Airport Extreme External HDD (Windows 7)

I just got the airport extreme and have been trying to hook up my external HDD to it in windows but cant find it.
Homegroup is set up and have tinkered on the included airport software so far to no avail.
Any help on this is much appreciated.

Lyle1986 wrote:
I just got the airport extreme and have been trying to hook up my external HDD to it in windows but cant find it.
Homegroup is set up and have tinkered on the included airport software so far to no avail.
Any help on this is much appreciated.
Airport Extreme does not support NTFS formatted disks. Acting as a NAS only HFS+ and FAT32 are supported
For that you have to use FAT32 with all limitations of that format or to learn Win7 to speak HFS+
For instance with Paragon's HFS for Windows ( http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/ )
Lupunus

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Airport Extreme external hdd causes router to reboot

When I try to access my external WD hard drive (formatted to FAT32) on my AirPort Extreme, it freezes and causes the router to reboot. How do I fix this?
I am accessing the hdd from windows 7 pc.

Try adding a powered USB hub....even if the WD drive has its own power supply.
Reason...the USB port is borderline as far as its ability to supply sufficient power for a hard drive even when the Extreme is new and even when the drive has its own power supply.
If the Extreme is a few years old, it is not delivering as much power to the USB port as it once did, and it needs some help.
Worst case, the internal power supply on the Extreme is starting to head South. That is usually not an issue until the device is 4-5 years old.

Time Capsule vs. Airport Extreme & external HDD

Hullo all. For time capsule backups, i am either going to purchase a 1tb time capsule unit or an external usb drive to use with an airport extreme base station's usb port. Wondering if someone more knowledgeable than i knows if either choice offers a transfer speed advantage over the other.
Also, if i go with the external usb drive option then i'd like to employ a usb hub so that when necessary i can also run my printer off of the same airport's usb port. Would anybody know if this would work okay, without compromising backup speed and quality?
Thanks!

artdlr007 wrote:
Of course - that is the essence of my question: what's faster, time capsule or an AEBS and fast usb external drive. And is the speed difference significant.
One big problem not being addressed by that choice is that Time Capsule itself is slow. Even if you connect a computer over Gigabit Ethernet directly to a Time Capsule with its internal interface hard drive, you will not get throughput anywhere close to Gigabit Ethernet speeds.
From the Macworld review of Time Capsule:
Depending on the size and number of files being backed up, throughput ranged from 45 to 60 Mbps over gigabit Ethernet. This would put an initial 100GB backup at 4 to 6 hours.
That's right. Real transfer times are lower than 100Mbps Ethernet, on a par with 802.11g wireless, and well below USB 2.0.
The speeds in the review and in my experience mean that with Time Capsule, neither USB nor the hard drive is the real bottleneck because both have higher throughput than Time Capsule's networking chipset. I don't know if the AEBS would be faster.

Airport Extreme external hdd slow after update 7.6.1

Hi, need help!
Since I updated the Airport Extreme firmware to 7.6.1 the access to my external disk is extremelly slow. Sometimes I can only access it by IP address, it not even appears in the Finder.
In the same day I updated to Airport Utility to 6.0, again, another error. Now I can't see the Airport, only by IP.
Installed the older version of Airport Utility, the 5.6, but nothing changed, it only appears by a few hours if I reset the Airport.
I'm getting crazy, there's no logic in this error.
If I use the Airport Utility from the iPad, everything is fine. In fact, I have to use the iPad if I want to perform a restart or reset the Airport.
If I use the Finder after a reset I can see the disk, but its very slow. If I access the disk by IP its works ok.
The Time Machine uses the external disk from the Airport, the last time took 3 hours to copy 500Mb.
Downgraded the firmware to 7.6, but it stays the same.
Help, don't know what more to do.

I spent several weeks trying to diagnose and repair this problem. Unfortunately the only fix I have found is to revert my firmware version all the way back to 7.4.2. I'm not the only one who has had to do this. If you search the net you will find that this is the standard solution.
As near as I can tell, Apple has abandoned any attempts to fix the major problems the airport extreme has with sharing USB devices. They sell it as a big feature of the router but it has been very disappointing. I will soon be purchasing a new non-Apple router because the airport extreme is no longer the only unit with dual antenna and device sharing features.

Airport Extreme + USB HDD = Time Capsule?

