Looking for router with HDD USB port and open source firmware

Now is the time to update my router and I am looking for the following:

1. USB port where I can attach my HDD to backup files/folders and play movies.
2. Possibility of 3rd party firmware DD-WRT
3. Good response time for gaming
4. Min Range of about 20m
5. <100€

I have made the home work and the best one which fits these seems to be WNDR3700v2 Netgear RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router 300Mbps.

Shall I go for it, the experts of routers or are there any others in this price range with better features? How to know if it is a v2 or v3(v3 don't have open firmware).

 

I would advise against USB HDD setup. Routers are notoriously slow when it comes to transferring files from such volumes especially if the HDD uses NTFS.
The only ones that re rather good at it are routers like Linksys E4200v2 using Marvell NAS-grade 1.2GHz CPU but there's another problem with such a setup. Marvell is no Broadcom nor Atheros and you can't run a 3rd party firmware on it.

Also such setups do not necessarily spin-down connected HDDs which is annoying and will shorten the lifespan of your HDD (some drives spn-down themselves and you can set up spin-down in OpenWRT if I remember correctly.

My recommendation would be to choose a good router (see sticky) and buy a decent NAS.

If that's too expensive you'll have to compromise somewhere- most likely in the pseudo-NAS setup. To give you an example- WNDR3700v2 which is a very good router- manages roughly 10MB/s write/read.
Insanely expensive Asus RT-N66U manages 17MB/s write and 11MB/s read (NTFS share) and the only decent one is E4200v2 (20MB/s write/read).


So you can get either a router with a 3rd party firmware or a good pseudo-NAS router. You should base your choice on the NAS thingy- if it's really important you should probably go for E4200v2 and give up on a 3rd party firmware.

 

Thanks for the info.

Wouldn't 10MB/s be decent info for most things like movie/music if done once a time?I found a E4200v2 for about 100€.Does it have the spin down option? In the first part it is said E4200v2 is Marvell and hence no 3rd party and in the end this is the recommended one.

Thanks!

 

Well I wouldn't recommend E4200v2 as a router-only. E4200v1 would be my recommendation due to the fact that it's based on a Broadcom chip and you get an option of using 3rp party firmware if needed, however these are general recommendations. In your specific case E4200v2 seems much better due to relatively high NAS-throughput.

Roughly 10MB/s is indeed enough for streaming video and music but it's damn slow if you want to backup files. 10MB/s is "up-to" speed- one that you would achieve with big files (like movies) but making a backup copy usually involves lots of small files (unless you use imaging software). Also the reason why it maxes-out at 10MB/s is that CPU is too slow to handle more than that so you might run into issues if you want to backup to pseudo-NAS or stream from it and someone else wants to do something else that involves multiple connections or puts load on main CPU (like downloading from Internet at thigh speed or downloading a torrent).

I don't know if 10MB/s is bearable for you and I don't know if you know- it may turn out that it's gonna be annoyingly slow. On the other hand if you can live with it WNDR3700v2 would be great.

As for E4200v2 spin-down- there's no such option in router GUI but I don't know if it's there anyway or not, sorry.

 

Thanks, rep'd.

So if I understand right, E4200v1 can use 3rd party Firmware and E4200v2 cannot. But E4200v2 has a higher throughput. The E4200v1 has how much throughput?

WNDR3700v2 has 3rd party Firmware but the throughput is only 10Mb as opposed to E4200v2 which has 20. What do you say about WNDR3800?

 

E4200v1 would produce some ~7MB/s with good wind. The reason is the faster CPU used in WNDR3700.

It looks like this:

E4200v1- Broadcom 480MHz CPU (7MB/s)
WNDR3700- Atheros 680MHz CPU (11MB/s)
E4200v2- Marvell 1200MHz CPU (20MB/s)

The faster the CPU the better the throughput. E4200v2 is by far the best pseudo-NAS solution but it's not nearly as fast as a real NAS and it doesn't have so many firmware options/settings.

Consider another setup- a refurbished router (WNDR3700v2 for $55 on Amazon) and a cheap NAS (few days ago Zyxel NSA320 was available for $80, I bought a Zyxel NSA310 for $50).

If you're lucky you'll end up with a router and a real NAS for slightly less than your limit.

WNDR3800 wouldn't be noticeably faster.

EDIT:
As a moderator I can see your IP so I took the liberty of checking it to see your location. You can buy a Zyxel NSA310 for 44€ in your country and a WNDR3700v2 for 75€. That would be over 100€ together but as a setup it would beat any router working as a NAS.

 

Thank you for all this info.

Would you have a link where to get the NAS for so cheap?

E4200v2 has no 3rd partyROM right but the WNDR3700 has. T

Thanks for all this info.

 

NSA310 is available at your local Amazon webpage for some 44€ and I've seen some other offers for similar price.

I actually bought my units for 35€ and 45€. It's a good device although the fan should be quieter or at least it should stick to 1000rpm all the time.
Other than that I have no complaints for the price. Write speed for big files if 40MB/s and you get Twonky media server in the most recent firmware (4.50)

New features are on their way and will be available in 4.60 firmware (see here).

It's never gonna be a QNAP or Synology but it doesn't cost $200 either so it's a good deal.

 

Thank you sir. If there was an award for customer service, i am sure you would get it.

If there is anything I can help you with, do let me know.

 

Received by 3700v2 today. Can you please provide a link to Flashable gargoyle img file for the WNDR 3700v2?3 hours of searching has no result!

How to access the USb on this router?Also no joy with DD-Wrt!

 

Here's the image for upgrading from factory firmware and here's the download page.

For your first upgrade you're looking for "gargoyle_1.5.7-ar71xx-generic-wndr3700v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin"

That said I would give a stock firmware a chance- it's really good and it may be unnecessary to flash an alternative one.

 

Since you chose WNDR3700v2 I recommend OpenWRT on it.
All the information you want is here
If you do not want to compile your own firmware (OpenWRT is actually about compiling your custom firmware not downloading whatever provided), you can look in the forums for builts others have compiled. There are people sharing firmware compiled from OpenWRT with your model.
OpenWRT has spindown package HD-IDLE.
Btw people have overclocked this Router successfully on OpenWRT, only OpenWRT.
I can only say that OpenWRT has the best Atheros Router support.

 

You have a good point,I flashed DD-WRT for this router and reverted back to factory as it couldn't make the HDD work over network.

Thanks for this info.Would you have a link to a good build with spindown.Compiling something seems to be too complicated to me who has used Ubuntu for a few hours.

 

This guy is sharing version1 and version 2 builds.
If you need any other software you can download from OpenWRT repository.
OpenWRT is special as it has an "app store" to download extra packages you need.
How to install

 

Thank you sir, will try it tonight!