Airport Extreme 802.11ac and USB disk failure

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Level 1

7 points

Airport Extreme 802.11ac and USB disk failure

hi,

Had an Airport Extreme 5th gen with a USB disk attached for over a year of which my Mac was using Time Machine and creating backups no problem, didnt skip a beat.

Just bought a new Airport Extreme 802.11ac, attached the same USB disk and Time Machine works once or twice then fails saying it cant find the disk. True enough if I open finder and try and find the disk its not listed.

Opening the airport utility it shows the disk attached. If I reboot the Airport Extreme the disk shows up again in finder for a short period of time.

Looks like they released a firmware update 7.7.1 which was supposed to fix this but it seems in my case it hasnt. Even factory reset after the update but no joy.

Normal wireless activities like internet access etc are fine.

Not sure if anyone else has experienced this yet? If not I guess ill try a non self powered disk or something, either that my AE is faulty.

thanks

matt

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jun 17, 2013 3:34 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 17, 2013 4:18 AM in response to MattyMRM

Matt,

Tim Machine to a disk attached to an Airport isn't supported except to a Time Capsule (probably something in the afp protocol but who knows!)

Regards,

Shawn

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Answer 2

MattyMRM Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 17, 2013 4:27 AM in response to Shawn Grinter 2

hi,

it worked on the older Airport Extreme. Regardless if im using it for storage or time machine the disk keeps vanishing and doesnt show up in finder. :/

Edit : http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/airport_extreme_80211ac_setup.pdf

even the manual now says you can setup TM on page 13.

thanks

matt

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2013 4:51 AM in response to MattyMRM

Matt,

Well that's good news, it's the first time I've seen TM being supported on an Airport device - perhaps Apple have finlly addressed the issue.

Anyway - perhaps there is a problem with the disk - can you attach it locally to your laptop and run diskutils to check it out?

Regards,

Shawn

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Answer 4

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jun 17, 2013 6:25 AM in response to Shawn Grinter 2

Shawn Grinter 2 wrote:

. . .

Well that's good news, it's the first time I've seen TM being supported on an Airport device - perhaps Apple have finlly addressed the issue.

Yes, on the new ones only; they have new innards, apparently the same as the new TC. The Setup Guide includes instructions for using TM.

All the support articles and Help still just say no, with no distinction between new and old.

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Answer 5

MattyMRM Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 17, 2013 6:26 AM in response to Shawn Grinter 2

hi,

ive formatted another disk, a mains powered one and left it doing a TM backup across the wireless. The old disk worked fine on the AE 5th gen.

Its almost like the AE puts the disk to sleep and it doesnt wake up unless the AE is rebooted. 😟

ill see what happens with this new disk, it happens quickly after not using the disk for a period of time. If it does it again ill be getting a refund I think and wait a while until all the bugs are ironed out.

thanks

matt

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Answer 6

MattyMRM Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 18, 2013 2:50 PM in response to MattyMRM

hi,

well the mains powered USB disk seems to be fine so far.

Still cant explain why the old USB disk worked fine on the 5th gen but not the new 802.11ac :/

thanks

matt

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Answer 7

Jun 19, 2013 2:17 AM in response to MattyMRM

Matt,

I'm wondering if it's a power issue - do you have a powered hub you can try?

Regards,

Shawn

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Answer 8

Jun 19, 2013 8:13 AM in response to MattyMRM

Matty,

What is the make and model of that HD you're connecting to the APX?

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Answer 9

MattyMRM Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 19, 2013 9:05 AM in response to Shawn Grinter 2

hi,

nope, just something else to plug in that I didnt want to 🙂

thanks

matt

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Answer 10

MattyMRM Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 19, 2013 9:06 AM in response to BobbyDigital00

hi,

its a Coolermaster USB disk caddy/case for a 2.5 inch drive. The drive itself is a Samsung 2.5 inch 1Tb 5400 SATA2.

thanks

matt

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Answer 11

Aug 7, 2013 7:01 PM in response to MattyMRM

Hey there,

I had a 2nd gen AEBS + 1TB WD external drive for TM and never had any problems. I bought an Airport AC couples of weeks ago and I moved my drive to it and I get the exact same problem.

note that my drive got external power.

The disk fell in sleep mode for some reason and won't wakeup unless I re-plug it or reboot the router. (the light on the disk is on but the disk doesn't spin)

Eric

Message was edited by: Eric Landry

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Answer 12

Aug 17, 2013 9:17 PM in response to Eric Landry

After rebooting the router 2 days in row and rebooting my computer the problem is gone and everything seems back to normal.

I didn't have any problems for more than a week.

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Answer 13

wgish

Level 1

14 points

Aug 29, 2013 12:01 PM in response to MattyMRM

My experience with the 802.11ac extreme with 7.7.1 firmware suggests Time Machine doesn't work when the name assigned to the device (not the SSID) contains a period, which the out-of-the-box name does.

Out-of-the-box, with the default device name still assigned, I could not get Time Machine to recognize the remote disk on multiple 10.8.4 Macs until I created an empty folder on it. Yet once registered with Time Machine, backups never occurred to the disk--TM status was always "waiting". The server name displayed in TM had the period in "802.11ac" escaped with a backslash (i.e., "802\.11ac").

I renamed the extreme, but used a name that still contained a period. The same difficulty was encountered registering the disk with TM. Once registered, TM status for the disk was still "waiting".The server name again had the period escaped with a backslash.

Finally, I just removed the period from the name. Registering the disk with TM then occurred normally and backup began immediately.

(In an earlier case with the 7.7.0 firmware, I had no trouble registering and backing up to an 802.11ac Time Capsule that had previously been given a name without a period in it.)

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