RT-N16 or other Wireless router with USB

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Gawd
Joined
Jun 11, 2003
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I have a USB powered hard drive enclosure with a 120g hard drive that I want to use to backup pictures of my daughter, but I want it to be on our network so my wife and I can store the pictures on it rather than on our laptops, so the data is always available and in the same location. I am looking for a good wireless router with USB port and tomato/DD-WRT compatibility, and I was set on the Asus RT-N16, as it has one of the fastest CPUs at that price point, external antenna, and although I have all 802.11n clients on the network, not all are 5ghz, so dual band is not that important to me. I forget where I read this last night, but I read that the RT-N16 does not supply enough USB power to run a USB-Powered hard drive. Can anyone confirm this? If this is true does anyone know if there are any other routers that do? Or should I just get something like a mybook live? My current wireless router is a linksys E2000 and pretty much does the job. Once the 120gb hard drive I'm using will eventually runs out of space I'll be looking for something else then.

Also it is my understanding that windows homegroup works over IPv6, is there any way to get my data to be able to be shared with a VPN with either of these solutions?

Another thought I had was to replace my 500gb hd in my laptop with a SSD and use the 500gb for my external hard drive, although I would still need a router that can power it.
 
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No router will give you enough juice to reliably power an USB-HDD.
//Danne
 
I think you need to feed 500mA minimum over the USB port to even think about powering a laptop hard drive with it. The weird thing here is that the router itself plugs into the wall, right? If you have an outlet for a router, why not just plug in your HDD next to it?

Also, if you are looking for homegroup sharing, get a WHS, not a router. A router with proper firmware will support samba/CFS sharing, but not homegroups.
 
I was reading that the E3000 and E4200 from Linksys supply 1000mA over USB. I have a inland 2.5" SATA to USB 3.0 enclosure that I got at microcenter for $12 that works just fine for me. I don't really plan on using it for more than backing up pictures and mp3s, it doesn't have to stream 1080p or anything like that.
 
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