Hi,

I'm using a WRTSL54GS router (WhiteRussian 0.9 RC6) with a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent USB drive attached and shared via samba. If I attempt to access a directory within a share on the drive via Windows Explorer after the drive has spun down, the disk spins up as expected but after a few seconds, samba reports the directory is empty, and I cannot write any new files to it either. Other directories on the share are accessible after the drive has spun up, but the first directory accessed remains unaccessible.

On further investigation, this doesn't seem to be a samba issue though as 'ls' gives the same result within the router itself. The only way I seem to be able to access the files in that directory again is to remount the drive.

Any suggestions on what might be causing this behaviour?

On a side note, I'm also getting errors at times trying to copy files to the drive via samba, indicating the drive is full. This is not the case. In such cases, the problem persists on multiple retries but I can generally always copy the same file into another directory and then move it to the original target. I've found various posts on forums via Google where people have experienced similar issues but have not yet come across a solution. Anybody else had this issue also?

Thanks,
-jim

I had the same problems recently. I cant say anything about the problems with disc spindown, because mine doesnt spin down. However, the error with not being able to copy files to the disc (disc full) ive had. I tried to locate the error for some months but never fixed it. I ended up reformatting the drive.

What i did found out (in my case) was that if i plugged the disc into a linuxbased computer and did a e2fsck, a lot of errors were detected. A LOT of errors. If i fixed the errors with the same program and reconnected the drive to my router with samba, all worked for a day or so. Then the problems were back. Did a recheck on a linux-computer - a lot of errors. Im no computerwizard but it seemed like something messed up my filesystem. My drive was formatted as ext3 by the way.
I never had problems reading the disc though.

Not much help, i know, but anyway......good luck.