Selecting Networked Storage as a location.

Hi Daniel,
With so little information (about your hardware, OS, etc) we'd only be guessing. I'd start with this:

Have you tried using the shared storage without authentication? What happens if a share is set up without username and password requirement?

\\host_name\share

\\LAN_IP\share

Let us know if this helps.

Computer:
Win 7 64x, i7, 8gb ram, 500gb HDD.

Modem/Router:
"BoB Lite" from Australian ISP iiNet. I think it is a N300 dual band modem/router with gigabit Ethernet and a USB3.0 port on it, made under licence specifically for that ISP. I'm working from a laptop but our house is wired for Ethernet so I use that because its faster/more stable.

Hard drive:
4tb Seagate Expansion

The router wouldn't let me set up a share without a username and password.

The network name for the share is \\boblite\seagate (the username for the storage is also Seagate)
The IP for the router is 10.1.1.1 (which is standard?)

I have tried \\boblite\seagate as well as \\10.1.1.1\seagate as possible usernames

At first I had the hard drive plugged into a computer and shared across the network. That computer didn't have a password because it never leaves the house. Despite this Acronis still wanted a username and password to use this computer as a backup location, even though it didn't have one.

Hi Daniel,

My recommendations were not user names. They were paths.

A user name would only ever be hostname\username or username

With a password

What I used for reference:

BoB Manual Pages 19-21 look relevant to your situation

You would only need to specify a host name if the device you were logging in from was not a member of the same domain, or in this case workgroup.

Give your sever a meaningful name.  "bob" is fine.  I'd stick with "workgroup" for the group as this is also default for windows unless changed.

Are you plugging the drive into first port - right hand side labeled Storage Charger?

It appears you need to follow the steps on page 20 to enable the file sharing capabilities of the modem/router.  The documentation states you must configure a folder to be designated as a share.  Give that a meaningful name "backups' and assign credentials.  So, if your server name is bob, and the router's IP is 10.1.1.1 and your shared folder is backups.  You should be able to access the share from windows and/or acronis using 

\\10.1.1.1\backups

or

\\bob\backups

then provide your credentials

username (selected earlier)

password (selected earlier)

thanks for all the help,

I can access the share from windows explorer. I either enter the network path into the address bar OR navigate through my computer to the folder.

Once I get to the folder where the backup is "\\boblite\segate" or "\\10.1.1\Seagate" (i named the backup drive 'seagate' which by the way the router works is also the username). When get there windows explorer credentials popup where I enter the username and password that I set up using the steps given in the BoB lite manual (which I already had) that bit works fine and I have used the networked hard drive to transfer files from one computer to another just to make sure it works. I did this by placing the files on the hard drive across the network from one computer in the house and retrieving them on another computer in the house across the network. In both cases i entered the username and password when prompted by windows explorer and it worked fine.

The problem is when i enter the same username and password when prompted in Acronis and hit connect it says 'connection failed'

Basically the networked drive seems to work fine in all ways using windows explorer but doesn't seem to work for acronis.

Does acronis require the usernames in a particular format? I am entering it in exactly the same format as i do into windows explorer. No host names or user names or anything. If the username is 'seagate' and the password is 'default' that is how i enter it into windows explorer and how i am trying to enter it into acronis. If the username for my computer is 'Daniel' should i be entering \Daniel\Seagate or something into acronis?

p.s. default is not the actual password :P

Sounds like you have it set up correctly. I experienced behavior similar to this in the acronis boot environment. This was when I "tested"connecting to a share on my NAS. However, just entering the credentials would allow access and a task to complete. I don't recall which build I was using, but you should certainly ensure you are running the latest build for the version you own. (build 6514 is latest for 2013). There is no particular format for entering credentials.. Just the username and password. What task are you performing when the problem occurs? Creating a back up task?

I think I managed to solve the problem myself. I navigated to the top directory of where backup was stored "\\boblite" and there was a yellow bar up the top that said 'specify credentials for this location' in blue text or something similar I entered the username and password into the pop up prompt that clicking on this text generated and that worked!!! Before I was clicking on the folder like you would normally do to navigate into it "\\boblite\Seagate". Trying to access this folder would generate a pop up prompt that into which I could not successfully enter the username as password. So it seems entering the credentials into the top level of the network location worked whereas trying to enter the credentials into the expected level of the network location (like you have to do in windows explorer) didn't work?

Not sure why one pop up prompt would work and the other wouldn't... Especially when the two prompts seem identical in nature. I have attached a photo showing where I was clicking initially to generate the prompt and what I clicked to generate the successful prompt in the final instance.

thankyou for all of your help. I hope this helps anyone else having the same problem.

Daniel,
Good work figuring this out. We couldn't have seen that from where we sit. Likely has something to do with how the device controls permissions on shared resources. Thanks for your post and image.