Currently using a Linksys E2100L which DOES have USB storage capability, but is rather slow when it comes USB speeds and of course it's limited to 10/100 megabit speeds. I'm using this to stream a 130GB+ music library on the USB drive (WD Passport USB 3.0 capable) to my desktop, laptop and HTPC. It works "okay" now, but seems a little sluggish at times (mainly when navigating folders in Explorer, and just a little when in the media player). So my question is are there any Wireless routers that actual perform well with the USB storage speeds? I don't have exact numbers, but the last time i copied files to the drive it went at maybe 5-6MB per sec. I've considered a true NAS & adding a 2nd drive to my HTPC, but a NAS is a bit pricey for this purpose and my HTPC was a Dell Refurb and I would prefer not to run it 24/7, or have it powered on to just stream music, but I'm thinking it may be the better option from a performance perspective if I go gigabit (even while still running megabit actually).
I've tried several routers that provide NAS on a built-in USB port. They tend to be extremely slow in accessing the drive. Also, they might be restricted to non NTFS formatted drives. Note: Netgear is releasing a router with the NAS hard drive built in. Not sure if they fix the access speed issues.
I got a D-link DIR-655 that got a usb port, my transfer speed is about 5mb/s. The reason it's so slow is the router cpu/usb chip isnt as fast. Screw usb ports on the router, just get a real nas and be done with it.
