Q: Airport Express connected to a external hard drive

The AirPort Express doesn't support USB hard or flash drives.

(72907)

The USB port on an Express is intended for a USB printer only.

Uses for the USB port of Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express

Apple should read this stuff once in a while.

It's possible the Apple salesperson was thinking of the Airport Extreme, which does support an external drive connected to the USB port. At the very least they should have explained the difference between the capability of the Extreme and the Express.

Thanks for posting this question.  I'm not new to apple products but still figured..."USB port?  USB drive!"   No such luck I guess.

I just purchased the Airport Exteme and also read that if you connected a USB drive to the USB port you could use it as a network drive. This is completely true. The drive will show up in your Shared section of the finder window with the name of your AirPort Extreme. This is really sweet. You can set up your time machine to that drive as well. This is an impressive product. Unfortunately it cannot boost my original connection speed. I pay for 24 meg and only get 22. This is not an apple issue but AT&T.

@ Tcampbell711 No - the problem is with Apple.  The Airport EXTREME you bought does what is requested.  The Airport EXPRESS the OP bought does not.  One works, one doesn't, with no explanation from Apple why the Express was gimped to only work with printers in the USB port.

I'm in the same boat as the OP (Airport Express, just purchased an external hard drive thinking I could connect it via the USB port). Are there any other workarounds that would allow me to back up all of my household computers wirelessly with Time Machine? Obviously, I could just go out and buy either Airport Extreme or Time Capsule, but I'm looking for a way to do it without spending $200+ and getting a new router when my current one is working just fine.

Guys the best & cheapest option is a raspberry pi! You can hook up anything to it, it costs $25 - $35. Use it as a router, file server, Time machine and you find tons of tutorials online

I think you can attatch a network drive to it via the ethernet port. Not shure about it.

USB external drive works with both model of Airport just it needs to be formatted as HFS+

USB external drive works with both model of Airport just it needs to be formatted as HFS+

If you are saying that you can connect an HFS+ formatted external drive to both an AirPort Extreme and/or AirPort Express, then your information is not correct.

The AirPort Express does not support a hard drive at the USB port.