BT Smart Hub 2 USB port

[Earthling]

I want to get an SSD drive to connect to my router's USB port and just want to get confirmation that the port is USB type A female.  It's just too difficult  for me now to climb the stairs and scramble under the desk to check it myself though someone is going to have to to connect the SSD.  If I've got it wrong I will have to get my order changed today.  TIA.

[imjolly · Accepted solution]

just a standard USB port

[licquorice]

Bear in mind that it will be very slow as it is only USB 2 and you will need to enable SMB1 on any devices you wish to connect to it.

[Earthling]

So am I probably wasting my time fitting an SSD?  My hope was to send my MR images to it from three networked computers, typically 30Gb files?  It can take about 2 hours for each at present using a spare HDD.

[Earthling]

Ok I bought a SSD but Windows isn't seeing it.  I'm guessing that's because the router's USB  port is not powered as the drive is being recognised when plugged into a computer.  Disappointing - looks as if I shall have to revert to the slow HDD I was using before.

[licquorice]

The hub will power an SSD drive.

Have you enabled SMB1 in Windows?

Have you mapped a drive letter to //192.168.1.254/usb1 ?

[Earthling]

Hi Licquorice, yes and yes.

[WSH]

I take it the SSD is formatted?

The SH2 probably needs FAT32 anyway, in which case you’re wasting your time trying to put a 30GB file on it.  FAT32 has a 4GB limit.  Theoretically, you could chop the file up in to 4GB pieces but that’s likely to be even slower, of course.  ExFAT might be worth a try, if the SH2 can handle it.

You’re wasting your time anyway.  It’s not the speed of the SSD that’s going to be the factor here but the speed of the USB 2 port (480Mb/s max) and the speed of the connection to the router, especially if over wireless.

Your best bet for this is to have the SSD internally mounted in your PC and formatted for NTFS.

[Earthling]

This is so frustrating!  I can plug this SSD into any spare port on any of my computers and it behaves normally, i.e. I can read it and write to it.  However it is not accessible at all when plugged into the SH2, unlike the HDD it was bought to replace.   SMB1 is enabled but I'm unable to map a drive letter to \\192.168.1.254\usb1

Functionally I can use the SSD when plugged into another networked computer but that's not a very elegant solution.  I want it always to be available to any system that joins the LAN.

[Earthling]

It seems this SSD is an SCSI drive.  Might that be the reason it cannot connect to the Smart Hub 2 but can connect to PCs and laptops?