Vodafone Broadband Complete: Cannot write to connected usb hard drive

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Gazza59

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#90431 21-Sep-2011 20:55

I have a Seagate Expansion Portable storage device connected via one of the USB ports on my Vodafone Complete Router. Have mapped network drive as per Vodafone manual. When I try to create folder or move data to hard drive I get message Disc is Write protected. Works fine if I use 2GB USB stick. Anyone have any ideas or solutions.

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Biddle Corp

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#524296 21-Sep-2011 21:17

Is the drive NTFS format? If so what are your user persmissions set to?

loganjames

272 posts

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#524324 21-Sep-2011 22:20

I have the same router same problem. I gave up, brought a NAS instead.

I don't think your doing anything wrong, this router was built to disappoint.

EDIT: Added smiley face to not seem so negative...

dno

1 post

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#524330 21-Sep-2011 22:56

I had the same issue, you can only read from your drive if your drive is formatted as ntfs. To be able to write to it, it needs to be formatted as Fat32

Gazza59

6 posts

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#524331 21-Sep-2011 23:03

Drive is 1TB partioned as three aproximately 320GB discs. Formatted NTFS. I am not sure what my permissions are for the router or how to change them. I have full administrator permission on my windows machine. Running windows vista home premium. I hope I don't sound to stupid, but every thing works properly when I use the 2Gb usb stick.

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#524467 22-Sep-2011 10:17

Try formatting a partition as FAT32 and see if it gets R/W access then.

NonprayingMantis

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#524473 22-Sep-2011 10:25

Kinda sucks that you have to reformat your disk to get it to work. I can only imagine how annoyed I would be if I was hoping to use this but told I had to reformat my 1TB hard drive to do it. The important content (family photos) is backed up of course, but I would still stand to lose a lot of other cool (but non-essential) stuff - movies, music, games, and be forced to reinstall a whole bunch of other stuff from disks or the internet (eating my broadband datacap), unless I go out and buy a new hardrive and transfer everything across.
How come it only works with Fat and not NTFS?

(btw, I checked and my external hard drive is NTFS by default. Is that normal?)

sbiddle

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#524478 22-Sep-2011 10:30

NTFS is the default these days in the Windows world, however because virtually every embedded device is based on Linux they all typically use FAT or FAT32.

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NonprayingMantis

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#524482 22-Sep-2011 10:36

sbiddle: NTFS is the default these days in the Windows world, however because virtually every embedded device is based on Linux they all typically use FAT or FAT32.

well that sucks masively.

could the same issue be behind why my Bravia TV won't see anything on my external hardrive when I tried plugging that in?
There was nothing in the instructions about the drive needing to be FAT,but from what you say above seems a likely issue.

these kind of devices (modems, TVs, bluray players) are sold with the feature that they can read content from a USB connected disk, but if they all need to be FAT and the disks are all NTFS then that is a pretty major issue.
that is the sort of thing no 'normal' computer user could be expected to know or understand.

Lurch

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#524561 22-Sep-2011 12:23

I have this router with a 1TB WD which is formatted in NTFS. Can write/read to it fine. I can check what firmware I have when I get home if needed?

Gazza59

6 posts

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#524703 22-Sep-2011 17:39

Thanks to all who are trying to help with my problem. I had WD hard drive connected did not work either. Might add, I sent Vodafone Support? an email Monday 4 days ago, still know reply. Not holding my breath though.

Still working on suggested solutions, but not getting very far. Would be interested to know how to check router firmware version and how to update if I need to.

Lurch

1061 posts

Uber Geek

#525706 26-Sep-2011 10:13

Should be home later tonight, have been away. Can check the firmware then :-)

simon14

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#525962 26-Sep-2011 20:05

My 1tb WD external hard drive can read/write perfectly fine while connected to this modem. Formatted with NTFS

Jaxar

383 posts

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#526108 27-Sep-2011 10:57

Gazza59: Thanks to all who are trying to help with my problem. I had WD hard drive connected did not work either. Might add, I sent Vodafone Support? an email Monday 4 days ago, still know reply. Not holding my breath though.

Still working on suggested solutions, but not getting very far. Would be interested to know how to check router firmware version and how to update if I need to.

Hi,

Have you had a response to this email yet? If not if you want to pop over to forum.vodafone.co.nz and PM Tim.C with the reference number that would have be given on the auto-reply email VF system would have sent and I will get somebody to look into it.

The reference would look like 1109**-******.

Please note: I have a professional bias towards Vodafone.

richms

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#526121 27-Sep-2011 11:15

FAT is useless since it has the 4 gig limit, so storing HD MKV's doesnt work on them.

Really if they are selling things with this braindead limit they should warn people they are as good as useless for large file storage, which they dont.

Richard rich.ms

kyhwana2

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#526172 27-Sep-2011 13:08

Linux has been able to (safetly) read/write from NTFS for ages now. There's no excuses for these devices to not support read/write from/to NTFS devices.

Especially annoying are TVs/etc that need to be able to play files larger than 4GB.

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