Connect USB hard drive to airport extreme

Before we begin, it is important to understand that some USB drives will work with the firmware in the AirPort Extreme and some will not. The USB port on the AirPort Extreme is only USB 2.0, and some USB 3.0 drives will not work.....even though USB 3.0 is "supposed" to be compatible with USB 2.0.

Apple does not provide a compatibility list of USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 drives, so we cannot guarantee that your drive will work with the AirPort Extreme.

Another factor to keep in mind is that the USB port on the AirPort Extreme is under powered, so some drives will not work unless you use a powered USB hub with them.....even if the drive has its own power supply, or the drive works fine when it is connected to a computer.....which has a higher powered USB port.

All things considered, you will have a much easier time of it if you can connect the drive directly to your Mac and leave it there. If you want to try to get the drive to work with the AirPort Extreme, then continue reading.

How is the USB drive currently formatted at this time? It won't work at all on the AirPort Extreme unless it is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).....highly recommended.....or FAT32......not recommended.

If you are not sure how the drive is currently formatted, connect it directly to your Mac and wait for the drive to appear on the desktop. Right-Click on the drive icon, then select Get Info, and look to find the Format of the drive in the window that appears, then report on your results.

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.