You may try SATA interface, but ned cable eSATA+USB-to-SATA+power or eSATA-SATA and additional power, yes - R7800 doesn't provide power on eSATA.
This is old 2.5" Hitachi HDD 5400rpm:
#hdparm -Tt /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads: 1204 MB in 2.00 seconds = 602.20 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 132 MB in 3.01 seconds = 43.87 MB/secMy theoretical parameters of the usb 3.0 drive are not bad. But this has nothing to do with the real transfers I get from the cable or wifi 
hdparm -Tt /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads: 1146 MB in 2.00 seconds = 572.94 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 172 MB in 3.00 seconds = 57.30 MB/sec
IMO you're better off not using a router as a network media sharing server. It's kinda like buying a VHS player that doubles as a clothes iron. Just dedicate a device to serving the files, and let the router route.
Could not have said it better. I started down the USB support path way back and was never happy with how it worked no matter the firmware being run, OEM or 3rd party.
I finally figured out what is said above. Routers are for routing and supporting clients and not for things like media server. Only time I have had a flash drive connected to a router in the recent past was when I was trying Yamon on a dd-wrt server and Yamon required a flash drive for support. A network attached NAS is the only way to go.
Just MHO and $.02.
I've been using hnyman's build for months now. I went back to OG FW for a month just too contrast as I thought wifi speeds might improve, they didnt. So Im back on this build. I love the flexibility, interface and want to thanks hnyman and the community. I love the NAT speed, the massive set of add on packages. network gear vendors really need to lift their game. open source will win, maybe if they stop chasing proprietary "gaming" RGB LED sales and focus on customer features and stability??
Slighty off topic, I switched from raid to DrivePool software raid, it is awesome, plz consider it before buying a proprietary nas.
Interesting product you point out, DrivePool. If I did not already have NAS support I would probably take one of the older PC's I have and use it as a NAS with this product. Probably wasn't around when I did the NAS as that was years ago.
connect via ssh and type these two commands
echo 35 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
echo 10 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor
then let me know if that improves your network transfer speeds (it did for me, it also improved my overall network speeds)
Wow, this command/setting helped bump up my wireless throughput by about 100 Mbps. I have a pretty beefy connection @ 480 Mbps and before using these settings I was lucky to see 350 over WiFi, but now I can sustain 450. Is there anything I need to worry about with this is as far as stability? What exactly does this do? Something to do with the clockspeed I suspect, correct?
It modifies the decision logic for adjusting CPU frequency. Likely a ramp-up with somewhat lower CPU load and a bit later ramp-down.
Of course, if you want to maximise the CPU power, just disable the ondemand governor and select performance instead. (so that CPU frequency is maxed out all the time.)
more info at https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt
Would there be any reason not to use the performance governor on a device like this? There's no concern about battery life... but perhaps the lifespan of the router could be reduced?
Well, as a typical home router sits most of the time rather idle, so running the CPU all the time at 1700 MHz instead of 384 MHz seems wasteful and causes higher thermal load on the device.
No it does not, at least in my case. The temperature did not change at all.
What SSH command would I use to set the governor to performance? I tried looking it up but have been unsuccessful.
Some hints below:
root@Router1:~# ls /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/
ondemand policy0 policy1
root@Router1:~# ls /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/
affected_cpus related_cpus scaling_governor
cpuinfo_cur_freq scaling_available_frequencies scaling_max_freq
cpuinfo_max_freq scaling_available_governors scaling_min_freq
cpuinfo_min_freq scaling_cur_freq scaling_setspeed
cpuinfo_transition_latency scaling_driver stats
root@Router1:~# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor
ondemand
root@Router1:~# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_available_governors
ondemand performance
root@Router1:~# echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor
root@Router1:~# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor
performance
(and naturally the same for both cores 0 and 1)
Very cool thanks. Wishing my WRT32X had CPU scaling for heat/power efficiency too as it would probably save a couple watts. Right out of the box (Linksys' stock firmware based off OpenWrt) during boot says:
[ 0.090030] cpuidle: using governor ladder
[ 0.092202] mvebu-pmsu: CPU idle is currently broken on Armada 38x: disabling
You can test my version of the mvebu CPU frequency scaling driver:
This one only scales cpu though, and not the voltages. R7800 is just a lot better for that.
Thank you very much for the instructions. Real transfers in my specific case have increased after wifi from 20MB / s to 30MB / s (link 866), and after a cable with about 40MB / s to 60MB / s it is increasing the real bandwidth by 50%. I am very happy with the results. In the CPU clock statistics I finally see twice after 1.7GHz. Thank you very much again. PS. we are slowly approaching the parameters of the netgear software 
FreeNAS and UnRaid. I use UnRaid and have been happy for almost 10 years now 
wow.....
I have my setup perfect for me but am curious about going forward which file type to just do an upgrade instead of a full blown install. Here is my version. How would I just update my current setup? Thanks
OpenWrt 18.06-SNAPSHOT r7157-8a0ad2660a / LuCI openwrt-18.06 branch (git-18.198.67944-94b6aa2)
Just a normal sysupgrade with a sysupgrade image. Nothing special needed.