Hello,
I’ve seen feature request for Metarouter image installations on microSD card, but I want to hear from developer if this feature is under plans or it will be never supported ? Its important to me because I have two options: wait for implementation of feature or buy another routerboard for full OpenWRT installation. So its interesting.
There are few things that prevent us from implementing this feature at this moment. So, yes, MetaROUTER support for external cards is planned.
Just out of curiosity, what feature you are missing in RouterOS, that you so readily want to install OpenWRT on router or in MetaROUTER?
Hello,
Thanks for answering !
I think RouterOS is full of features that any router need, but with OpenWRT we can have running linux machine so I was planning to install intrusion prevention system (snort) and also apache web server. I don’t need for additional linux server running web server for example. Off course web server is not router’s task, but intrusion prevention system would be good to have in router itself. Anyway Metarouter is like an additional linux server PC just running on the same hardware platform as router. That is awesome, but I don’t like to waste internal flash write cycles for that.
metarouter on micro-sd will not be available for some time.
Also, about flash memory - it is writeable a lot of times, and you should not worry about writes. At least RouterOS works for years on few nand storage several generations older than ones used now.
The most important thing is that microSD support is on planing list.
Now I’ll try to configure Metarouter on internal flash and start to use it. Hope it will be possible to mount microSD partition with Metarouter and install additional packages on it ?
now you cannot access that storage from MetaROUTER or any other hardware that is available on host.
I see. Then I’ll check what is better: Metarouter or new routerboard with OpenWRT installed on it. The most important think for me at this moment is snort installation. It would be nice to know how much approximate wites will be made per day to internal flash if I use Metarouter, but I think its too hard to predict.
it highly depends on your configuration. For example if you use remote logging and you are getting data from some database that resides somewhere else, writes should be minimal if there at all, and reads do not do anything.
it may wary, but 1 sector on NAND should be writeable 100`000 times. and that is a lot.
Agree… That’s a lot. Its bad that I have already have one bad sector 
I think I will go for Metarouter anyway and at the same time will wait for microSD support. Thanks for information !
@janisk: You asked why someone whats to have OpenWRT. We need it in our small remote locations for a Radius Server that can perform 802.1x and MAC authentication. We’re replicating the data from the central server and the switches have both server configured. so if there is a problem with one server or the WAN connections the users still get authenticated.
Our problem now is that the new 1100AH has 40MB of flash (25Mb free) which is not that much if you’re using OpenWRT with Radius and other stuff. It would be cool if we could move the Metarouter to the mircoSD.
unfortunately i cannot influence dates when the feature is implemented. Got on the list thought.
Hi MikroTik Support
Been using Mikrotik Routerboard for a few years now and have only recently started using the METAROUTER virtualization functionality.
It is totally awesome and probably one of the coolest features of the Mikrotik devices.
If at all possible can you BUMP the feature request for running METAROUTER on top of external MicroSD / USB storage.
It would unlock so many cool possibilities which require sufficient storage i.e. Media Servers / Web Servers / File Servers / Webcam Security Servers, etc.
Kind Regards
Frikkie Botha
Hi MikroTik Support,
any updates on this?
Bump… 7 years later
Yes, install Metarouter on the SD would be really great. Now, with the Hex3 (RB750Gr3), even more.
Hello MikroTik Support! How are things with the implementation of storage on external USB (Flash, External SSD) media virtual images of guest operating systems in MetaROUTER? I own a great device RouterBOARD 962UiGS-5HacT2HnT, the worst drawback - memory storage of only 16MB, it is very small! I can’t use virtualization features … Urgently implement this opportunity, and you will have many more customers! I really want to get VOIP-server, Console-Torrent-Client on my MikroTik RouterBOARD!
Hello everyone! Same here with RouterBOARD 962UiGS-5HacT2HnT. Please, Mikrotik, add an ability to use a USB storage to place MetaROUTER VMs.
At this point how about an option to remove the almost useless feature? Everytime I see this option I get excited and then remember it useless with the pitiful amount of space on the devices that do support it 
It’s been 10 years … It can’t be that hard to make external storage plug-in? A small hint, you need to add the “mount” command to the script 
. If the technology is so unstable, add the MetaROUTER installation on USB to the testing software version. I don’t want to throw away my router because of the small built-in storage memory …
Any updates on this? Allowing a program to read and write to an external storage can’t be that hard right? RouterOS already have a way to mount external storage right?
The fact this is still not a feature yet after 10 years makes me believe that this is intentional and its to limit metarouter only to the higher end mikrotik routers