TP-Link TL-WDR4900 can both USB ports be utilized as extroot?

Carves · October 28, 2021, 2:55pm

According from the spec this thing has 16MB Flash and 128MB RAM, plus 2x USB ports.

I'm going to install OpenWRT and other stuff, so definitely I will be running out of storage space.

Here is my questions:

There are 2 USB ports: USB 1 and USB 2, will there be any difference for sticking a USB flash drive ?
Can both USB ports be used as extroot ?

Thanks,
Ben~

mk24 · October 28, 2021, 3:05pm

There is a USB hub chip inside to combine the two ports to one CPU port. So they're basically equivalent. Also like any USB, you can use an additional hub to have more than two ports.

There can only be one "root" drive, but you could plug drives into both ports, make one the root and the other a data drive mounted on a subdirectory of root.

Carves · October 28, 2021, 4:18pm

Nice.

I'm using a 32GB USB flash drive. I think that should be enough to run everything and store the necessary data.
The other USB port I'm going to use is as console port.
Thanks for the idea

slh · October 29, 2021, 2:42am

For security reasons, I'd suggest to re-evaluate your plans - for OpenWrt 16 MB flash are already plenty, if you're thinking about 32 GB you're almost definitively doing something wrong.

It's a router, not a space ship.

Carves · October 29, 2021, 6:40am

I will keep that in mind.
Thank you.