Airport Extreme - hard drive set up for multiple computers in network

I have been having problems setting up my USB portable hard drive into the Airport Extreme. I am trying to set it up so that I can access the hard drive using both my Apple Laptop and my Windows desktop. Could someone assist me with this? or perhaps point me to the right how to link?
Thank you,
Raul

Check to see if the issue is with the following: In Windows double-click My Network Places. Select View Network Connections. Right-click on Local Area Connection and select Properties from the menu. Client for Microsoft Networks must be checked in order for any of the Apple disk software to work. If it isn't, check it and click OK.
After I did this I was able to use all Apple software as it was designed - everything just "worked".

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Is the Airport Extreme Hard Drive sharing ok for Time Machine?

With leopard on the eve of its release, I wanted to get a large network accessible storage solution that would allow my wife's and I's Macbook pros to use time machine on the network drive when we were at home. Since we rarely use our laptops while sitting at a desk connected to an external drive, I figured this would be a great idea and started to look into various NAS solutions.
Surprisingly, most generic (netgear, western digital) network drives require you use proprietary software to connect to them, and are only compatible with windows xp. After seeing the options the airport extreme opens up in terms of network storage I figured it would be the best bet.
Do you have any other suggestions besides getting an airport extreme? I would rather not have to buy a full blown mac that I have to leave on 24/7 to share the drives. Or do you see any possible pitfalls to this idea? Such as, would time machine forget to use the network drive after a while since it wouldn't always be available to it when away from home?

Unless the content of time machine is minuscule, USB will perform the worst at consistent data throughput. You might consider an ethernet storage device instead. The base station supports Gigabit Ethernet (though Wireless 'n' is maximised well below that).

How do I transfer animations on a portable hard drive set up for windows os onto my new macro?

How do I transfer animations on a portable hard drive set up for windows os to my new mac book pro?

You should be able to copy from a drive even if it is setup for Windows.
If might help if you can tell us how the drive is formatted.
Allan

Airport extreme/hard drive problems

Any advice appreciated...
Our airport extreme only intermittently recognizes our Lace hard drive and it's driving us crazy. We bought macbook, the airport, and hard drive at the same time (yes we abandoned the PC world) and had a friend hook it up. For two months everything worked fine and we even hooked our printer to the airport and printed wirelessly.
Then for no particular reason, the harddrive disappeared and we can no longer access it wirelessly. We can, however, plug the harddrive USB into the Macbook and we can use the harddrive perfectly. Also, interesting, if we open airport utility and click on "disks", the harddrive is there, but it doesn't show up on the desktop or Finder and we can't access it.
I've called Apple tech support numerous times (We bought the extra service, but sadly that didn't keep us from having to spend an extremely obnoxious time on hold. We thought Apples were supposed to easy. but that's another story..). So far, we did get the airport and Macbook to recognize the hard drive by simultaneously renaming the harddrive and unplugging the hard drive and Airport. That worked for exactly 18 hours. Then the harddrive disappeared again. I called tech support twice but after 45 minutes on hold each time, I lost my patience. (They make us hold for the first step, then hold again for the product specialists. Gee we sure are glad we spent extra for the extended service!)
Other interesting tidbits: We've never had a problem with wireless internet service and have always been able to wireless send jobs to the printer.
Any ideas?
Signed and thank you,
Not so sure switching to Apple was a good move.

This is the most acceptable solution I have come up with:
Either go to the DHCP tab under internet settings on the router and "reserve" IP numbers for any hardware that interacts with the drive or manually set IP numbers in your network instead of using DHCP. The problem occurs when an IP number to any computer connected to the drive changes unexpectedly. This would be whenever the DHCP lease renews if your computer is asleep when this happens. I have not had a single drive issue since I set this up.
If you need to access your drive from a remote location where you don't have control over how the network there operates, then avoid letting your computer sleep while it is connected to the drive.
I chose to manually assign an IP number to my desktop and also to remote base stations, however this is not so convenient for my laptop because it then wants to use the manual settings everywhere unless I set up another "location" which has to be manually changed. This is where reserving IP numbers under the DHCP tab was really useful. The laptops on my network are still getting their numbers from the DHCP server but the server knows to give each one the same number based on their MAC addresses.
If you take a look at the default settings for DHCP, you will notice that not all the available numbers are being assigned through the DHCP server. You can use numbers outside this range (other than x.x.x.255) for your manually assigned IP numbers and still have DHCP running for when guests come over to use your network.
Message was edited by: Tom Alperin

