Setting up home NAS - Part 1 - Scientific debugging to get USB drive visible as \\share in network

Introduction

One of the previous posts was about scientific debugging and a template for debugging notes. The scientific approach really shines when we have to pause and resume the debugging. 

This is one live example where it is applied not necessarily in code debugging but fixing an issue with the home router

The requirement was to set up a home NAS. There are many ways to make it. A detailed post on home NAS would be coming in the future as part 2. One way is to set up a poor man's NAS like system is by connecting a USB drive to the home router if the router supports it. Nothing fancy. No high availability. Just a backup mechanism.

This post is to discuss one problem faced during the setup. 

After connecting the USB drive, the corresponding share is not getting visible to Win 10 machines.

Debugging a router problem would not be interesting to the readers of this blog as the majority are developers. But this gives a good example of how to follow scientific debugging which guarantees an output.

Solutions in internet

Optimum is the internet connection provider here but their connection guide doesn't have anything on it. Then checked the D-Link DIR-868L router page. That also not talking about any specific than marketing works. Then read the support page of the router. It has some more details including how to connect USB. But there is no special step mentioned. Just connect a USB drive and navigate to \\Router IP

• Execute windows troubleshooter
• If the drives having special characters router may not recognize it.
• SMB 1.0 disabled by Win 10 latest version.

Scientific debugging

Since its lockdown and debugging with kids (5 and 2 years) is extremely difficult as continuous troubleshooting is not at all possible. So I decided to follow the scientific debugging using the template created earlier. It is in gist and embedded below.