WD External Hard Drive Connected to Airport Extreme

Question

WD External Hard Drive Connected to Airport Extreme

Hi!
Is it possible to connect my WD SE Passport Essential to the Airport Extreme? I want to back up my Imac and my MBP at the same time without connecting the WD-HD bak and forth to both machines.
I tried using a highs speed USB port (D-Link) and connect it to the AE but the WD-HD does not appear on my iMac and MBP but the printer (connected to the AE thru the D-Link) works.
Thanks.

iMac (Leopard) and MBP (Snow Leopard), Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 4, 2010 2:28 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 4, 2010 2:34 PM in response to California2010

Welcome to the disucussion area!

I tried using a highs speed USB port (D-Link) and connect it to the AE but the WD-HD does not appear on my iMac and MBP

The drive will need to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to work with Macs. Do you know how it is formatted?

Where were you looking for it to "appear"?

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Answer 2

Nov 20, 2010 9:17 PM in response to California2010

Almost identical setup here. It should probably work, provided your hub has enough power for the hard drive. Like the person above mentions, make sure you format it (connecting it to your computer) first. Where you're going to see it connect is through the Airport Utility application.

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 21, 2010 8:23 AM in response to California2010

Are you planning to use Time Machine for the backups? If so, you need to know that backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See [Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Airport.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

A better alternative would be to connect an external HD to your iMac, and back it up directly to one partition. Back the MBP up to a separate partition, via "sharing," over your network. See #22 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum), for setup instructions.

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