Need advice on hard drive set up for a Mac Pro

Just changed over to a Mac and would like some advice on hard drive setup. Have a Mac Pro 2.8 with the 320 gig hard drive.
I plan to run Windows with MS Flight Simulator and Office 2007 through VMware Fusion/Boot Camp.
Will be transferring camcorder video to edit and make DVDs. Lots of music, podcasts, photos, and short videos will be stored.
I'm planning to buy additional hard drives.
Any suggestions on how many/what size hard drives to get.
What should the stock 320 hard drive be used for?
Where would I put the Windows stuff? What format/partion size?
Where should the backup go?
I've seen many positive comments on Western Digital Caviar Black drives, would that be a good choice?

Welcome to Discussions!
Here's my (current) setup.
4 x WD640AAKS. As Hatter says, brilliant drives. Whisper quiet and very fast. Plus extremesly good-priced.
Drives 1 and 2:
Raid0 boot volume. Also set as Photoshop scratch. I ran lots of tests on different setups and this is faster than having a separate scratch drive, almost the same as having a separate internal raid0 for scratch. But I felt I couldn't motivate that use of harddrive bays for the little extra it offered in speed.
Drive 3: User account on first partition and a second, 23GB partition for Windows XP.
Drive 4: Time Machine, which only backs up the User account partition.
I clone the startup drive to an external regularly. In fact I have three bootable clones, one OS X with latest updates, one with OS X with latest updates and my applications, and one of the boot volume before any major updates - overkill perhaps... I use the 320GB OEM drive in an FW800 enclosure for this.
/p

External Hard Drive set up for Mac and PC

Hi there.
I have a Lacie 1000GB external hard drive conected to Power Book Pro. I don't know much about it but was wondering if I could partition some of it off for my PC back up. As my Powerbook is for buisness (editing) I try and keep it away from emails and things, which I use me PC for. When I first purchased the Lacie HD, after setting it up with the mac I then tried to connect it to the PC to do a general back up of documents, etc. but it wouldn't allow it. Can anyone help with this? Sorry the info is a little vague...
Adam

You need to have a partition for OS X and one for your PC. Partitioning will erase your drive.
Open disk utility in the utilities folder in finder. Choose your external drive.
Choose partition and then under volume scheme choose 2 partitions. Pick the size of the partitions by either dragging the center bar with the dot on it or type in the size. Pick the partition you want to be your mac partition then choose option and pick guid partition table. For format choose mac os extended journaled. Pick a name for this partition
Now pick the other partition and under option choose master boot record. Under format choose MS-DOS file system. Choose a name for this partition.
Now in the right hand corner choose partition. It will take a while so be patient.

Airport Extreme Hard Drive + Printer

Hello,
When I was reading through the Airport Extreme features on the Apple site, it says that the Extreme supports both a Printer and an external Hard Drive connected to it via a USB hub.
When I launched Airport Utility to see if the HD and Printer was getting recognised I noticed that the printer is listed as a Hard Drive as well as a Printer?! and the actual Hard Drive is listed no where.
Any ideas how to solve this?
Thanks.

How was the problem solved?

Airport Extreme & hard drive to serve files to PC

Hi, I picked up a 640GB LaCie Hard Drive from my Apple Dealer to act as a NAS and share files among my PC's. My PC's can't see the area the files are saved on but can see the area that I formatted if I want to attach my Mac but that's only 40GB in size! LaCie gives you the option to format the drive for both Windows and Apple files. LaCie is suggesting the Extreme can't serve files to PC. That seems wrong. Can anybody help? Do I need to reformat the drive and copy the files to it again? Suggestions?
Thanks, Michele

Click here and follow the instructions. The image cannot be opened on a PC.
(30316)

Time Machine & Airport Extreme Hard Drive Questions

I purchased a LaCie 500 GB hard drive to use as a backup for Time Machine intending to attach it to my Airport 1802.n. It would not mount on my MacBookPro 3.1 and Time Machine didn’t see it. I could see the Drive using Airport Utility but not using Airport Disk Utility.
I then tried to get Time Machine to recognize LaCie by directly attaching it to my computer and let Time Machine use it for the initial backup (This is a painful way to operate!). After completing the backup, I reattached it to Airport and manually mounted it using “Connect to Server…”, the only way that it would mount.
I then entered Time Machine Perfs and Time Machine knew it was attached. So, I started a backup. Instead of using the LaCie, a disk image named Backup of Gene’s Mac appeared and Time Machine put a full backup on the image. My LaCie got a strange folder added named “NAME.sparsebundle”. It’s not sparse. The folder contains 21 GB. It is the size of the original backup. Ultimately, I rebooted and everything on the disk image went away. Time Machine now produces an error message when it tries to start. The message is “Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory. I handled this problem by turning Time Machine off and then rebooting. I dragged the disk image to the Trash and remounted the LaCie. I then turned Time Machine On and started a backup. The disk image reappeared and was loaded with all my backup.
Questions:
1. What is a “.sparsebundle”? Did Time Machine create the folder on the LaCie?
2. Could I move the files put on disk image to the LaCie without messing up the backup process? Could they be recovered if necessary?
3. Can anyone explain what happened when I went through the procedure described above?
- MacVet123

