Can't find hard drive shared using Airport Extreme

I was thinking of using the same set up for making backups - an airport extreme + a hard disk connected to it, and am very surprised to read it is unlikely to work well. Apple sells their TimeCapsule as a device to make wireless back ups, and it seems to me that's nothing more than an airport extreme with a hd built into it. As i would like to be able to take with me the hard disk now and then I thought being clever combining the airport extreme with and external hd, but it seems Apple with it's sales technique is even more clever! In this you are forced their time capsule, which is relatively expensive (the added hd sets you back some 130 dollars) and leaves with a less flexible solution.

Hi did you ever get an answer I am having the same issues I know it can be done just can't do it. I can see the hard drive when I go into the Air port utility however when I go looking for it in the finder window can't find it have ticket all the boxes do you know what is going on?

Other threads discuss this and seem to conclude that the recent firmware upgrades cause the external usb to constantly drop. rebooting the router may fix it temporarily but it drops again later. I guess we'll just have to wait for Apple to sort it out?

I know have an external hardisk (Iomega minimax) connected directly to the Airport Extreme, doing backups from my Imac via Time Machine, and it has been working very well for the past three days. A few things are important:

- switch off all devices before connecting them.
- switch on the harddisk, and after that the Airport Extreme. this is only important the first time, after that, the order doesn't seem to matter.
- in Airport Utility the harddisk should turn up: share it
- Important step: in the Finder, under Shared, double click the disk, so that it gets mounted. You should now be able to see it in Time Capsule.

As said, it works fine up till now - without any cables, the harddisk sitting under the Airport switches on every hour dutyfully to make it's backups. I haven't yet tried to use a hub to connect both the external Iomega and a printer to the Airport Extreme (have to get a powered hub first) - the last post in this forum suggests this might be more problematic.

Good luck!

Macmateo: Thanks. It's not an initial setup issue - as I said it was working fine for the first month I owned AEBS and iMac, now the airport extreme simply will not connect when you click on it in the finder window, even though the external disk shows up as recognized in airport utility.

Hi, ok, but I was responding to Croft02, his problem might have been the initial setup, and he asked me if I ever got an answer.

Grtz

correction: in the second paragraph I wrote Time Capsule, where it should be Time Machine. Soo confusing 😉

I am glad I found this thread. It sorted out my issues and pointed me in the right direction:
1.) reformated drive from FAT to the N...+ format (now I can save to it)
2.)connected it to airport
3.) shared it using airport utility
4.) rebooted airport with drive on
5.) found it in finder in shared Airport Extreme drive
6.) moved data across wirelessly and verified I could choose it in time capsule.

I was surprised not to see it on the desktop with the other drives including the one that was physically connected. Why not display it in the same manner? Why make a wireless shared drive harder to get to than a connected drive?

Thanks called apple in the end to get sorted apparently I am just a tool.