Airport Express and an external hard drive???

I am thinking of getting the new LaCie La Cinema external hard drive that can play my movies however it can only run on USB2.0 and doesn't have wireless networking capabilities.
Is it possible to set up Airport Express near my TV, and plug the external hard disk into the network? This will make it very handy as my backup movies that I convert will go directly to my living room next to the TV.
Thx for your help.

None of us know Apple's plans and speculation of future Apple plans and products is not allowed in this discussion area.
However since the AirPort Express (AX) has been in production for nearly 4 years with no announced updates... adding this functionality is probably not in the plans.

Similar Messages

Can I use time machine through airport express and an external hard drive?

I want to be able to use time machine remotely. I own a WD 1TB passport external hard drive. If I connect it to an airport express, will it backup my macbook pro?

Not sure what you mean by "remotely". Remotely on your network, or remotely over the Internet?
In either case, the AirPort Express does not support a hard drive. You would need an AirPort Extreme for that.
Trying to use Time Machine over the Internet is incredibly slow and unreliable. Remember, you are uploading. Upload speeds are often 10 times slower than download speeds with most Internet Service Providers.

Can i use time machine with a airport extreme and a external hard drive

I have connected a hard drive to my airport extreme.
Now i would like to use time machine to back up my computers, and would like to do this on the hard drive which is connected to my airport extreme.
Next step is that i would like to be able to approach my external hard drive via the internet.
Is this possible or not?

Both are possible. However, Apple does NOT support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks attached to the 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn). Doing so will potentially lead to data corruption and is highly not recommended. Please check out this excellent Pondini article for more details. This article also provides the Apple Support references that states Apple's position. Bottom line? If your backups are critical to you, then you may want to rethink your backup solution.
As far as accessing the AirPort Disk from the Internet, the following is the basic steps to do so:
Start the AirPort Utility > Select the AEBSn, and then, note the IP address shown.
Select Manual Setup.
Verify that Connection Sharing = Share a public IP address is selected on the Internet > Internet Connection tab.
Select Disks, and then, select File Sharing.
Verify that both the "Enable file sharing" and "Share disks over WAN" options are enabled.
Verify that Secure Shared Disks = With a disk password. (Recommended)
Verify that AirPort Disks Guest Access = Not allowed. (Recommended)
Select Advanced, and then, select the Port Mapping tab.
Click the plus sign to add a new port mapping.
For Service, select the "Personal File Sharing" option. (Note: This option would only allow Mac clients to access the AirPort Disks. If you want both Macs and PCs to connect, you would need to leave this field at its default value and enter the appropriate SMB ports to the mix of ports to be opened.)
In the Public UDP Port(s) and Public TCP Port(s) boxes, type in a 4-digit port number (e.g., 8888) that you choose. In the Private IP Address box, type the internal IP address of your AEBSn that you wrote down in step 1. In the Private UDP Port(s) and Private TCP Port(s) boxes, type 548. Click Continue.
In the Description box, type a descriptive name like "AirPort Disk File Sharing," and then, click Done.
Click on Update.
To connect to the shared AirPort Disk from a remote location using a Mac:
From the Finder > Go > Connect to Server.
Enter the Pubic (WAN-side) IP address of the AEBSn, followed by a colon and the Public port number that you choose in step 11 of the previous procedure. For example: afp://www.mydyndnsdomain.com:8888 or afp://123.456.789.123:8888
Click Connect.
You should be prompted for your user name and password. The user name can be anything you like; the password should be the Disk password for the AEBSn that you created in step 6 previously.
Click Connect.

Airport Extreme and connecting a hard drive

Hello All,
Thank you ahead of time for your help! I have a couple of questions regarding the set up of my airport extreme and an external hard drive.
What I want to accomplish is using the airport extreme to ONLY share a hard drive for backup and sharing other files through out the house. My housemates already have the internet going through their router, so there is for the airport extreme. Can a macbook pro (13in intel) receive two wireless signals, one that is the internet and the other from my airport extreme (that shares my hard drive)? If so, how is this done?
Any assistance would be more that appreciated!!
Thanks!!

Hello njoza. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
The simplest way to accomplish this would be to connect the 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn) to the Internet router by Ethernet; reconfigure the AEBSn as a bridge, and disable its wireless radios.
In this configuration, you can still share out the hard drive and only need to connect to the Internet router's wireless network for both drive & Internet access.