Hi!
(Sorry for my poor English, I hope it's possible to understand my problem/question).
I bought a MacBook in January 09. It's connected to the Internet via WLAN and a Fritz.Box (Wireless Router with built-in DSL Modem, unfortunately it uses the old slow LAN and WLAN protocol and a USB1-Port).
I want to backup my files with Time Machine via WLAN. I tried to connect a USB-Drive to my Fritz.Box but it was terribly slow (USB1...)
It's important, that the backups go automatically when I'm at home and connected to my WLAN.
Now I think of buying something that's more useful. I have three ideas and I'm not sure what to do...
1) Buying the Time Capsule. Pro: I think, it will work perfectly. I don't need to worry about a thing. Contra: It's terribly expensive. In Germany 1TB will cost about 600$. (Maybe I should buy the 500GB-Version and update it by myself to 1GB or 2GB).
2) Buying the Airport Extreme. Unfortunately I'm not sure if a Airport Extreme + USB-HDD is the same as the Time Capsule. Apple writes: "Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be used to back up to many kinds of Mac OS Extended-formatted drives, but you cannot choose AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk as a Time Machine backup volume. " On the other hand some Users wrote that they managed to get their TM-Backup on a AE-HDD (but did this work via WLAN?). With the Airport Extreme it would be easy to manage a itunes-stream-server (the Airport Express is not too expensive). And the Airport Extreme isn't too expensive as well.
3) Using a Network-HDD. It would be not too good, since I had to use my slow WLAN-Connection and since this wouldn't be supported by Apple at all. On the other hand this would be the least expensive version.
What should I do? Is it possible to work with the Airport Extreme and an external USB-HDD via WLAN and without any problems (like mounting the drive manually each time I connect to my Network).
It would be much more fun, if everything ran automatically, when I got in reach of my Network...
Thanks in advance! Gerrit

A couple of pointers.
The hard drive must be specifically formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to work with the AirPort Extreme's USB port. Check the documentation that came with the drive to find out how it is formatted at the present time.....it is likely formatted to work with Windows, which is not compatible with the AirPort Extreme.
Unfortunately, even if the drive is formatted correctly, Apple does not officially support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme, so that will be the next hurdle to deal with.
Some users actually do seem to be able to make this work, but overall, it is not a reliable method to backup your data if it is important to you.

How do i install airport extreme on a windows pc and route it to another windows desktop?

How do I install airport extreme into a windows desktop pc and then successfully route it to another windows desktop?

The AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS) is an Internet router that supports both wired and wireless network clients. You can connect both of your desktop, using either media, to the AEBS for network connectivity.

How to access a USB disk drive connected to Airport Extreme from a Windows 7 PC?

How can I access a USB disk drive connected to Airport Extreme from a Windows 7 PC?

...Called it a roaming network. Wireless mode is create a wireless network. I have checked allow this network to be extended. Probably need to uncheck that?
Yes, that option should be deselected as it only pertains to when both routers are interconnected by wireless. Since you have a roaming network, they of course, would be interconnected by Ethernet.
The other important settings for a roaming network are:
Each router must have a unique station name. For the AirPort, this would be called its Base Station Name. I believe the default station name for Linksys routers is: linksys
Each router must broadcast a wireless network with an identical Network Name. For the Linksys, Network Name is the same as its SSID.
Each router wireless network must use the same Wireless Security type and password. The Linksys WRT-54G is capable of up to WPA2 Personal. If you have it set to this level of security, the AirPort should be at the same setting.
Make sure that each router is not on the same Radio Channel for the 2.4 GHz radio. In the US, there are basically only three non-overlapping channels: 1, 6, or 11. Set each so that they don't use the same channel but use of those three choices.

How do I install a new AirPort Extreme on a Windows network?

How do I install a new AirPort Extreme on a Windows network?

To configure a new 802.11ac Extreme requires AirPort Utility for iOS or AirPort Utility for OS X.
http://www.apple.com/airport-extreme/specs/

AirPort Extreme Drivers for Windows XP???

This may be a very silly question, but I've got a new Mac Pro that will be arriving in two days and I couldn't help but wonder, "How will the AirPort Extreme WiFi card be able to connect to the Internet when I'm running Windows XP from a separate hard drive using Boot Camp?
The Internet connection in my apartment is wireless only (coming from a router upstairs in my landlord's part of the house). Are there any AirPort Extreme drivers for Windows XP? If so, I have not been able to find anything online.
Any suggestions on how to do this?
Thanks,
~Greg

Thanks for the info Stefan,
However, I don't think that the Macintosh driver CD will do me any good in this case because I am not planning on running the 32 bit version of Windows XP. I will be installing XP64 tomorrow once my CD arrives in the mail.
I've heard of quite a few people who are currently running XP64 on their Mac Pro's, but I'm also pretty sure that the driver CD created by Boot Camp will only work in Windows XP 32-bit.
If ANYONE knows of a work around for installing macintosh drivers for my super drive and airport extreme, PLEASE let me know, because I will most certainly need to be able to use my wireless card and keyboard (especially for the CD tray)
Thanks,
Greg

Access external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme USB via Windows & Mac

