Q: Connect USB hard drive to airport extreme
I have an Iomega LDHD-UP external hard drive that I want to connect to my Airport Extreme (running version 7.6.4)... but I can't seem to do it.
Currently, the Airport is set up as a bridge to my Verizon Fios Router. All of that works fine.
The instructions from Apple do not seem to help me, because I don't have "Airport Disk Utility" -- only "Airport Utility" -- and I'm hitting a roadblock from there.
(AirPort: How to mount an AirPort Extreme USB hard disk volume in Mac OS X and Windows - Apple Support)
Normally, I can figure something like this out, I figured I'd ask for help rather than going in circles for another hour.
Any advice? Thank you.
Airport Extreme, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)
Posted on Mar 20, 2016 8:42 AM
As I noted above, there are only two formats that will work with the USB port on the AirPort Extreme......Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and FAT32.
So, if you want to use your current NTFS drive, and unless you have backups for all the files on the drive, you will need to copy everything that you want to keep to another drive for temporary storage, format the Iomega drive for Mac, then move the files back over to the drive when the formatting is complete.
Then, the task of trying to figure out USB compatibility and USB power issues will begin.
I'll also say again that there are so many "If's" here, that is simply not possible to say whether spending the time to try to make things work will be successful. I recently spent a good deal of time with another user who wanted to do essentially the same thing that you are doing......and things just would not work.....even after doing everything right with a number of hours of effort.
If it were me, I would purchase a new USB drive.......first making sure that the store will allow the drive to be returned if it doesn't work......and try to set things up that way. Ideally, you want a drive that is already formatted for Mac in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Apple's USB port technology is probably 5+ years old on the AirPort Extreme.....and even if you can get the drive to work......you should understand the drive will run at about half the speed of a USB 2.0 drive that is connected to a computer. So, things are going to be SLOW.
It's your call, though.
Posted on Mar 20, 2016 9:35 AM
