I tried: Reboots, different power-up sequence, reconnect to PC and run DSKCHK / repair errors, ...
I tried a different cable.
TRULY STRANGE: My Seagate has a USB connection in the rear, and two USB ports on the front to attach additional drives. So... I connected a 1.5TB Western Digital "My Passport" which get the power through the USB cable. The AC20 detected the Western Digital drive, but not the Seagate. I concluded the cables, both of them, must be good.
I then reconnected the Seagate back to a PC, and scanned for errors again. Confirmed it was NTFS. Confirmed the AC20 supported NTFS. It does and I did not reformat the drive so how would it have changed. I then noticed the drive label looked much longer than I remembered. Did I change it when I first connected it to the laptop? I don't know, but I may have. I changed it again to 11 characters and reconnected to the AC20. Logged into the router and viola, the drive was detected.
So my question to TP-Link is : "What is the maximum drive label length supported by the Archer AC20 for an NTFS drive?"