I have an Airport Extreme and I would like to connect an external hard drive to it via USB so that I can backup pictures, music, documents etc. I need to be able to see the external hard drive from my windows PC. I eventually will be buying a Mac so I would like to be able to also get to my pictures and documents via the MAC as well.
I currenlty have an iPhone, iPad and Apple TV so getting to the external drive from these devices would be a huge bonus also if that is possible.
I recently bought an ioSafe Solo External Hard Drive and I had to return it because it was only formatted for the PC. When I plugged it into my Airport Extreme, I could see the drive via the Airport Disk Utility but I could not see it from my PC and I could not map a drive to it. When I contacted ioSafe support, they said that what I was trying to do was not possible since I did not have a MAC available to me to reformat the drive.
I hope that I am not trying to accomplish the impossible because I will always need to live in a MAC/PC world.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

You must know people with Macs.. it is 2min work to plug a USB drive into a Mac Laptop and format it Mac OS extended with a quick format.. And that is better IMHO than buying a utility or buying a pre-formatted drive which are often more expensive for no very good or obvious reason.
Another option is a Linux boot disk.. Linux distributions have very similar command line tools to the Mac OS. (some are identical) and HFS+ has been available for ages in Linux.

Windows 7 with Airport Extreme External HD Connected

I have read for the past few hours and worked to get my new Toshiba Windows 7 laptop to recognize my external hard drive that is connected to my Airport Extreme. I have 2 other laptops, Windows XP, that connected without problems. I have tried almost every solution I could find in this forum with no success. I have turned off the windows search function. I have changed the airport channel from automatic to manual selecting channel 11. I have Windows 7 Home Edition and cannot access the local security settings.
I am at a loss and very frustrated that I just bought this new computer and cannot use it. Any suggestions or fixes?
As I mentioned, I have literally spent a few hours searching, reading and trying.
Thanks.

For Win7 Home edition, you will have to make a Registry change. Please do so only if you are comfortable with making Registry edits ... and, as always, any errors introduced may render your Win7 device unbootable.
Open registry editor ( Start search - regedit)
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Create a new DWORD value with the following properties: NAME: LmCompatibilityLevel VALUE: 1
Restart your PC and try the connection again.

Windows 7/Airport Extreme/External HD/MacDrive HELP!

Hello all,
I just upgraded my PC from Vista to Windows 7. I have an Airport Extreme running my home network with a 1TB FreeAgent External Hard Drive connected. When I was using Vista, I used MacDrive to be able to view and access my external on my PC (the drive was formatted as HFSJ I believe). Long story short, everything was working just fine before the upgrade.
Now that I'm running Windows 7 (with MacDrive 8 installed), I can see my external hard drive from My Computer; however, it no longer shows up as a MacDrive disk. It shows up as a generic FAT32 networked disk. The problem with this of course is that I can transfer files from the external to my PC, but not the other way around. When I unplug the external from the Extreme and plug it in directly to my PC, it works just fine; MacDrive instantly recognizes it and it works normally.
I went back onto the Apple website and as far as I could tell, found that the Hard Drive Sharing feature of the Airport Extreme is compatible only with Windows XP and Vista.
I guess my question is, am I doing something wrong? Or is it as I think, that the Airport Extreme Disk Sharing feature is just plain not compatible with Windows 7?
And if this is the case, does anyone know of anyone work arounds to the situation?
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Shameless Bump

Airport extreme and HDD and windows 7 file sharing, Airport extreme and HDD and windows 7 file sharing

Hi there I simply could not launch files sharing at home using airport extreme.

The disk must be formatted HFS+ ie the standard Mac format or it has to be FAT32.. people mention FAT16 but lets face it.. no one is going to go back that far.
NTFS is not readable.. Strongly recommend using HFS+ so format the disk on a Mac .. once plugged into the AE you can access it from windows over network.

Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme + External Hard Drive for iTunes Library

Hi, I currently have an Airport Extreme (Gigabit) and am planning on getting a MacBook Pro. What I want to do is keep my iTunes Library on an External Hard Drive and attach it to my AirPort so I can access it anywhere in the house (and world). Now I have been reading various reviews that perhaps a Time Capsule would be better for my needs. I don't plan on using it for Time Machine backups right now, just as a NAS Drive. If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate the advice.
Thanks!
Message was edited by: Mr. Macintosh693

