How do I get an Airport Extreme USB drive to mount on desktop?

in finder, look for the icon of your extreme under shared. click on that icon and it will reveal a folder representing the USB drive attached to the extreme. click on that folder and the USB drive will mount. the following screen shot is from my TC but it will look very similar for your extreme

Airport disk utility? What's that?

AU lets you admin the settings of your airport base station.

Is it even available for 10.5.8?

yes. you will find it in applications > utilities.

J GG

And you can add the drive to System prefs -> Accounts. Select your account then Login items and click the + sign at the bottom.
This will mount the drive whenever you log in to your computer.

Chris CA wrote:
This will mount the drive whenever you log in to your computer.

... or, one could create an AppleScript such as this ...

try
mount volume "afp://<devicename>.local/<volumename>" as user name "<accountname>" with password "<accountpassword>"
end try

... and save it as an application that runs @ startup.

this will mount the drive on the desktop *without opening a finder window*.

(credit for the script goes to Tesserax )

J GG

Airport disk utility? What's that?

Actually, it's Airport Utility.
It's what you used to set up your Airport when you first connected it.
See this -> AirPort Utility 5.5.1 for Mac

how's the drive formatted ?

the AEBS will not recognize NTFS formatted drives ...

J GG

rr hawks wrote:
I'm afraid there is no Airport Disk Utility in my Utilities folder. I am not even sure if it should be there in 10.5.8.

it's standard as part of OS X. however, you can download it from here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl955.

J GG

but I am curious what Airport 'Disk' Utility is.

Nothing. It was a mistake.

The Apple support doc I linked to in my first post

Uh, you posted no link.

rr hawks wrote:
The Apple support doc I linked to in my first post only explains how to get drives to mount on the desktop using that, not Airport Utility.

there's no link in your 1st post.

I am still at a loss, as nothing I try gets the drive to mount on the desktop.

did you check how the drive is formatted ?

I may resort to the Applescript suggestion, but I am hoping there is a more 'normal' solution.

see the suggestion by Chris above (system preferences > accounts > startup items > "+" sign.

J GG

rr hawks wrote:
Yes, I tried adding it to startup items, but to no avail.

you will only be able to select/add the drive to your startup items when it is mounted.

if you launch *airport utility* (AU), enter +manual setup+ for your extreme, and go to the disks tab, do you see the USB drive ? the following screen shot, again, is from my TC but it will look very similar to what you see



anyways, in order to get your USB mounted, you could try couple of things:

1. perform a *power cycle* of your equipment. shut everything down for @ least 15 minutes. then, in intervals of 5 minutes, turn the modem back on, next drive, followed by the extreme, and last your Mac.

try to mount the drive using the finder as per the screenshot above

2. if no joy, *factory restore* the extreme. pull it from power and get a paperclip or pointy object. while you plug the extreme back into the outlet, press (and keep pressing) the little reset button @ the back of the unit until the status light flashes amber rapidly (8-10 seconds). this will return the extreme to out-of-the-box status.

in order to avoid re-entering internet and network settings, you could save the configuration of the extreme before you restore it. to do that, launch AU and enter +manual setup+ for the extreme. from the file menu choose +export configuration file+ and save it on your desktop or wherever. the config file can be imported once the +disk problem+ is fixed.

let us know what transpires.

J GG