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External Hard Drives

I'm looking for a way to connect the USB HD's that I had connected to my Airport Extreme via hub to Eero - any suggestions

23 replies

    • retired and good at it
    • susandennis
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I use a Pogo Drive that is only marginally useful. I do miss being able to plug my USB drive right into the router and have it available to all.

    • RunningwiththeDevil
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    @FuzzyG I disabled the wifi, but forgot to scratch the DHCP - I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

    @susandennis - I looked at the pogo drive but the reviews were so-so.  I was thinking about a Joruby USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet NIC/LAN Network Adapter and connecting it to a hub.  

    • FuzzyG
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    RunningwiththeDevil Did it work?

    • Potentially the best network solution you'll ever need
    • ronnyromero
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I just hope the USB ports can be used for HDD in the future.  That would be a great feature.

    • EHB
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I was deeply disappointed to find out that the eero USB port won't support a hard drive.  On my old router, like many people, i had a drive loaded with music that played easily on my Sonos.  When I emailed eero about this, they said they currently have no plans to make the USB port useful, and writing about it on the eero community page might help the issue get traction, and that is the best thing I can do.  So, everyone, please squawk about this. It's a very basic feature on most routers, and for the price eero really should have this functionality.

    • NicevilleSteve
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Back on "Black Friday" eero advertised that there is a USB 2.0 port in you technoligy section "Dual auto-sensing Gigabit ports for WAN (cable or DSL modem) and/or LAN (networked device) connectivity, USB 2.0 port"  was deceptive and needed to include the caveat I found in the help center "printers can also be connected to your eeros via Ethernet. The USB port on your eero is currently only for diagnostic".  The technology statement the general public is lead to beleive this would be something we would be able to connect either a printer or external drive and not for diagnostics. I shouldn't have had to look at the help area to find out after the fact when I tried to set one of these up that it is totally useless to me.  It's like a car salesman telling me I have one but oh by the way it is for our use, not your's.  I talk to customer support and they agreed that it was misleading!  I looked today and the technology section still doesn't contain the caveat -  currently only for diagnostic! 

    • eero Community Manager
    • Jeff_C
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Official response
    • Reported - view

    Hi NicevilleSteve

    Thanks for the feedback. I am sorry for any misunderstanding there may have been. I'm happy to pass along this feedback to the appropriate team.

    • mbianco
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    This is a bummer for me as well! I have a printer and 2 ext hard drivers that are connected via USB to my airport extreme. I've never found the wifi connection on low-end printers to be reliable, but I'd the printer shared over the network. Also, I'd much rather have a standard & simple USB drive than have to host the drive on the network and deal with an addition ethernet > USB adapter.

     

    This is all to say: +1 for this feature request :)

    • Thirst4Knowledge
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Just adding another frustrated user -- same use case -- had an Airport Extreme with an external hard drive and all was well with centralized back-ups avail to all laptops on network -- now that seems a no go despite USB port so thinking about returning the silly things...

    • ArtsyCB
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Another one here who switched from Netgear with a routed hard drive, only to find the eero USB is useless.  :(  I had it set up for family use with the old router, so that we could all access the files.  Now it's just a pain. 

    • gadfly14
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    +1 for a usb port request. My time capsule in bridge mode has started to fail on every backup and Apple tells me it will not back up reliably if it's not used as a router. So my options are to allow it to set up its own network and switch to that when I want to backup my macs, ugh, or to use an external usb drive with a male RJ45 to female usb adapter. Problem is that all of these adapters have lukewarm reviews. Love my eeros, they've worked flawlessly out here in the woods in my 2-story house but the lack of a working usb port is disappointing. 

    • brettlin
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Still no solution to this? Dang. I was going to set up our external HDD to the network, doesn't look like I can now. Two steps forward with getting the Eero, one step back not being able to connect a HDD.

