Nighthawk D7000. Needing help please regarding accessing a connected usb hard drive through VPN

[everway9]

Hi everyone

I have just purchased a Nighthawk D7000-100UKS Router. I'm new to using VPN's so please bear with me on this. I'm experimenting at home with the VPN setup. The router is connected to my home broadband and I'm trying to access the USB Hard Drive which is connected to the router. To access the hard drive I'm using my laptop (Win 10) which is connected to my mobile phone 4g network.

I took me ages to do it but I've managed to setup a remote VPN connection between my laptop and the router by following the instructions listed in the 'VPN' area of the routers settings. I've used no-ip to setup a Dynamic DNS account and have installed and configured (as per router instructions) open VPN on my laptop.

The open VPN GUI task bar icon has gone green so is connected (the NETGEAR-VPN TAP adapter is connected but says unidentified network).

This is where I am stuck. How do I now get access to the USB drive now I'm connected through the VPN? Should the hard drive show up anywhere in 'This PC' or 'Network'?

What I'd like to achieve is to be able to see all files on the usb drive and if possible be able to open, edit and save files as if it was files on a local hard drive. I don't really want to have to download a file just to edit it and then have to upload it again when I've finished. (is this even possible?)

If any of you could possibly help me finish what I've started I'd be really very grateful.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[smashjohn]

I think you access via SMB protocol. Try going to the start/run menu and type "\\x.x.x.x" where x.x.x.x is your D7000's internal IP address.

If that works, you can map a network drive by right-clicking a share in the folder.

 

[everway9]

Hey.

Thanks for that. I'll try it tomorrow and get back to you .

 

[Alabalcho]

Just make sure you can connect your drive while connected from the "inside", that is while connected directly over WiFi/Ethernet.

 

[everway9]

Hiya. Thanks again for your posts.

Unfortunately run \\ip address did not work. I also tried with :21 on the end.

Alabalcho, I can connect and map the drive when I'm on the same network as the router/drive is on.

 

[everway9]

OMG!!! The Netgear Ready Cloud application suddenly started to work!!! The annoying thing though is that I have no idea why or how. I've not changed any of the settings.

Sorry... I didn't mention that I had been trying to use the Ready Cloud app previously to using the VPN.

I don't know if you are familiar with the ready cloud app but it does actually use a vpn of sorts. You don't need the vpn service in the router turned on for ready cloud to work. I was trying the VPN service out because the ready cloud app wasn't working. But now it is I am abandoning the VPN and just using the readycloud vpn instead.

Once the readycloud app is connected it opens the shared folder on the hard drive in windows explorer. So I just copied the address and pasted that into 'Map network drive' in 'this pc' and voila.

I really need to find out why it suddenly started working though and try it out on all the other pc's which will need remote access.

Sorry if all that is confusing you. But if you know readycloud then I think you will know what I'm talking about.

I will experiment with the other built in vpn server and open vpn again soon but I just want to make sure readycloud works properly so I'm going to concentrate on that for now.

Thanks again for taking the time to help.