The Sundarban
Published Jan 26, 2026, 6:00 PM EST
Gavin is the Section Lead for the Expertise Explained, Security, Cyber web, Streaming, and Leisure verticals, former co-host on the Undoubtedly Useful Podcast, and a frequent product reviewer. He has a level in Up-to-the-minute Writing pillaged from the hills of Devon, extra than a decade of reputable writing trip, and his work has regarded on How-To Geek, Educated Reviews, Depended on Reviews, On-line Tech Strategies, and Encourage Desk Geek, amongst others. Gavin has attended CES, IFA, MWC, and diversified tech-alternate reveals to report all of a sudden from the bottom, racking up a total bunch of hundreds of steps in the course of. He is reviewed extra headphones, earbuds, and mechanical keyboards than he cares to endure in mind, and enjoys copious amounts of tea, board video games, and football.
All over the encourage of your router are several ports, one among which is the ever-so acquainted USB port. But while many mute routers treasure to advertise that you can flip it into a “personal cloud” or “basic NAS,” the actual fact is that your router’s USB port isn’t persistently the safest choice for your information.
The advise is that while your router’s USB port is that if truth be told designed for convenience, it would not persistently indulge in the identical security, redundancy, or overall capabilities as a dedicated NAS or diversified explicit backup tool.
So while there are some ways to use your router’s USB port, you shouldn’t be the usage of it as your very top information backup choice.
You want to have confidence security
Shoving a 1TB power into a USB port would not yowl “safe”
One amongst basically the most important reasons to encourage up information is to retain it safe and procure, yet security is one among the foremost dangers overpassed when people talk relating to the usage of a router in this scheme.
Your router has a undoubtedly explicit job: it acts because the “front door” to your digital home. It stands between your non-public devices and the chaotic, likelihood-stuffed public information superhighway, routing your web page visitors to where it desires to head. But when you trudge a power plump of your non-public information into the tool accountable for your community security, you’re effectively storing your valuables in the guard sales arena in want to in a procure one day of the house.
In overall, routers want to flip on some extra tech to construct it useful as a backup instrument. The advise with right here’s that a majority of those services and products and protocols will seemingly be out of date, operating faded versions, and are unable to be upgraded to safe, mute versions.
For example, while most mute routers now use Server Message Block v3 (SMBv3) for procure community communication, older routers may possibly also use SMBv2, which lacks discontinuance-to-discontinuance encryption (though it is on the total procure), or worse, SMBv1, which used to be first launched 30 years in the past and is riddled with vulnerabilities. While Microsoft eliminated legitimate support for SMBv1 in 2022, there are composed ways to permit it, potentially exposing your information.
Merely place, most routers (specifically older ones) don’t derive enough explicit security updates to retain your information safe. If a router is compromised—and person routers are overall targets—it’s not valid your information superhighway connection in likelihood. An attacker potentially beneficial properties access to whatever is saved on that connected power: inside of most documents, household photographs, ID scans, monetary records, work information, and extra.
Your router potentially isn’t built for performance
You’re having a peruse at painfully slow transfers
Credit: Christine Persaud / MUO
Most person routers are built around low-power system-on-chip (SoC) processors designed for routing web page visitors effectively—not handling storage. Even when the router proudly advertises a USB 3.0 port, the exact-world performance is regularly disappointing, because the USB controller, inside of bus, CPU, and firmware all turn out to be bottlenecks long before the flexibility itself reaches its attainable.
This journey alternate-off is a key cause why your router isn’t basically the most main choice for information backups. Funds routers in overall combat to reach double-digit megabytes per 2d, mid-fluctuate fashions may possibly also proceed between 10–30 MB/s, and even top class person routers typically ship speeds that feel if truth be told immediate. That’s a share of what even an affordable external SSD can originate when plugged all of a sudden into your laptop, and nowhere advance the trip of a dedicated NAS.
Your router will slow down even extra under excessive-load, because that’s not its predominant role—routing information is. So, if your community is busy with heaps of connected devices, your router CPU finally ends up juggling wi-fi web page visitors and storage projects concurrently, slowing everything down to accommodate.
Backups need reliability
And your router’s USB port isn’t that
Credit: Amir Bohlooli / MUO
The closing motive of a backup is insurance. You want to know, with 100% easy job, that if your laptop dies, your information is safe. Briefly, most person routers weren’t built for sustained read/write workloads treasure a NAS and even a factual external storage power.
Or not it is yet another case of hardware that’s not built for the job you need it to originate, that manner you may possibly also trip any quantity of components that may possibly also contaminated your information. A few of it pertains to the router hardware components detailed in the previous share; if your router is overwhelmed with connection requests and dealing at ability, you may possibly also procure file transfers don’t work, drives randomly disconnect mid-switch, file systems turn out to be corrupted, and your community shares can recede.
Every other consideration is that some routers won’t even indulge in enough power to work with your external laborious power. The volume of power supplied to the USB port on a router is producer-explicit, which is ready to cause extra concerns if you are attempting to use it as a backup choice.
One amongst the foremost reasons to use dedicated backup hardware treasure a NAS is that you indulge in redundancy built into the system to give protection to your information. With a USB power plugged into a router,