     

    :-(

    • johnnythund3rs
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I can't complain about feeling shorted; my eero kit was free.  But I was really kind of shocked that this next gen tech can make no use of a USB drive.  I ripped out a pair of well functioning but WAF-disapproved Asus RT-66s. I'm happy with the simplicity of this system as well as it's looks and user friendliness, but pulling up short of managing a simple storage medium in the network seems a bit bush league.  I used to operate a NAS, network shares, drive cages, etc.  (Shiver).  I replaced a lot of that with a passport drive plugged into my Asus.  It helped the family drop things for each other immensely.  Can you not implement a simple (feature lean) private file share for anyone/thing connected to the network?  For anyone reading this, what's the next simplest thing I might do here?  I don't like running PC's all the time to support a file share.  My NAS's are all old and in pieces.  I have a plethora of 1-2 TB drives laying around.  What's the smartest way to solve the problem of:

    "I have a requirement as household IT lackey to have a reliable and persistent (i.e. worthy of configuring across 30+ devices and I won't regret it), minimal cost file share on the home network to which authenticated devices can read and write"

    • Marc
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    + 1

    • dockvickers
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I loaded a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ with the OpenMediaVault NAS operating system. My customer has an ASUS router connected to his EERO with ASUS wifi disabled. I connected to the ASUS via ethernet cable in DHCP mode and the NAS is rock-solid. A libre board would be a little faster, and I will be doing that on mine. Speeds are not lightning-fast but the average user will love it. I have the Pi in a case with cooling fan. If the SD ever crashes it is a 2-second swap to bring it back up. It was a 80-dollara fix and he has a 8TB Seagate connected.

      • Bryan_Lin
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      dockvickers I do have a spare ASUS router on hand, so I got it set up like this: ISP cable modem coming in to one of eero 6 ethernet port, Asus router connected to another eero ethernet port with Asus WiFi and DHCP turned off. For some reason the hard drive connected to the Asus router USB port is nowhere to be found on the network when trying to access it from my laptop.

      I'm asking this question now two year after your post 😜. Do you mind share how did your customer get his NAS set up?

    • Shanesez
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I used to have an Airport Extreme with multiple useful USB ports. I replaced that with a pair of Eeros and now I'm regretting the choice because the USB doesn't do diddly squat for me.

    Really, after so much feedback and such a long time, why is this still broken?

    • jcfreak61
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Wow!  I was shocked that my new EERO Pro 6 Router doesn't have a USB port to connect my hard drive?  Come on guys!  My 6+ year-old Netgear N600 had a USB port, and in 2021 EERO is delivering what they consider a PRO GRADE router w/o a USB port?  What even surprised me more is this stream has been going on for over four years and EERO still hasn't addressed this request for their customers. Again I say Wow what a disappointment!

      • wase4711
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      jcfreak61 Of course, you DID research your purchase prior to making it, correct?😱

      Cause if you did, you would have known there is no USB port on these things..

      • jwilson.2
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      wase4711  I used a dongle to go from ethernet on the Eero to USB and a dongle from there to a. hard drive with a connector I don't recognize (flat with two non-symmetrical hookups). The hard drive is powered but, like me, all the dongles must have been thoroughly confusing. Not being able to use a hard drive back up with the Eero router is a serious lack of functionality that is very surprising. Not a happy camper here.

    • mbianco
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    This was a massive disappointment to me as well. I ended up using a Raspberry Pi to attach my drives to the network. I wrote up how I did this in case it's helpful:

    https://mikebian.co/time-machine-backups-with-a-raspberry-pi-and-external-drives/

    • kjohnson
    • 1 yr ago
    • Reported - view

    I feel that I was suckered by all of the glowing reviews into buying a very lame product in the eero-6 Pro +. Lack of usb hard drive support is a deal breaker for me. There may be a workaround of some kind but I should not have to invest time and aggravation in finding it. I have until Jan 21, 2023, to return it to Amazon so it is going back on Monday, Dec 19, 2022.

Content aside

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