Hi. I have a wired home network (1 x PC, 2 x laptops) based around a modem/router device supplied by my ISP (iiNet). The device is called BoB2, uses asdl, also supplies voip services and I have connected a removable Samsung 1TB drive to it (RHDD).
For many months, the only info on the RHDD was one file, accessed as \\BOB2\BoB2 USB storage\filename.ext and it was available to all computers on the network.
I recently decided to back up a Windows 10 user account to the RHDD using ROBOCOPY from Microsoft. By mistake, I included some folders which I didn't want so I started to delete the unwanted folders using File Explorer. These took forever while the RHDD was connected to the router so I moved it to a usb port on my laptop, where it became drive 'e'. I deleted most of the unwanted folders and files using Explorer and, because there were some 'too long' filenames, I also used the purge option in ROBOCOPY to delete those. All nice and clean.
Then I moved the RHDD back to the router, where BOB2 and BoB2 USB storage show up in Explorer but when I try to access the latter, I get
"Windows cannot access \\BOB2\BoB2 USB storage".
When trouble-shooting, I get "BOB2 exists but Windows can't find BoB2 USB storage".
So I tried experimenting with a thumb drive. On my computer, I added a small file to the empty thumb drive, whereupon it became f:\file.ext. Then I move the thumb drive to my router and Explorer shows the small file as "BOB2\BoB2 USB storage\file.ext and also shows the presence of folder "BOB2\BoB2 USB storage\System Volume Information and, in that folder, the file WPSettings.dat. What I did with the thumb drive was similar to what I did with the RHDD, yet the thumbdrive contents are accessible when attached to either router or laptop but the RHDD contents are only accessible when attached to laptop.
Can anyone throw light on this?