Google Wifi using external hard drive

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi I plan to buy Google WiFi AC-1304
after installing openwrt on it
Is that possible to connect external hard drive or usb storage using adapter?
Thanks

2

Yes. As long as the device is supported by openwrt and has a working USB port, you can. It's just a matter of installing the packages corresponding to the filesystem used on the disk as well as utilities like block-mount.
Now if you wanna share that drive on the network, you also need to install something like samba or another type of file server.
Standard linux stuff, really.

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the AC 1304 puck has a single USB-C port that is used for powering the device and for data. This means you will need to obtain a powered usb hub in order to both power the puck via its single USB-C port and to utilize the port for data connections. In short yes you can connect an external HDD but you will also need to obtain a powered USB hub in addition if you do not have one already.

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4

Keep in mind that IPQ4019 with its 4*716 MHz ARMv7/ cortex A7 is not exactly up to delivering NAS performance.…

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5

My router is ea8300 with 256 ram so can't run plex media server I tested every thing install correctly but because of insufficient ram openwrt crash after start plex media server

I only want connect hard drive and run plex media server on it
But not sure if it possible connect ntfs hard drive to Google WiFi AC-1304

6

you might also want to consider buying a AMD/Intel zero client device instead of the puck and run a x64 version of openwrt. Usually can be picked up 2nd hand for less than 20 bucks. They generally use only a few watts of power so running them 24/7 is fine. You will need to connect a keyboard and VGA monitor for initial bios setup into kiosk mode. Make sure to install a fresh CMOS battery and you're good for several years of uninterrupted use.

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7

Thanks

Any suggestion for cheapest config I can buy?

8

That varies widely between regions and what currently happens to be on the market.

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9

HP and Dell seems to be plentiful on the 2nd hand market and usually come with 1 or 2 GB of ram which is plenty enough to run anything you want and commonly sell for around 30 bucks. Some come already fitted with a msata drive or at least an empty msata slot you can add in your own msata SSD card. You can also boot openwrt using a USB pendrive if you have a spare one lying around. The only caveat is to carefully read which x64 openwrt image you want to use squashfs or ext4.

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10

Thanks

Is hp t610 good enough?

11

I would aim a little higher, this will not be all too fast and >12 watts is a bit much (especially for this performance level).

12

HP T420, T430, T510, T520, T530, T610, T620, T630, T640 are all sufficient.

the T610 you mentioned consumes around 20W. The T420 or T530 are half that at around 8W.

You might want to also consider the Dell Dx0D devices. I prefer Dell because they use standard power 12V power jacks common on any router which are cheaper and easier to find and usually can be sourced simply from your existing stock. The HP uses a 19V notebook style power jack and not always easily on hand.

13

In general, not older than 10 years (at most) tends to be a good strategy (the t610 was released in 2012).

Personally, I'm increasingly hitting perfomance limits for my Atom j1900 based lan server, mostly with mail and proxy services it's starting to become noticable. Modest local fileserver usage (not too many, not too tiny ones) tends to be less stressful.

What is good enough or not, depends a lot on the envisioned usage scenario. And depending on your electricity, the idle power consumption is something to be aware of. alderlake-n isn't necessarily expensive (especially for the next two weeks!), is a lot faster and might get away with ~5 watts idle.