Which firmware do you use?

If it's tomato,dd-wrt then you can login via ssh,telnet and show us what happens if you do the following.

-after login execute command: tail -f /varlog/messages
-plugin the drive, messages should appear now

Copy and paste the output

Another firmware would probably resolve this problem, but it cannot be guaranteed. Since I have not used this drive. From the Specs it looks like it should work with the latest usb module + ntfs-3g which comes with dd-wrt or tomato. The original firmware uses an older linux kernel (2.4) + older ntfs-3g.

Another problem is the speed when using ntfs. The ntfs-3g that is opensource has horrible performance around 2MB/s on these 450Mhz routers. Ext3 will be 3 times as fast. For some people this is still too slow and they prefer to have a real NAS.

Flashing another firmware is actually easy, going back to original firmware is a bit more work, but if you want a feature you don't get with original you won't regret it.

For example my favorite feature is , that I can set a time shedule for wireless operation. So at night wireless is deactivated and in the morning it's automatically activated again, if I really need it at night I just press the WPS button twice. That's a feature you don't find in the original firmware.

You'll find a dd-wrt demo here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/demo/
The online demo does not include all features that are available but should give you an idea how many features these alternatives give you.

May not be the answer you're looking for but this weekend I bought a 1.5TB Samsung Story Station (I know the name is cheesey :-)) but it's working wonderful with the 3500L (and Tomato). Quite cheap too.
Formatted with ext3 and is now home for many movies and series. The 3500L with media server works fantastic, it's serving 1080p material without any problem.

FAT32 and EXT3 are working with Netgear stock firmware. How do you unplug your device ? This should be done from Web UI. Otherwise there might be some unexpected behavior.
Anyway I will test this firmware when I get some time.

Do a factory reset and try again. This is really unusual behavior. I have personally use this router with USB device and not face any problem till now. You can also try with different firmware version.

Hi Kong, i love your firmware but now i want to use an USB drive (ntfs) and test it with your latest firmware, speed around 2MB/s :( I flashed back to latest orig. firmware and the same drive has speed around 9MB/s.
is there a chance that your firmware can do the same speed on USB?

P.S. sorry for bad school english....


>Another problem is the speed when using ntfs. The ntfs-3g that is opensource has >horrible performance around 2MB/s on these 450Mhz routers. Ext3 will be 3 times >as fast. For some people this is still too slow and they prefer to have a real >NAS.