Airport Extreme Kills Drives

I thought one of the neatest features of the Extreme was the capability of connecting a hard drive to it which I could use as a network drive to store files on. The only problem (and please tell me if I'm doing something wrong) is that when an external drive is connected to the Extreme it NEVER STOPS SPINNING. As of this morning I have fried a second 500gb hard drive. The first one I wrote off to heat - it was sitting in a place with very little ventilation. The second drive however had it's own cooling system and is a very robust drive. This morning I couldn't access the drive. I ran disk utility and it advised me to back up the data immediately and re-format the drive. Anybody had any similar issues? Anybody have something to teach me? Does anybody at Apple want to send me a new drive

Steven Wren wrote:
I thought one of the neatest features of the Extreme was the capability of connecting a hard drive to it which I could use as a network drive to store files on. The only problem (and please tell me if I'm doing something wrong) is that when an external drive is connected to the Extreme it NEVER STOPS SPINNING. As of this morning I have fried a second 500gb hard drive. The first one I wrote off to heat - it was sitting in a place with very little ventilation. The second drive however had it's own cooling system and is a very robust drive. This morning I couldn't access the drive. I ran disk utility and it advised me to back up the data immediately and re-format the drive. Anybody had any similar issues? Anybody have something to teach me? Does anybody at Apple want to send me a new drive
Unfortunately, I think your just having a run of bad luck, a good hard disk should not need to spin down and should last for years. That said, a reasonable environment for that drive and good ventilation is required.
One could debate whether running all the time, or spinning up and down as needed is better or worse for a drive, but the drives should still last a long time.
It also could be the model of drive, under optimum conditions, a Western Digital desktop drive should have up to a million hours of running MTBF, RE2 Drives about the same, but have a better warranty, cost more, and are classified as enterprise drives with better specs.
Since you didn't mention the drive model that you are having issues, or whether its more than one, cannot be more specific, though one would think that most drives today would be pretty reliable, but some do fail prematurely and when that happens, is a pain if not backed up somewhere else. I prefer WD drives, Seagate drives are the last on my list at the moment. Though everyone's mileage varies on how long drives will last.. just keep good backups of important data, and you'll be fine.

Similar Messages

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.
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AirPort Extreme External Drive Not Recognized

I have an AirPort Extreme 802.11ac and am hooking up a Seagate 1.5TB external hard drive (USB 3.0 with backward compatability) to the USB port but it is not being recognized by Airport Utility. Does this need a power source? What am I doing wrong?
I did reformat the external drive from NTFS to be Mac compatible (Mac OS Extended - Journaled) and when I plug the external drive into my MacAir, it shows up and is completely usable. Once I plug into the AirPort Extreme though, it goes into the netherland and I can't find it at all.
Help?

I have the HGST Touro USB3 drive that works fine with apple airport routers.
I did try and establish a sort of database.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5912861?tstart=0
Contributions are sadly lacking but it already shows.. some work some don't.. some work with hubs some don't.
To OP..
As per Bob's comment.. you are now in Limbo.. since you don't know if the problem is the hard disk or the usb hub. And it is possible either or both are at fault.
Look at OWC as they seem to specialise in external drives for Mac/Apple world. They sell hundreds of different USB drives.. I recommend you ring and ask their sales staff .. explain the problem and what you want.. a disk that works with model xyz airport.. like the Apple document show.
Even from Australia we buy stuff from OWC as they have first class knowledge of apple systems. And if you look for specials they are excellent.. !!

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

Trouble connecting 1 of 3 macs to my airport extreme thumb drive!

I'm not good at using the terminal so I leave it alone. The other 2 macs in the house can hook up to my thumb drive hooked up to my airport extreme. This Imac won't and I get an error saying that" the text entered does not appear to be a recognized URL formant". I am using the correct address afp://10.0.1.1 . I get a message that my mac does not recognize the url and that they normally start with the prefex afp (which mine does). 2 other macs in the house pick it up perfectly.I ran repair permissions and it said that the following errors could not be fixed
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpLoad" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources /DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/sbin/pppd" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/sbin/vpnd" has been modified and will not be repaired.
I think I'm on to something but I don't know how to repair these files, especially the first one. Any Ideas?

