Canon MF656Cdw stopped scanning to home Local Network Drive

[Rmichael]

Hi,

I have a Canon MF656Cdw. I have a home network using a TP Link Router Archer BE550 v1.0 with firmware v 1.1.2 Build 20250317 rel.18331(5553). My canon MF656Cdw is connected to the network wirelessly. I also have numerous other devices on my network including a Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs. All devices can print to the MF656Cdw without issue. Connected to my router I have a USB drive which serves as a network storage device. All other devices on my network I've tried, including Windows PCs and iphones can write to and modify files on the network USB drive leveraging the user id and password set for the USB drive on the router. My Canon MF656Cdw can scan to my wireless network Windows PCs shared folders successfully.

My problem is my Canon MF656Cdw stopped being able to scan directly to the USB network drive about two months ago. I've tried multiple ways to reformat the destination in the Remote UI address book including trying with SMB and FTP without success. Despite numerous reconfiguration attempts including factory resets of both the router and MF656Cdw I continue to get error #804 every time.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

I saw your post yesterday and started thinking about a response.  In all honesty, routers were never intended to be a true print servers or network attached storage.  These were nothing more than creative fluff added by the marketing departments in hopes of selling more devices.  The best thing you could do would be to buy true network attached storage.  Relying on a router for this just sets you up for frustration and continuous management overhead.  A router firmware update can make or break a "feature" like this.

I'm sure your Canon product is functioning as expected.  What kind of path does the router use for storage?  Is it IP based, host name or a UNC path?

How is the disc formatted?  FAT32, NTFS or EXIF.  Many consumer grade routers use a modified version of Linux.  The kernel version might be by processor memory.

Does the path resolve directly from a computer on the network?  The device should be discoverable.  

Consider a NAS.  I like QNAP, but Synology are also good.  The latter are typically underpowered in my experience.  They are also less expensive.  

[Rmichael]

Thanks for the feedback. As I understand it the router can use IP addresses or UNC paths. It also supports FTP. The drive is formatted NTFS. That said, your response prompted me to take a closer look at firmware. (It was my initial lack of knowledge that a factory reset is not the same as a firmware 'reset'.) Before I did a factory reset of the canon scanner I printed out the logs and it turns out it stopped working almost right after an automated firmware update was published for the TP Link router. This weekend I plan to downgrade the router to the previous firmware, if supported, and see if it resolves the issue. Regardless, I was also thinking about an NAS but wasn't sure it was worth the investment for our relatively small needs. But based on your advice I will likely pursue one of the more basic Synology NAS's.

One related question. Correct me if I'm wrong but with the Canon MF656Cdw there is no way to enter the host name or path and then search for destinations/folders? That is, you can't really discover devices or destinations in the Remote UI or canon screen, rather you must effectively hard code the path with the assumption that your format is correct and destination exists?

As a last attempt, will let you know if my router firmware downgrade over the weekend works or not.

Thanks

[shadowsports]

Greetings ,

Reverting the firmware on your router could very well fix the issue.  I'm pretty sure you have to use an absolute path for the destination  I'll check later this morning once I get some coffee.  ☕

[Rmichael]

Downgraded the router firmware over the weekend and confirmed the issue was fixed. Thanks for the suggestion. I still plan to invest in an NAS.

Ryan

[shadowsports · Accepted solution]

Ryan,

Excellent!  Thanks for the feedback.