access USB drive on Huawei HG630B on Spark aDSL for Mac OS X laptop

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › access USB drive on Huawei HG630B on Spark aDSL for Mac OS X laptop

wbmcilvaine

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#160084 22-Dec-2014 22:27

Using a Huawei HG630B aDSL modem supplied by Spark and it runs well. I am trying to connect a USB thumb drive to the USB port and see it from my MacBook Pro laptop, wirelessly, running 10.10.1

The Huawei manual says that the modem will recognize Mac OS format or FAT/FAT32. Have tried both. When I plug in the thumb drive it does not appear in the Finder. How do I access it? I can access the modem webpage but don't know how to use FTP or Samba.

Any guidance is appreciated. I would like to setup an external HD with iTunes library installed so I can share it across other computers in the house or use it for a Time Machine backup drive.

thanks

dwknight

74 posts

Master Geek

#1202369 22-Dec-2014 22:56

I've never been able to get the Finder to connect to my HG630b either. Don't get me wrong, I love Yosemite, but Apple sucks when it comes to networking with non-Apple products. I have a hard drive connected to it which acts as a DLNA video server for my TV, but I had to resort to using a third party FTP program in order to transfer files back and forth.
I have a hard drive connected to an Airport Extreme which I use for Time Machine backups. I don't think you can do wireless Time Machine backups any other way (other than having a Time Capsule of course), but I could be wrong.

plambrechtsen

1948 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1202623 23-Dec-2014 13:01

I never played with the USB storage feature on the Huawei routers personally. But in my view if you are needing a NAS then you should look to purchase a NAS that is fit for purpose to do the job you are wanting to do.

I have yet to see a router that is sufficiently powered to handle a decent filesystem I/O even with the higher end routers. It's bundled in as a "feature" but if you are serious about it and wanting to use it as a iTunes Library or for Time Machine really you need to purchase a NAS otherwise you are setting yourself up for unnecessary pain and suffering in my personal opinion.

I run a my book live at home and they are great, and there are all manor of different NAS products on the market today. But if you wanted to go for one make sure it has built in disks rather than one that only takes external USB disks. As the USB only ones means that you either plug in a powered or non-powered USB disk and power management can be iffy as sometimes the NASes won't power down the disk. Whereas if you have one that the disk is built in (or swappable) then all the power management is handled within the NAS the way it should be.

wbmcilvaine

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1202731 23-Dec-2014 15:38

Perhaps I offered a red herring in mentioning Time Capsule. I am really just interested in seeing if I can access files from a thumb drive attached to the USB port. In spite of what the manual says, this seems a bit difficult. MacBook Pro 10.10.1. thanks for the information.

wbmcilvaine

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1202929 23-Dec-2014 21:16

Success! The USB flash drive is configured as FAT/FAT32 using Disk Utility. I happened to load some images on it for practice. I logged in to the modem webpage, opened the ADVANCED item, opened USB DRIVE, selected FTP to start the FTP server. I changed the default username and password to something easier for me to remember and hit "SUBMIT". I used the "Connect to Server" item in the GO menu in Finder. I entered the new username and password I had created and there it was. It appears as USB1_1 and by double clicking on it I can open it to see the contents. Path appears to be "myusername@192.168.1.254. Now if I can just figure out how to move files to and from the drive we will be good to go... Thanks for the thoughts.

wbmcilvaine

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1202939 23-Dec-2014 21:44

Have also discovered that you can't' use finder to transfer files in FTP. Have to use a separate FTP client software of which there are many free and paid.

Potek

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1243130 20-Feb-2015 15:35

I know this thread is a couple of months old now, but I have been reading posts about the Spark HG630 and came across this.

I've just read the HG630 user guide and see it supports Samba file services. If your Mac is using Mavericks or Yosemite, it will try using SMB to connect to servers such as your USB storage by default. You can then open or save files through normal file dialogues.