Can someone enlighten me on the support for USB drives and FTP on the current OpenWRT firmware?

I recently upgraded to a TL WDR4600 and have been happy with the network performance relative to the WRT160N v3 (on DD-WRT) I had in place before. I have NOT been happy with what seems to be constantly dropping connections with the stock FW and feeling that an upgrade to OpenWRT would be helpful for that.

What I didn't expect is that how much I enjoyed using the built-in USB ports for network storage and the built in FTP access makes it even more convenient. Is that support built into the current OpenWRT? If not, is it possible to add-on? How much effort? I'm not a total newbie to this, but if it's too involved I'll probably just stick with the stock firmware and hope they make it more stable soon.

it's all about packages installed
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/techref/opkg

vsftpd is available, also as samba and tonns of other software
basic openwrt installation will take 4mb of your 8mb flash chip so you have enuff space to install it

Hi there you could just install Gargoyle.
https://www.gargoyle-router.com/index.php
USB and FTP is all built in and ready to go.
Gargoyle is built on top of openwrt cc brantch. it's verry simple to use and the forum is really helpful. there is lots of plugins you can install and a grate adblocker. need any help then just let me no. if you do flash Gargoyle and dont like it you can just flash openwrt strate back with no messing about. to flash Gargoyle for your router just go to downloads and get 1.9 brantch. the file you wood use is gargoyle_1.9.0-ar71xx-generic-tl-wdr3600-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

Thanks for the responses! tapper, I will definitely check out Gargoyle... I haven't heard of it before!! sounds like I have a weekend project now!

I also have issues with USB support on my WDR4600.
I installed 15.05 on it yesterday.
I do see several USB tools/apps and vpn (strongswan 5.3.2.1) installed.
But i don't see any menu's to setup VPN or the USB. I have a drive plugged into one of the 2 USB's but nothing shows up under windows or even in the luci console.

How to activate these apps so they may be configured? I tried browsing and searching through the wiki but all i see is a bunch of, what seems to be, console commands. I tried some of them via Putty but got nothing in return (Isusb -v (checking now it might be lsusb -v (L not I, damn fonts))).
Documentation is still the hard part for these open source / community programs, it seems.
In some of the YT vids they show an older version (v12) with a system-system-mouted (or something like that) tab/path in the luci interface. No such thing in my 15.05 Luci.

btw: i had to install 14.07 first from the stock FW before upgrading to the 15.05. stock fw did not accept the 15.05 bin.

So how to activate these apps???

TIA, Niels

I know nothing of OpenWRT support, but I took tapper's suggestion and installed Gargoyle. It was stupidly easy to install (my only experience was dd-wrt on WRT 160N v3, which was significantly more involved). The USB and FTP support I wanted were just there and painless to configure. My experience so far with Gargoyle has been excellent. I highly recommend giving it a shot. I think there's an easy upgrade path from OpenWRT. I'm on the 1.9 branch that tapper mentioned in his post above.

Gargoyle won't install. Openwrt does not recognize the bin as valid. Neither did it want to flash back to the TP-link firmware.

I helped a user downgrading from the "newest" (right before new years) to an older TP-Link firmware (US firmware). Basically you need to take the header from the newest firmware (installed at least) and overwrite the older firmware header, in his case he managed to downgrade by doing so and afterwards flash to OpenWRT. Use a hex editor so make sure you don't overwrite something else but I think it's the first 256 bytes or so that needs to be changed.