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

Similar Messages

Airport Extreme Base Station and External Hard Drives

Hi all. Bought my first Mac 2 days ago and am very impressed. Such a smooth transition from vista. Just working my way around it and very impressed.
However one minor problem. I have a Airport Extreme base station with a USB Hub and 2 identical Freecom External Hard drives connected. As expected both connected fine and are accessible They name themselves FREECOM HDD and FREECOM HDD (2).
My question how do i change the names of these to be more relevant to me?
I have already tried setup through airport utility. Obviously with 10 years working with windows i could do this with my eyes shut on PC. It is probably just as easy MAC please help......

Select a drive in the Finder and either press Enter or choose Get Info from the File menu and change the name. You may need to connect them directly to the computer instead of through the base station to do this.
(45809)

Airport Extreme won't recognize external hard drive

Hi everyone,
I've searched and search and tried everything, but my airport extreme refuses to recognize my external harddrive. I'm wanting to set it up so my time machine so it will back up automatically - basically a poor student's version of a time capsule. Please - I'm getting desperate - nothing I've found on-line has helped. Thanks!!!

I have just completed hooking up my airport extreme to my seagate external drive. I have the newer version mb763lla airport. After hooking everything up, I created a homebase network, and Initially my two windows computers would not recognize the drive, in my computer. I plugged a usb jump drive in to the router to check if the router required drives to be formatted fat32 and the jump drive worked, jump drives are formatted to fat32, so I knew my problem was the format of external drive. Then I knew I needed to format my drive to fat32, so I looked around the internet trying to find the best way to do so. What I discovered is that if you go to the website of your external drive, they generally have software to help you format your drive. Seagate has discwizard, and I noticed Western Digital has some too. I choose to format my drive with two partitions one fat32 and one ntfs. I was under the impression from some of the websites I visited that I would have problems with vista & fat32, so I used a windows xp computer to run the format software from seagate. I plugged the usb external 320gb freeagent seagate hard drive directly into the xp computer, to format it. After running the software I restarted my computer, and the drive worked, and I could now find the drive on both my xp and my vista computers. It did assign different drives, on the xp the drive is called y: on the vista the drive is called z: . Both computers can write or read to the fat32 partition of the drive.

I have a Airport Extreme with a 1TB external HD connected to it. How can I password protect certain files?

I have a Airport Extreme with a 1TB external HD connected to it. I have it set up so my Macbook Pro and PC's in the house can access it. i have some files that i would like to protect(sensitive personal info.). Is there a way that can be done where as certain folders are password protected? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

Would a good workaround be to use disk utility to set up a password protected sparse image, of course being connected directly to the Mac, then connect the drive to the Airport Extreme?
Then, couldn't one use that drive and protected files as normal on the airport? It would just require one extra step of using a Mac to set things up first.
I disconnected my Airport so cannot check it out for myself.
Hugh

Emulating AirPort Extreme NAS functions?

I'm intrigued by the AirPort Extreme base station's NAS functionality, wherein you can connect a drive and have it available to every machine on the network. I don't have plans to buy one since I have a separate Mac acting as a server already.
However, I'd love to set up a nice seamless shared drive. Does anyone know how the AirPort Extreme NAS works? Is it just AppleShare and you have to log in every time, or is it something more seamless or automated?

You should be able to easily share your Mac Server with anyone on the Network. Just a matter of Permissions, I'd suggest Sharepoints...
http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/
Should work about identical to a NAS if you wish so.

Airport Extreme does not recognize external drive a drive

I have an airport extreme base station with an external drive connected to it. For quite a while the drive correctly displayed as a drive and could be used for time machine backups. All of a sudden the drive is only being displayed as a shared folder. It does not appear in disk utility drive list. If I connect this drive directly to my mini or macbook it is handled as a drive and can be used by time machine. As I said, the drive had been working perfectly for backups until somewhere around july 5. I did try loading an older firmware onto the airport, resetting the airport using the reset button, and I also upgraded the airport to the latest firmware release. All of these steps did not work.
Any feedback would be appreciated
john

this *****, pardon my language. I tried using a usb connection on a netgear router and that didn't work. someone on one of the mac forums told me it would work with an extreme base station. The description of the base station said
>>
Share your hard drive.
You can share an external USB hard drive over your wireless and wired networks by simply connecting it to the USB port on your AirPort Extreme Base Station. Called AirPort Disk, this feature is perfect for sharing files and more.
>>
like I said earlier, it did work for 10 months then just stopped. I did read the link you provided. So as it stands I just have to wait until I can dig up more cash for a new base station which isn't happening anytime soon.
oh well, thanks for the help
john

Airport Extreme AC (5th Gen) and USB Hard Drives

I just got a new iMac.
Previously I had three external hard drives chained together directly via firewire 800 on a Mac Mnin. In the old configuration, Time Machine backed up to one of HDs pretty quickly. Since the new iMac doesn't have firewire - I took those same hard drives - using their USB 2 connections and put them on a hub connected to Airport Extreme. I see them under shared drives and access is great - but the back up speed is not very fast. Is there a better way to connect these drives for the purposes of Time Machine backups? They are formated Mac OS exteneded, etc
Thanks.

