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The USB Support menu is divided into sections, including USB Support and Attached Devices. These sections include settings to enable or disable USB port support, configure USB-related printers and configure settings for USB-attached storage. There are also settings to support 3G/4G/5G USB modems.
Core USB Support: Checking this enables the USB driver/services for USB-equipped hardware. When enabled, a series of specific options appear for configuration. These will depend on your router hardware.
USB Printer Support: Checking this loads the driver for USB printing support. (Default: ).
USB Storage Support: Checking this enables driver/service support for USB storage. (Default: ).
Hotplug script: Here, enter shell commands to execute when a USB device is attached or removed.
HDD Spindown: Enabling this makes FreshTomato spin down mechanical drives when idle. There's no need for this
on solid state drives, such as SSDs or flash drives, as they have no moving parts. (Default: Enabled).
3G/4G/(5G) Modem Support: Checking this enables support for 3G/4G/(5G) USB modem dongles.
This allows you to use a cellular carrier as an Internet provider. For more details on 3G/4G modem settings, see the WAN Settings
section on the Network page. Supported USB modems are listed in the 4G/5G compatibility page.
The Attached Devices section contains a table of devices FreshTomato detects are attached to its USB ports.
The table has columns describing the device Type and the Host controller number where the device was detected.
There is also a column heading with a plain English Description of the media found and its status of mounted or unmounted.
If a drive is not mounted, clicking on the [Mount] option beside it mounts the drive to a mount point.
If a drive is mounted, clicking on the [Unmount] button will unmount the drive, so it's ready to remove/disconnect.
Changing USB storage settings which require loading/reloading of the USB storage drivers may affect the content in your syslog (system log) file. For example, enabling or disabling filesystems, or unmounting the drive where the syslog file is stored may cause storage errors and possibly loss of some syslog content.
For this reason, it is recommended that if you want to change any USB filesystem settings, you first reconfigure syslog to be stored in RAM. Only then should you adjust filesystem settings and/or unmount the drive. After that, you can safely configure syslog to be safely stored on USB storage once again, where it should not be interrupted.
USB filesystem corruption is one of the most common causes of system instability. Keep this in mind when troubleshooting router issues. You could experience a VPN connectivity issue, WiFi instability or any other sort of random problem which might be directly or indirectly caused by USB filesystem issues. Make sure to add USB filesystem checks to your troubleshooting checklist.