Elements 5tb compatible with Netgear N600 router?

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Is the WD Elements 5tb drive compatible with the Netgear N600 WNDR3400 for use as a networked drive?

I just purchased the Elements 5tb drive to replace a much older Passport 1tb. However, I cannot seem to get my Netgear N600 to recognize it as a drive when I plug it into the N600’s USB port. Both drives are capable of USB 2.0 and 3.0, and the N600 is USB 2.0.

I have tried the following to make it work, at least twice each, to no avail:

  • rebooted the N600
  • ensured the N600 has the latest firmware
  • swapped the cable from my old Passport to the Elements drive
  • removed and re-attached the cable from the Elements drive
  • removed and re-attached the cable from the N600
  • deleted the old share details from the N600

The drive works like a dream attached to any of my PCs. The old Passport works just fine, and I was able to attach it, have it detected, and set it up with no problems. The new drive just doesn’t show - the N600 shows “No Disk” when I try to set anything up.

At this point it just seems like it is incompatible. Is that the case?

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

sounds like it :confused:

it could be a Maximum Supported Size compatibility issue or a Partition Table compatibility issue or a File System Format compatibility issue

You need to check with Netgear what the Maximum Size Hard Drive supported

And also check if the Netgear supports GPT (GUID Partition Table) … older hard drives will be MBR (Master Boot Record) … Newer hard drives are GPT

Ensure you have it formatted in the format your Netgear supports (eg. NTFS, FAT32, exFAT etc etc)

3

Thanks for the reply. I’m checking with Netgear, as well.

It supports NTFS, and the drive is NTFS, but I can’t tell from the documentation if it supports GPT or requires/expects MBR.

Thanks again for the help.

4

Check the partition type on your older 1TB

If it’s MBR … then it could be the reason why it works fine

But, to ultimately test if that’s the issue …backup all the data on the 1TB drive (back it up onto your new 5TB drive)

Then format the 1TB drive NTFS and GPT … copy some data back onto it and plug it back into your Netgear to see if it’s recognised

Only 2 possible outcomes …

If it works … then you can eliminate the GPT Partition Table as the problem

If it doesn’t work … then it’s the GPT Partition Table that’s not supported

But the problem is, MBR only supports up to 2TB

You could try the WD Formatter Tool and attempt to format the 5TB in “WinXP Compatible” mode which is MBR … but not sure if it’ll work