Hi Shadow99999
Did you ever resolve your issues with disconnection between your Mac Pro and Airport Extreme? I am having a similar issue.
I have had the extreme for about 4 months and I loose access to the internet about once a month. When I try to troubleshoot the Airport Extreme it is usually inaccessible from my Mac Pro which is my wired access point. The Airport Utility times out with a network error number that unfortunately I did not write down. The light is still green but nothing seems to be working. The first time I tried plugging and unplugging ethernet wires and accessing wirelessly through a Macbook but now I just unplug the Airport Extreme and replug (a Microsoft solution with no problem resolution.) Today I had some unusual internet traffic on my DSL modem and I wanted to look at the Airport Extreme but again I was unable to get to the Airport Extreme with the Airport Utility on my MacPro. (Everything up to the latest rev. per software update.)
The lack of access between the Airport Extreme and a wired computer is really frustrating and may drive me back to my trusty five year old Buffalo Airstation. I could at least log in when I suspected there was a problem. Loss of internet access with the Buffalo was down to maybe once every 6 months to year and lock ups to wired access even rarer.
Any other thread that you found to help you resolve your problem?
Message was edited by: Karl Seibert

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".

IPhoto Library, AirPort Extreme & attached Drive

Hello, I have multiple iPhoto libraries spanning 100gbs, it's getting too large for my MBP. Plus next time I upgrade my MBP it'll have a SSD and so my libraries will definitely be too big. I want to be able to access my libraries without having to plug in an external drive. So my plan is to move my iPhoto libraries to a drive attached via USB to my Airport Extreme. I will then backup that drive with a cloud based backup solution. I appreciate accessing iPhoto libraries via wifi may cause increased response times but is there any problems I should be aware of with this solution? What would you recommend?
Thanks for any advice.
Tim

Besides what are the alternatives, if my house was flooded, burnt or robbed I'd also lose the external disk backups.
Multiple back ups to HD stored offsite.
My Library lives on my iMac. It’s Backed up to two external hard disks every day. These disks are permanently attached to the iMac. These back ups run automatically. One is done by Time Machine, one is a bootable back up done by SuperDuper
It’s also backed up to a portable hard disk when ever new photos are added. This hard disk lives in my car. For security, this disk is password protected.
I have a second off-site back up at a relative’s house across town. That’s updated every 3 or 4 months.
My Photos are backed up online. There are many options: Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug etc. However, check the terms of your account carefully. While most sites have free uploading, you will often find that these uploads are limited in terms of the file size or the bandwidth you can use per month. For access that allows you to upload full size pics with no restrictions you may need to pay.
Every couple of months I test the back ups to make sure they are working correctly. It’s very easy to mis-configure a back up application, and the only way to protect against that is to do a trial restore.

Is it possible to allow others to access my airport Extreme's drive via t

I have read the threads about my accessing the USB drive on my Airport Extreme via an AFP connection...and it works. Without a hitch! BUT....
I would like to allow others (who are not on my home network) to access this same drive (with some level of security). Is THAT possible and if so, how? I have 2 partitions on this HD, one is a mac-formatted partition and the other is a FAT32 for PC user access. Or course, each partition has a unique name so, depending on the user, they would access either the Mac or PC formatted partition.
BTW, I did some thread-checking but all seem to find are one's that show how to I can make a connection to my own drives away from the home, NOT someone who is not associated with my home network to make the same connection to the USB drive on my APE.
I am running OSX 10.5.6 and the APE is running 7.4.1 firmware. the APE was purchased in 2008.
Thank you, in advance.

So here is how it is done if you want a PC user to access the USB drives on your Airport Extreme.
1. Start up the APE Utility software
2. Set the APE up with WAN sharing of the USB drives, and take note of the admin user ID and password for the APE and also the APE's IP address.
3. Go to a PC connected to the internet and open up 'My Computer"
4. In the address line in "My Computer" type in
\\XXX.XXX.XXX substituting the X's for your APE's IP address
5. you will get prompted for the admin user ID and password for the APE. This may take a few seconds so be patient.
6. You should now have access to the drives from a Windows PC.
---> This will work best if you have a STATIC IP for your APE.
Cool!

Airport extreme external drive Format?

I have an airport extreme and would like to set up either one or both external drives 2tb and 3tb as media drives or storage. I have a combination of Imac, Ipad, PCs and Android devices that connect and I would like to have the abilty to read/ write to these drives. Is this possible? And if it is what format should the drive/s be in?
Sorry if this has been covered somewhere else I have searched and can't seem to get a good answer.
thanks for the help!!

An USB drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), FAT16, or FAT32, and will work best if formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when there are any Macs on the network. ExFAT and NTFS won't work.
If it's an Ethernet drive and not an USB one, you don't normally need to be concerned with how the drive is formatted. Just plug it in.
(88828)

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).

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?

Can't copy large files to airport extreme USB drive.

