USB drives into routers

Thumb drives vs portable hard drives, though both USB connectable do not function the same in connectivity.

similar to your example a portable hard drive will simply not connect to a super unity and be readable where a USB memory stick is readable...

it's a power use and protocal issue how the data is being called up.

Small USB flash memory is typically formatted with the FAT file system. This is an old and basic file system with some limitations - max 4GB file and a volume limit 2TB or less.  However it's universally supported.

Your new USB drive may be formatted NTFS which is a much more sophisticated journalled file system and probably incompatible with the router. However you could reformat it to FAT with a utility on a PC, be aware you will lose any data currently stored on it.

Separately powered drive will be best.

Although I've noticed that the capability exists, I've never tried to use the built-in upnp streaming function from my router... Are you happy with the way songs are presented for selection (eg with nStream)? Do you hear a difference between putting the USB key into the Qute directly vs streaming?

What NAS did you choose and what upnp server does it run? Lots of folks here have had success on a huge variety of makes and models...

Regards alan

Thanks for the replies, you have all given me something to think about. Regarding the way the powered usb drive is formatted, I should have mentioned that I have a Mac and I assumed as I have a Mac that the drive can only be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I know that they can be reformatted but will doing that prevent me transferring  files from that Mac The thumb drive is FAT 32 formatted. I will need to read more about the differences. With regards to how the songs are presented, I have one drive with Linn downloads complete with artwork which appears to work as it should. I have another with songs from my iTunes folder that should have artwork but try as I might I can't get the artwork part to come up. As far as how it sounds, to my ears, it sounds fine. If you are going to try this option, the router downloaded a small bit of software onto the drive to, as far as could tell, allow the drive to be used this way.

Oldgit I think you have solved.. BTW you can format your ITB drive as FAT32 and your mac should be ok, but is not as efficient with small files

Alan, what router do you have that UPnP streams.. That sounds interesting. Most consumer routers support UPnP for firewall port / address service management, but I have never seen a UPnP media streamer.. That could be interesting to look at. I wonder what server software they use?

Simon

Perhaps I am using loose terminology - is there a difference between UPNP streaming and DLNA? If so, apologies; if not, good to go...

My ISP-supplied router ("Bell Home Hub" here in Canada) is a Sagemcom FAST2864. I also use an Asus RT-N66U as my wireless access point (and wired gig-E switch). Both have DLNA Media Server functions (which can be enabled independently of the basic UPNP management and EZ discovery services like WPS). Looks like other modern routers with USB offer DLNA also, including LinkSys.

No idea if they have an outside company's software or wrote very basic servers...but both are in the firmware and have on/off access from the main web page. The Asus also has a bit of content management available: you can specify scanning of all attached USB drives or choose a top directory for scanning as well as select audio/video/photo content.  

nServe presentation from both here is quite basic and Twonky-like (I say this since it looks like the Twonky server running on my IOmega ix2 NAS; I didn't find a direct port for configuration and 9000 was not open). You start with a basic list: album, all music, artist, folders, genre, playlists. Both served MP3 (copied to USB from my iTunes library, no artwork as reported by Oldgit) and FLAC (copied to USB from my NAS, artwork and all). 

Kinda cool and possibly an easier "get started with streaming" solution than other things we've seen discussed here. 

Regards alan

Alan, I had a quick look at the Asus RT-N66U and indeed it mentions streaming video and music but couldn't see the details.. 

DLNA is an industry association profile of  UPnP Media Streaming specifications to support more consistent   functionality and interoperability for domestic media streaming.

Simon

I have one of the asus model which it towards the top of the tree so may be abit different, pretty sure they enables afp and time machine support. Not sure if its the same on the ops model.

on mine I did have a play and it appears to work fine. Also works wan side for access when outand about   with the minimum of fuss.

i have other solutions in place so took it off, but it certainly had no issues with a usb 3, 2tb model.

Hi folks, I reformatted my 1TBMyBook to the FAT system. I then loaded a few albums from my iTunes library and attached the drive to one of the two USB ports on the back of the Asus router. The router then added some lines of code and it all worked fine. I don't quite understand if the 4GB file limit imposed by the FAT system will have an effect on what I am trying to do. Will it mean that I can only have 4GB of music on the whole drive, or will it mean that I will have lots of 4GB folders?

No album art though, this seems to be not easy to resolve. 

Oldgit you should format as FAT32, which these days is pretty standard. The limit with FAT32.is 1TByte.

Simon

Oldgit 4 gig limit is on single files, however to complicate things that could be a 'package' such as an MKV file, which appears as single file but is really a wrapper for many files.

However within the confines of audio, you will be fine, you can have a folder with 4 gigs in as long as its not a single 4 gig file.

Cheers for that, I will do that. 

Apparently I have done this.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to add album art.

Find the artwork on line as jpg

Put it in the album folder and call it 'folder'