Formatting A USB Stick On The Router

File-system formats

Theoretically the ASUS device can read "FAT", "vFAT" or "NTFS" file-system formats natively, but those file systems cannot hold the full set of permissions that Linux-standard "Ext2" can so I recommend reformatting just in case.

  • Newer USB sticks which come "exFAT" formatted for Windows won't work - they'll need reformatting to use in the router.
  • Ext2 sticks will no longer be readable by Windows (without extra drivers) - perhaps stick with NTFS if that's really a problem.
  • If you have your own Linux box, you can do this on your own PC rather than via a command line to the router, but stick with Ext2. Ext3 doesn't have any real advantages for USB sticks, and the kernel version in the router is pretty old. Hence no Ext4/btrfs support & I wouldn't trust Ext3 support anyway!

Formatting with Ext2

As we'll be reformatting the USB stick, you must unplug any current/valuable USB stick from the router & reboot it, to make sure you don't wipe valuable info by confusing which stick you're working on!

I'm assuming you realise this wipes any previous content - back it up elsewhere first if valuable!

  1. Plug the new USB stick into a slot on the router - doesn't matter which one.
  2. Cut & paste the following text into a router command line - see Getting command line access):
umount /dev/sda1
fdisk /dev/sda
o
n
p
1
1

w
mke2fs /dev/sda1
  • The "umount" command might chuck out an error if the USB stick wasn't auto-mounted beforehand - not a problem.
  • There is a blank line after the "1" command - so it fills the entire USB stick with the new partition.
  • the mke2fs command will take a long time (many minutes) on big sticks.
  • You can add " -L mylabelname" to the end of the mke2fs command to give the stick a custom "label" or name. This is useful to distinguish between sticks when you have more than one plugged in & are not sure which is sda1 - it is used when mounting the device in the "/mnt" directory.

Once finished, unplug & re-plug in the USB stick so the ASUS code auto-mounts it successfully, or trigger a reboot (e.g. type "reboot" into the command prompt). Check it's mounted correctly via some "Available Space" appearing against it in the main admin page at http://router.asus.com/.

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