For anyone else who is scouring the internet to get their TP-Link Router & USB drive to function as a NAS...... I have a WD HDD and the solution that finally got it to work was to do a quick format...

@ArcherC8 Yeah, I scoured the forums and none of their solutions worked..... there's ONE I haven't tried yet and that's to reformat the drive and try again. Currently copying the data from the drive...

I'm trying to use my router to share a 5gb external hdd between myself and my wife. I can see the HDD and modify the options via the web UI... I can also open up media that exists on the drive....