Airport extreme working with external hard drive via USB port adaptor :)

Hi Everyone. I hope this post will be helpful because I have been very frustrated with apple and their customer support and I figured this out on my own by reading all of the discussions and playing with my settings but it took me a while...
I recently for school bought all apple products and I have non-mac products as well. I bought the airport extreme believing I could hook up all of my computers through it and share the printers and my mybook external hard drive with my husbands desktop and the other lap tops. Unfortunately this was not as easy as advertised...
I was not able to successfully have both computers stay connected to the printers so I have to have mine for my laptop connected via the airport extreme and my husband has his desktop connected to a different printer via a ethernet cable. It would work at set up and then a few hours later not print anymore and reinstalling the drivers just confused it... if anyone knows a solution for this please let me know. It worked wirelessly for me but not for him.
As far as the external drive for the airport extreme goes I went and bought an additional USB port hub so I could access my printer wirelessly and my external hard drive as well for time machine back ups.
I set up my external hard drive so that it will save files from both a mac and a non-mac computer and we can both access it (not sure if that matters in the solution or problem for others); however, the desktop (non-mac) was able to by clicking and dragging files to it assess the hard drive and utilize it and my macbook was not able to because the airport extreme showed the drive under disks but when I tried to access it through time machine it was not there. I played with this for a long time and finally figured it out.
I believe I went under finder, then chose go from the menu bar, then chose connect to server and the default for it is afp://10.0.1.1.. You enter this in under server address and you may be prompted to give your password. The password was tricky as well because it showed my computers user name and I thought it would want that password but instead it wanted the password to log into my internet or my airport extreme's password. Once I put this in I was able to open my time machine preferences, finally choose the mybook external hard drive that was now showing up, choose it and my computer is currently doing a back up as I type without the error message of failed, unable to locate volume, or any others.
Hope this posting was helpful and not to confusing and feel free to message me if you need clarification and think this may solve your problem as well. GOOD LUCK!

Seems to me you should have done your homework setting up your network and not assuming that any third party device you choose to use would work without problems.

Accessing Time Capsule and linked external hard drive from other devices and copying to these drives

Hi
Please be gentle. I am not that technically able :-)
I have managed to set up my time capsule. Router working, external hard drive linked, time machine back ups working...
The last thing I am looking to do is to access files on my time capsule and also external hard drive (linked to it), from Mac, Iphones, Ipads, Apple TV, Windows laptops X2. Am I able to do that? Have read so many discussions but dont get the answer. Please be gentle :-)
Regards
Tommy

The last thing I am looking to do is to access files on my time capsule and also external hard drive (linked to it), from Mac
This should be automatic.. find the TC disk under shared in finder.. double click it and see under the data folder.. you can create new folders in there.
Note using the TC for data and TM backups is not the greatest of ideas.. please read pondini.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
The external drive is fine though..
Now it can have loads of issues if you run Mavericks.. so if you have trouble.. do not be surprised.. if you run Mavericks.. be surprised if it works without trouble.
Iphones, Ipads
iOS devices are not file based.. they are not intended to be used with a file device like TC and will neither backup to it nor open files from it.. of course what apple wants and what users want are different things so there are plenty of file apps to help you read and write files.
Filebrowser is the major one.
http://www.stratospherix.com/products/filebrowser/
You still cannot backup though.. iOS uses itunes to backup or icloud.
Apple TV
There is nothing you can do with AppleTV.. it is not a file device at all.. it is not even a media player.. it is a streamer. (Early model Gen1 and Gen2 can be jailbreak.. so they do actually have media player ability) Gen3 is tied to its mother's (iTunes) skirts with steel cables.. no JB.. no use really. If you want to play movies from a TC buy a WD Live TV.. it is a player.. !!
Windows laptops X2
You can access the TC from windows..
1. Make sure the TC naming complies with windows networking.. to put that simply.. all names should be short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric. Apple wizard will recommend a name for the TC, like
Fred Blog's Airport Time Capsule.. this is wrong on so many levels.
It will be a total pain on windows.. use FBATC or TC or anything you like.. as long as it follows the rules..
Short 2-20 characters.. less than 10 is better.
No spaces.
Pure alphanumeric.
All names must comply.. TC name and wireless name/s
2. Load the airport utility for windows into the computer.. you can download for up to win7.. apple haven't bothered with windows since then and are pretty out of date. The win7 utility will load on win8 with the usual voodoo and astrological help.
3. Windows must be set to home for location.. if you cannot open a command window and ping the TC by ip and name, then pull down the firewalls.
4. In windows explorer type into the address bar directly.
\\TCname or \\TCIPaddress (using, of course, the real name or real IP).

