Turn my NAS drive into and USB 3.0 drive (sort of)?

USB Network Adapters USB2-E1000
1

I have a D-link DNS-323 NAS enclosure with two 2TB drives in it. One was almost full so I did a data transfer from it to an 8TB drive in one of Plugable’s USB 3.0 drive cradles. It worked flawlessly when transferring from my NAS drive on WiFi. But it took an entire day to completely empty the drive. Peak speeds were up to 150Mbps, or about 22MB/s.

I want to use the USB3-E1000 to directly connect my laptop to my NAS drive via the CAT5 (or is it RJ45 cable?) and transfer the data from the other hard disk in my NAS enclosure. I do already have two Killer Gigabit Ethernet ports on my laptop, but they don’t seem to allow my laptop to ‘see’ the NAS drive directly through the CAT5 cable.

As the title states, I want to know if the USB3-E1000 will allow my computer to ‘see’ the NAS drive through the USB 3.0 port as an external USB 3.0 drive.

2

Hi Mark,

Thanks for contacting Plugable!

Our USB Ethernet adapter allows direct wired connection to any Ethernet port. That being said, it depends on the NAS manufacturer whether or not your NAS will transfer data via Ethernet direct connection.

For example, I own a Synology NAS and I can direct connect via Ethernet and transfer after rebooting both my computer and NAS server to get into APIPA mode. However I cannot guarantee this will work with a D-Link brand NAS as well.

I would contact D-Link to confirm if this is possible, and if so, what is their suggested procedure.

Hope this helps!

Thank you,
Jordan @ Plugable

3

Hi !!!

I have a Synology DS414 and a PLUGABLE USB 3.0 7-PORT HUB WITH 25W POWER ADAPTER. Currently I have 4 drives connected to the HUB and the HUB connected to a USB3.0 port on the back of the DS414.

Drives 1, 2 and 3 have the same enclosure, same brand. Drive 4 has a different enclosure, different brand.

I noticed drives 1, 2 and 3 disconnect from the HUB and/or the DS414 because from time to time I receive an error message from the DS414 indicating “usbshare1 or usbshare2 or usbshare3 were not properly ejected”.

Right now I am testing with drive 4 to see if it gets disconnected and an error message is generated for it too.

If it does, I guess I am going to have to assume that your plugable USB HUB is not compatible with Synology. If it does not, my conclusion will be that the enclosures for drives 1, 2 and 3 are not truly USB 3.0 compatible.

Any hints about the testing I am making?

Regards,

Ed

4

Hi Ed,

Great question!

Sorry to hear that your USB hard drives are experiencing disconnects via a Plugable USB 3.0 hub connected to your Synology NAS.

There are many possible reasons why your USB external hard drives are not behaving as they should, like you mentioned.

The most common issue is that many NAS manufacturers do not support USB hubs as a means to connect several USB external hard drives to your NAS.

Some NAS manufacturers do support USB hubs, but only for low power USB devices like Bluetooth dongles or USB flash drives.

For this reason, we do not recommend using any Plugable USB hubs to connect external hard drives to NAS servers, unless the NAS manufacturer themselves have declared our products as officially compatible for that type of use.

First, I would check with Synology on their official stance about using USB hubs to connect USB external hard drives like you are doing.

Next, you can try to isolate the issue by connecting each hard drive one at a time to the NAS server’s USB port directly, without using the Plugable USB hub.

If you continue to experience disconnects when the drives are direct connected, then we must assume that the issue is something besides the USB hub. I would reach out to Synology support to help investigate a cause.

If you only experience disconnects with the USB hub in between the drives and the NAS server, then another possibility is that your USB hard drives are drawing more than 25W power combined. Check with your USB drive manufacturers to confirm.

If that is the case, we suggest upgrading to a more powerful Plugable USB hub, like our 60W model USB3-HUB7C: http://plugable.com/products/usb3-hub7bc

Once again we cannot guarantee that any of our USB hubs will work if the NAS manufacturers have not declared them as officially compatible for use with USB external hard drives.

Before upgrading hubs, I would first confirm with your NAS manufacturer that they support our USB hub for this type of usage. If they confirm that our hub is supported, their support should be able to assist further.

Hope this helps!