Connecting External Hard Drives to an Airport Extreme

Question

Connecting External Hard Drives to an Airport Extreme

Hi:

I have been reading about AirPort Utility and how some folks are having problems reading or seeing an external hard drive connected to an Airport Extreme station. Well… I have the same problem, I connected a Maxtor 1 TB USB HD to my Airport Extreme and I can’t even see it on the Airport Utility. I have 2 Airport Express stations connected, one in my kitchen and the other one in the living room. I use them to send music to my wireless speakers and they work great! I can also see them in the Airport Utility, but cannot see the Maxtor HD. I formatted the HD using my MacBook Pro and re-connected the drive to the Airport Extreme again and no luck.

Any thoughts or ideas would be great.

I also noticed that the Airport Utility looks different from before, it must have been updated at some point. But what I can see on this new look utility is that the Airport Extreme station is connected with the two Airport express stations, but that’s it, no HD.

I may be looking in the wrong place because I can’t access options I was able to access before such as changing the Airport Express’ name, etc.

Can anyone shed some light to this Airport Extreme Utility.

Thanks!

Manolo.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), iPhone 4 -iPod Classic 160GB - Apple TVs

Posted on Feb 13, 2012 7:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Bob Timmons

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Level 10

159,236 points

Feb 13, 2012 8:05 PM in response to Victor Romero1

1) Check to make sure that the drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

2) The USB port on the AirPort Extreme is borderline as far as power is concerned. Based on experience with a number of drives and info from this support area, there is about a 75% chance that you will need to use a powered USB hub with a hard drive connected to the Extreme....even if the hard drive has its own power supply

3) If you are using Snow Leopard 10.6.7 as your profile indicates, little has changed with AirPort Utility. The current version is 5.5.3. Please clarify on what operating system you are using.

4) The hard drive will not "show up" on the desktop like a drive attached to the Mac using USB or Firewire. If the formatting is correct and the drive has adequate power, you will see an AirPort Extreme icon under the SHARED heading when you open the Finder or Macintosh HD.

Click the Extreme icon and a folder representing your drive will appear just to the right. Double click the folder to mount the drive on the desktop.

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Answer 2

Feb 15, 2012 2:34 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Hi Bob:

Thanks. Here are my comments in regards to your points.

1) Yes, I forrmatted the drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

2) So, do I connect the powerd USB hub to the Extreme? Or is this hub wireless to the Extreme? Sorry, I am just not sure how this work, I've never done this before. Any recommendations to the type of USB hub I should get? Will it be worth investing in a time capsule wireless HD? Honesteley I have never had any issues with Apple products, so I wanted to save money to get the time capsiule at some point.

3) I am sorry, I didn't specify and forget to update my profile, but I have Lion OS.

4) I just checked and my Maxtor does show up under the shared heading Airport Extreme Icon! I guess I just didn't know how to look before.

Thank you! You've helped me tremendously!

Please still advise if you can about the USB hub and the Time Capsule.

Manolo.

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Answer 3

Feb 15, 2012 2:59 PM in response to Victor Romero1

I am doing the same thing right now, oddly enough. Here's what I have:

Airport Extreme

Powered (very important) USB hub

Three WD hard drives, all formatted to HFS+ a.k.a. "journaled"

The drives are plugged into the powered hub, which is plugged into the Airport Extreme. The drives are showing under the "Shared" section of Finder. I also have them mounted on the desktop.

The drives are mounting, but none of them are showing any content.

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Answer 4

Feb 15, 2012 3:03 PM in response to Victor Romero1

If the AirPort Extreme icon is showing up under the SHARED heading in the Finder, then your hard drive is receiving enough power. You don't need the powered USB hub unless you want to add more hard drives.

I use a Belkin powered USB hub, but I'm sure there are many other alternatives.

The Time Capsule is a good choice if you have Mac or several Macs and you want to set up automatic backups for each Mac.

Since you already have an AirPort Extreme, you would probably not need to use the router capabilities of the Time Capsule if you decide to get that product. You could use it simply for backups.

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Answer 5

Nov 11, 2012 7:03 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Bob Timmons,

Which Bellingham USB hub do you have? I bought the powered 7 port one and it did not work with my extreme. After plugging two externalhrd drives into it, nothing showed up in my shared finder. But when I plug my external in directly, it shows up. One external Iis powered, the other is USB powered. Not sure if that made a difference.

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Answer 6

Nov 11, 2012 7:20 PM in response to BobaBeRRii

Which Bellingham USB hub do you have?

The Belkin 4 port powered hub that I was using had a power supply failure sometime this past summer. I replaced it with a Dynex 4 port powered USB hub.

http://www.dynexproducts.com/products/computer-accessories/DX-HB4PT.html

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