I have a tesco router and an external hard drive attached to it as a network drive (shared) for my macbook and MB-Air. Have no problems with my MB accessing it, but with MB-AIR it says - 'the version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supp

I have a tesco router and an external hard drive attached to it as a network drive (shared) for my macbook and MB-Air. Have no problems with my MB accessing it, but with MB-AIR it says - 'the version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supported. pls contact your system administrator to resolve the problem'. MB-Air uses maverick downloaded yesterday - upgrade from mountain lion. MB uses snow leopard still, as i am quite used to it and am thinking of upgrade if mavericks work fine on air. Also have parallel on snow leopard but it is no longer supported according to mac website - if i upgrade am i going to lose my parallel and will have to buy a new one!!!

Yes, the Old Master file has a folder for each year where I find all photos from that specific year. I am attaching a screen shot of the file.
In the meantime i have managed to download all photos (it did not download any video files though in mpg, avi, 3gp, m4v,mp4 and mov format) to a new iphoto library. Unfortunately the photos are quite mixed and often doubled up. I ma considering to purchase iphoto library which checks all duplicates in iphoto. this will save me a lot of time. What do you think?

HT201250 i am using for first time the time machine and an external hard drive because I want to erase my macbook and start from zero files. do i keep my files in the portable hard disk when I connect it again with the macbook or the time machine will era

i am using for first time the time machine and an external hard drive because I want to erase my macbook and start from zero files. Am i keeping my files in the portable hard disk when I will connect it again with the macbook or the time machine will erase all?
I would like to know if after I erase all my data, empy hard drive inside the macbook, the time machine will erase all my files that I have saved in my "WD "My passport" external hard drive

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Time Machine has to erase the external disk in order to make backups. Before setting Time Machine up, copy the files of your external disk to the hard disk of the Mac in order not to lose them, and then, set up Time Machine. The first backup will start automatically.
If you want more information about Time Machine, read the Pondini's site > http://pondini.org

Backing up Mac HD with Time Capsule AND an external hard drive

I am sure that this question has been asked one way or another but I can't seem to find the exact answer.
I would like to back up my Mac HD with the Time Capsule AND another hard drive essentially to create two backups. Should one fail, I still have another copy as a precaution. The Time Capsule will be my primary back up because my external hard drive is usually switched off and will only be turned on from time to time to perform "less frequent" backups.
With Time Capsule AND the external hard drive on, will Time Machine just update the backup on the external hard drive without becoming confused with the other copy on Time Capsule? In other words, can Time Machine distinguish between two different Time Machine Backup files and bring them up to date accordingly?
I understand there is an archive function on the Time Capsule, which would also serve the purpose. However, I am wondering if there is another way.
Thanks.

Rheopaipo wrote:
I am sure that this question has been asked one way or another but I can't seem to find the exact answer.
I would like to back up my Mac HD with the Time Capsule AND another hard drive essentially to create two backups. Should one fail, I still have another copy as a precaution. The Time Capsule will be my primary back up because my external hard drive is usually switched off and will only be turned on from time to time to perform "less frequent" backups.
With Time Capsule AND the external hard drive on, will Time Machine just update the backup on the external hard drive without becoming confused with the other copy on Time Capsule? In other words, can Time Machine distinguish between two different Time Machine Backup files and bring them up to date accordingly?
I understand there is an archive function on the Time Capsule, which would also serve the purpose. However, I am wondering if there is another way.
I don't think it's possible to configure Time Machine to back up to two locations without modifying its settings frequently.
You might consider using that external drive to hold a bootable backup. You can create such a thing with either of the utilities SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. If you pay the registration fee for SuperDuper! (~US$28), there's a mode where it will back up only what has changed, which makes the backup operation run quicker. (Carbon Copy Cloner may offer a similar feature.)

How to migrate from my old MacBook Pro to a new one with less disk space and an external hard drive?

I have just bought a new MacBook Pro and an external hard drive.
Yet I have problems migrating data from my old MacBook Pro (more internal disk space with around 500 GB data) to my new one (internal disk space less than 500 GB).
I have connected all 3 devices but it seems the Migration Assistant does not have an option for us to select to migrate to an external hard drive.
Any other way to do it?
Kindly help me. Thanks.

For your situation, Target disk mode may be the most efficient method:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661
Ciao.

Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?

Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?