A sparsebundle is a 'bundle' ( that is, a folder which looks like a single file-- iPhoto library, and even Applications themselves are bundles ) which is a disk image . That is how TM backs up across AirDisk. It's not the same backup mechanism as if the disk were used locally. I can't help you past there but hope it works for you, I'm still not to that point yet.

Airport Extreme Hard Drive Going to Sleep

Hi,
I have recently purchased an Airport Extreme along with a 3tb WD My Book Essential hard drive and all was going swimmingly (and I was wirelessly backing up using time machine) up until the other day. Annoyingly the hard drive is going to sleep after an hour or so of inactivity and cannot be spun up again without being restarted at the hard drive itself instead of when the network needs it.
Is there any way of spinning the hard drive up over the network automatically when it wants to back up or I want to find a file on the hard drive? Do I need to buy a USB hub? Or would another solution work?
Thanks,
Henry

It sounds like the drive isn't working. I suggest you return it.

Connect to Airport Extreme Hard drive

I have tried everything to see my USB hard drive. I have read many of the posts and have double checked my settings. The only thing I can see which might be the problem is the file system is NTFS. Is it possible to convert it to Fat32 an not distroy the data?
At this point I am not sure exactly how I am suppose to access this drive. Is it suppose to show up in my File explorer? Can I create a shortcut? Where do you go to see the contents of the drive?

Sewardsfolly, Welcome to the discussion area!
The only thing I can see which might be the problem is the file system is NTFS.
That is the problem. It needs to be formatted HFS+ or FAT32.
Is it possible to convert it to Fat32 an not distroy the data?
The best/safest method is to copy the data to another drive, reformat this drive, then copy all the data back.

Airport extreme hard drive password protecting files?

i share the hard drive with 2 others in my house and we each have folders in the drive with our names on them. i am new to a mac so forgive me if this is a stupid question. i was wondering if you could password protect folders on a hard drive?
thanks, aaron

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I need to back up my imac running Tiger (no time machine) so that we can upgrade OS. It is set up for multiple accounts. How do I capture all files in each account using newly purchased USB external hard drive?

I need to back up my imac running Tiger (no time machine) so that we can upgrade OS. It is set up for multiple accounts. How do I capture all files in each account using newly purchased USB external hard drive? Thanks!

Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Or you can simply use the Restore option of Disk Utility to clone the drive to the backup:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

I have an 2tb time capsule 802.11n Wi-Fi base station can I use this as an external hard drive and use a new airport extreme 802.11ac Wi-Fi for my wifi?

I have an 2tb time capsule 802.11n Wi-Fi base station can I use this as an external hard drive and use a new airport extreme 802.11ac Wi-Fi for my wifi?

You can use the 2 TB Time Capsule as a network drive. That means that it must connect to one of the Ethernet LAN <--> ports on the new AirPort Extreme, or connect to the network using wireless.

Set up a Windows formatted Drive as an Airport Extreme USB drive

I have a USB hard drive that was formatted as a Windows NTFS drive. The drive does not have data that I want to keep. I assume I have to format it as a MAC drive to use it as a Airport Extreme USB drive. What is the best way to set it up? Should I format it with the drive attached to my Macbook Pro or can it be formatted attached to the Airport? Are there any things I should be aware of in attaching this drive to the Airport?
Although I don't think it matters, this drive is a Vantec Nexstar MX400 enclosure with two 3TB hard drives configured as a 3 TB RAID 1. If anyone has additional information I should know about working with an MX400 RAID 1 drive in formatting it for a Mac it would be appreciated.

You need to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), FAT16, or FAT32 while it's plugged into a computer. exFAT, NTFS, and non-journaled HFS+ won't work.
You may also need to use an USB hub with its own power supply.
(111341)

Airport Extreme - hard drive set up for multiple computers in network

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