Hi,
I have something like that working at the moment. My setup is based on a Mac Mini Core Duo [ OS 10.5.6 ] connected to a Time Capsule. I have configured iTunes to store all archived music on the Time Capsule. I use the Apple Lossless format for my CDs and approx 420 titles have taken approx 130Gb from my 1Tb Capsule. In general this setup works well [ especially the optical out of the Mac ] but be aware of the following potential pitfalls:-
1. The Time Capsule is a little on the noisy side and depending on the quality of your playback equipment, your choice of music, ambient noise and your values of "satisfactory" you may want to put your Capsule or HDD in another room. This seems OK for generic playback, but in my experience wireless is not a good way to go for streaming content.
2. iTunes v8.0.2 has a preferences capability to allow you to redirect it's archive to the Time Capsule. However, even if you leave the Capsule switched on it goes into a "sleep" mode. Rip a new CD and iTunes won't tell you this; instead it will silently reconfigure itself to store on your local hard drive and then you're left with the challenge of moving your collection piecemeal if you want it in one location, followed by manually updating iTunes to "point" it to the new location of the music.
One nice thing about the Capsule is that it does allow other connection types. I have mine networked to a PC running Ubuntu Linux and a music player called Amarok and I am able to stream the Mac-Ripped lossless files and play them over Linux perfectly... Works very well. Apparently you can do this with a Windows client and iTunes for Windows, but I don't run Windows as a matter of principle and can't validate that.
My 1Tb Time Capsule runs hot, too. Not dangerously so, but hot to the touch. There are no cooling fans, but you might want to think about placement; it needs plenty of fresh air circulating around it.
For what it's worth [ and I appreciate this is going beyond your question ] I also wanted my setup to be able to store and retrieve recorded TV. I have Elgato EyeTV and a USB Freeview decoder. I quickly learned that despite claims to the contrary the performance of the wireless connection just isn't up to streaming video content. So I went out and purchased a pair of Ethernet-over-mains adapters from Zyxel that are absolutely perfect for the job.
Yes, the Capsule is a little pricey for what is little more than a Hard Drive in a box, but it does work very well.
Beware the timeout disconnections and the silently re-configuring iTunes thought...

(Synology, ReadyNAS, or Airport Extreme)+External

I just recently switched to Mac. I had a big desktop, my girlfriend had a very old macbook, so we are dumping both and just bought a MB Air. We need some external storage and my initial idea was an Airport Extreme + an external harddrive and using that as a NAS. The reason for this instead of a TC is that we want to be able to unplug the Hard drive and take it with us incase we are going some where with no wifi access.
I also have not given up on having a smaller Windows desktop in the near future, I love both operating systems, so I want both
2 things with the Airport Extreme with an external:
I have heard that they are rather slow. Now if this would be the large chunk of my storage, I do not want a slow NAS dragging me down on a brand new laptop.
Also, when I get a windows desktop in the future, I would need special software to access the drive attached to the Airport Extreme, not a huge deal but annoying.
Now for the other options: Synology and ReadyNAS
From what I have seen, Synology is the better brand and ReadyNAS is the budget.
If I were to use an external attached to one these (I also will mount internal drives too), would it be equally as slow as the Airport Extreme?
Would I need to format the harddrive differently, essentially would I still need software on the windows desktop to access the NAS, or could we leave the drive in its current format (useable on both operating systems).
I know the one downside of this is that the Airport Extreme has a router built in, do any of the Synology or ReadyNAS drives have this? Most internet providers in San Diego where I am provide a Router/Modem in one.
Thanks for your help!

I have heard that they are rather slow. Now if this would be the large chunk of my storage, I do not want a slow NAS dragging me down on a brand new laptop.
It appears that your goal is to have quick-access file sharing as a higher priority to overall file storage. If this is the case, a dedicated Ethernet NAS would be a superior solution to an AirPort Disk (a USB HDD attached to the AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule base stations.)
The AirPort Disk will work with both OS X & Windows clients ... even Linux. However, as you mentioned, disk data access speeds are not stellar.
Also, when I get a windows desktop in the future, I would need special software to access the drive attached to the Airport Extreme, not a huge deal but annoying.
No. The Extreme's file sharing service supports the SMB file sharing protocol to allow access from Windows or Linux-based clients.
If I were to use an external attached to one these (I also will mount internal drives too), would it be equally as slow as the Airport Extreme?
Possibly, but that would depend on the connection type used for external HDD support on these dedicated NAS devices.
Would I need to format the harddrive differently, essentially would I still need software on the windows desktop to access the NAS, or could we leave the drive in its current format (useable on both operating systems).
NAS devices have built in file server support. Think of them as mini servers with multiple internal HDDs. Whether or not, your PC will require additional software will depend on what additional features (RAID, iTunes Server, Time Machine support, etc.) that you want this NAS device to provide. In most cases, if the NAS supports a particular feature it will come with the appropriate software to access it.
I know the one downside of this is that the Airport Extreme has a router built in, do any of the Synology or ReadyNAS drives have this?
None that I know of and would doubt any will in the future.
Most internet providers in San Diego where I am provide a Router/Modem in one.
... and in that case getting an AirPort Extreme or any other wireless router would not be necessary ... unless you still want to go the route of having a router that supports file sharing with external HDDs.

Airport Extreme External HDD (Windows 7)

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