The external drive must be connected to the Mac using either USB or FireWire
You must remove the external hard drive from the list of items that are "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Preferences.
Here's how:
Open System Preferences (gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click Options
Look for the name of the hard drive in the list of "excluded" items and click on it to highlight it
Click the -- (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the hard drive from the list of "excluded" items....so it will now be backed up
Strongly recommend that you do the first backup using Ethenret from your computer to the Time Capsule since the entire contents of the external drive will be copied on the first pass. Ethernet will be 3-5 faster than wireless.
Once you have the first backup done, you can use wireless for subsequent backups since they will nornally be much smaller....unless you add large files to the external drive.

Can I set Time Machine to backup both my hard drive and an external hard drive?

Hi. I've been working with a lot of family video lately and my internal hard drive has filled up significantly. iMovie doesn't seem to have a good archiving facility like Adobe InDesign which I use at work were all the relevant files are gathered together into one folder. Apple advised me to relocate my movie files to an external hard drive and herein lies my query.
Is there a way for me to set Time Machine to backup both my iMac's internal drive and the external hard drive that would contain my movie files? I've been using Time Machine for my backups for a few years now, but backing up the external as well has me stumped. If Time Machine could be used then all the necessary file accociations etc would be safely backed up as well - that's why I don't want to have to manually backup the external.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

7string48 wrote:
Thanks so much Pondini!! You just quickly answered a question that none of the Mac people in 3 stores or Apple Care have been able to answer.If you can format it HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work. If not, it won't.
I'm not too surprised about the Apple Stores, as they don't get much training on Time Machine. But AppleCare sure ought to know.
Oh...what about if the external drive is an array...like a Drobo with it's own proprietary formatting...I guess that would not work...??
I've never used a Drobo. A number of folks here have used them as their Time Machine drives, but I don't recall seeing anyone try to back one up with TM, so can't say for sure. But if you can format it as HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work. If not, it won't.
At least part of the reason is, Time Machine uses the File System Event Store, a hidden log of changes that OSX keeps on each Mac-formatted disk/partition, to figure out what's changed and needs to be backed-up. See How Time Machine works its Magic for details.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations of backing-up multiple volumes with Time Machine.
However, even if it will work, that may not be your best strategy, depending on your circumstances:
Since Time Machine keeps copies of things you've changed or deleted, the destination needs to be considerably larger than the data being backed-up. How much larger varies widely depending on how you use your Mac, but a general "rule of thumb" is, it needs at least twice the space to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
If you have a large internal HD, fairly full, plus a large external HD, and the files on the external don't change frequently, you might want to use Time Machine for the internal, and a different app to a different disk or partition, on a different schedule, for the external. Especially if space is a consideration, you might not need to keep previous versions of files on the externals. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some alternatives.

Can time machine back up an imac and an external hard drive?

I currently back up my imac via time machine but to reduce space on my hard drive I want to move my itunes library onto an external hard drive. If i do this can time machine still back up my imac and the external hard drive with the itunes library on automatically?
Regards
Toekoms

toekoms wrote:
I currently back up my imac via time machine but to reduce space on my hard drive I want to move my itunes library onto an external hard drive. If i do this can time machine still back up my imac and the external hard drive with the itunes library on automatically?
yes, given enough space on the destination drive (your library may grow over time). also, the drive needs to be connected directly to your Mac.
you might want to make sure the drive is not excluded from TM backups by checking in system preferences > time machine > options.
also, as for moving your iTunes library, see this read for tips/instructions.
JGG
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

My MacBook Pro keeps making copies of a document that I am trying to save. I don't want to duplicate the file. I only want to save it on both my hard drive and my external hard drive. I do not want to change its name for every save, which the computer see

My MacBook Pro keeps making copies of a document that I am trying to save. I don't want to duplicate the file. I only want to save it on both my hard drive and my external hard drive. I do not want to change its name for every save, which the computer seems insistent on doing. Help!!

11lizzyp wrote:
can't be saved because the file is read-only.
I did not create the file to be read-only. I created to be able to continue to add to it as I work on it.
More on versions here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4753
local snapshots:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878
Sounds like a permissions problem ie read only.
If running repair permissions from your DiskUtility.app does not sort it,
Someone should jump in here with erudite and concise fix.

Installed 10.4.6 now ipod and lacie external hard drive no longer register

Hi
thankyou in advance, I updated to 10.4.6 but now the ipod and lacie external hard drive (usb drive) are not recognized by the computer. have tried disk utility, restarting etc but no difference. The lacie is recognized by another computer so it is not faulty. Any suggestions please?

after reading this and resetting the PMU, my drive works. I'd say try it, the worst that could happen is you have to fix your time and date.
read this-
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2072301&#2072301
then followed this-
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

Airport Express and an external hard drive???

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