Hi Everyone,
I'm positng because I'm unable to copy large files to an AirPort Disk using Moutain Lion. I have the following setup.
AirPort Extreme:
- Firmware version: 7.6.3
- Airport disks secured by password
External Drive:
- Seagate 3TB External Drive connected to Airport Extreme thru USB
- Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Formated
Computers:
- MacMini(Mid 2010) - MacBookPro 13" Retina
- Both have Mountain Lion with latest updates
Airport Utility:
- Version 6.2
I am using the drive for a backup of .mv4 files. Files up to 4g transfer just fine. Files over 4g will get all the way to the end and throw a -36 error. If I plug it into my mac the files copy just fine. I have googled the issue and get all of these fat32 and win7 issues. Not really relevant from what I can tell.
I have also connected other drives the the Airport formatted the same and get the same problem.

That's not entirely unusual as using that port on the AEBS for backup is an iffy business, especially if you are trying to use Time Machine which is completely unsupported by Apple.
There may well be something wrong with the file you are trying to transfer, hence, the -36 error. I have no solution for you. Generally, there is no suitable solution. If you get the error while trying to copy several files at once, then try doing one file at a time which sometimes works. Archiving may enable you to transfer the archive, but then dearchiving on the destination may not work.
You can check the filename length and look for illegal characters or just rename the file, if possible. And, don't overlook the possibility that the file itself is corrupted even if it does not appear to be so from outward appearances. Lastly or firstly, try transferring the file to the external drive hooked up directly to the computer instead of the AEBS.

Airport Extreme connected drive does not appear in Time Machines drive list

I have two Macbook Pros. Both have 500GB hard drives. I have an airport Extreme with a WD terabyte hard drive and a HP printer attached via USB cable. Both Macbooks can access the WD HD & internet.
One MacbookPro has time machine set up to use the Terabyte HD as backup.
I want the other MacbookPro to also use this terabyte drive for backup.
But when I try to set up Time Machine to use the drive, the drive does not appear in the backup drive list.
What can I do to fix this? I had a HD crash on the non-backed up Macbook recently. I desperately need it to be backed up!
Any ideas?

Does the drive show in Disk Utility? Try a restart.

Airport Extreme - NAS Drives or External USB?

I'm looking at getting an Airport Extreme for my house but I wanted to know the best options.. Should I go with a couple of 2TB NAS Drives or two 2TB External USB Drives?
I have one MacBook Pro, one Windows Gaming Machine and one Windows XP SP3 Netbook.
WIll there be compatibility issues between using NAS over USB or..?
One finaly question as well, I know this is an Apple based forum/ site but its definitely worth asking.. Anyone confirmed that Android works with the Airport Extremes?
Cheers

Thats a good thing to hear because there are 3 Nexus's that are in the household.
I am very torn between the Express and the Extreme.. I just wish the Express was a little bit more money and offered the Harddrive support! That's all I need it for

IPhoto 7 Will Not Share File on Airport Extreme USB Drive

I have a USB drive plugged in to my Airport Extreme (n). I keep both my iPhoto 7.0.1 Library and my iTunes 7.3.2 Library on that drive. I am able to share the iTunes Library just fine from two machines. But if I open the iPhoto Library on one machine it works fine - but when I try to open iPhoto from the other machine I get a 'locked file/locked disk/inadequate permissions' alert. Have repaired permissions from iPhoto boot window - and the disk/file is not locked. I used to be able to share the iPhoto Library on this disk prior to iPhoto 7. Anyone have a suggestion as to how to cure this?
Thanks, Tuck

Sure, I'll explain. Actually this is how network shared drives are supposed to work from what Apple's promotional material says. I have both my iTunes Library and my iPhoto Library on a USB drive connected to my Airport Extreme so that both my wife and I can share the music and the pictures. We will often listen to different things at the same time on iTunes - which will make sense to you as that activity is really only a read. But I can add and delete music at the same time that she listens. With iPhoto we both can look at different pictures at the same time - I suppose just like iWeb can import photos at the same time I am running a slideshow in iPhoto. My problem is that this ability broke during my upgrade to iPhoto 7.0.1 - although it is possible this happened during 10.4.10 and I didn't notice, but I don't think so. As I have mentioned above I now find that I can create a NEW iPhoto Library and be able to share it on both machines again. So - my current question is: can I copy the contents of my old iPhoto Library into a newly created library and retain all the edits, events, titles, rankings, etc? And if so, is there any trick to it.
Regards, Tuck

Airport Extreme Kills Drives

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