Setting up a basic NAS on OSX

andyglynn · 2017-02-13T01:58:11.000Z

I’ve recently bought MT300N with the intention of attaching an external hard drive via USB and using it to back up from my mac. I’m having a few problems with the process…

I’ve got the mini router attached to my main router via the WAN port and access and mount the drive from my main network. I can also see the drive contents in the GLI interface. I’m on OSX Sierra and the Drive is formatted in EXFAT. However, when I try to copy to it, I have to enter my Mac’s password (I’ve tried the router’s user name and password and this doesn’t work). and when I do I’m told : “<span style=“color: #242729; font-family: Arial, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #fafafa;”>The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.</span>”

I’ve done a bit of googling and it looks like its something to do with ‘smbpassword’ and I have to somehow put my osx username and password onto the router for it to allow me access. Theres no obvious way of doing this through the luci interface though. I’m guessing I’ll have to use the command line? I’m a bit clueless about how to even access the router that way.

Any help anyone could give would be really appreciated. Since the router has ‘usb storage’ listed as one of the features, it feels like it shoudl be easier than this. Thanks.

alzhao · 2017-02-14T10:05:18.000Z

replied you in ticket system.

andyglynn · 2017-02-27T05:20:56.000Z

So I eventually found a work-around for this which I’ll pass on in case its useful to anyone else in the future.

Support for EXFAT on mac seems a little sketchy (its easy to set up read support, but seems to need a lot more fiddling in order to be able to write). EXT4 and NTFS do work but they’re not formats OSX can read by default. However it doesn’t matter because it’ll be the router reading the drive, not your mac.

You just need to format the drive in one of these formats. There are a few methods for doing this but ext-fs offers a free trial mode (hopefully you’ll only need to do this once). Attacht he drive directly to your mac and install the software. Then format the disk in EXT4 format either from disk utility or from the ext-fs pane in your system preferences.

Reattach it to the router and you should now have read and write support.