The confusing part to me was that the new Extreme has a USB2.0 spec?
It is easier and cheaper.
USB3 spec causes 2.4ghz wireless issues.
See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423604,00.asp
In a wireless router.. that aint good.. and some manufacturers have had issues.. Asus for example. Their USB3 are useless in several of the routers because they did not shield well enough.
Internally the AC version AE is same chipset as the Asus.. they could have used USB3 which is built in.. but I think went conservative and decided not to as they were faced with early release of hardware they didn't understand. And so they are still having issues with the basic hardware.. imagine throwing in USB3 wireless issues.
All of the above is total and utter speculation on my part. Apple are the most secretive company in the world.. they don't even own up to mistakes.. they never tell you what they are doing or why. No apple rep will say I am right or wrong.. total PR blackout.
But IMHO that is why you should have bought a Time Capsule which has a SATA interface inside.. and is very much faster than USB2. The cost increase is only what the hard disk costs.
No doubt gen7 or gen8 will suddenly come out with USB3. It always pays to keep some features up your sleeve even if the chipset manufacturer has them built in.

Airport Extreme (7.5.2 firmware) + USB Hard Drive

My new Airport Extreme N (running 7.5.1/7.5.2 firmware... both) randomly disconnects my usb external hard drive attached to it during file transfers or just looking through the file structure.
Any idea how to fix this?

What kind of hard drive is it? It is also imperative to know how this HD is formatted.... FAT32, NTFS, Mac OS X extended... etc....
One thing to consider also is wireless interference. If you have something like a cordless phone nearby and it happens to be running on the same channel as your Extreme, this may cause the devices to lose connection. You may want to consider distancing any devices that emit wireless signals from the Extreme or change the channel within Airport Utility. Power cycling the Extreme will force it to find a better channel if the channel is set to 'Automatic'. Or you can manually change it from the Airport Utility's 'Wireless' tab after selecting the 'Manual Setup' option.

Airport Extreme files not visible on USB drive.

Airport Extreme files on Toshiba USB powered drive not visible through Windows. I disabled antivirus with no change. If I copy files onto it they go but then disappear. If I copy again it asks if I wish to overwrite the file as its already on the drive I just can't see them there. I tried another computer, also Windows 7, on our network with the same results. It is formatted as Fat32 and is recognized by the Airport. It is a 1TB size drive.

double post.

New Airport Extreme (2014) does not see USB Drive

Just fired up my new 2014 Airport Extreme and attached a Toshiba 3 TB USB Drive. My new (late 2013 iMac) does not see the new drive in Disk Utility.
The Extreme works in all other ways; ie, as a router, as a wireless node.
It came to me formated as a Windows drive, so I attached it directly to my MacBook Pro (which saw the drive) and reformated it as a Mac Drive (Journaled, GUILD). It showed up just fine on the MacBook Pro desktop.
When I reattach it to the Airport Extreme, it still does NOT show up in Disk Utility on the iMac.
Help Please

When I reattach it to the Airport Extreme, it still does NOT show up in Disk Utility on the iMac.
That drive will not show up in Disk Utility on the Mac.....since the Toshiba hard drive becomes a network drive when it is attached the AirPort Extreme.
Disk Utility will not display a network drive. It will only display drives that are connected directly to your iMac via USB, FireWire, etc.
Check using AirPort Utility to see if the AirPort Exteme recognizes the drive.
Open AirPort Utility, click the AirPort Extreme icon, then click Edit
Click the Disks tab at the top of the next window that appears
The drive will appear here if it is recognized by the AirPort Extreme.
In the example below, my WD Drive is connected to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme.

Airport extreme won't work with usb drive

I bought a USB hard drive and formated OSX extended journaled on my MBP. I plug it into my Airport Extreme and the AE will not recognize that a drive has been connected? If I plug it back into my MBP there is no problem.. it works.. but the AE does not recognize its existance.
I've seen many others online who've had the same problem... some have said plugging a powered USB hub into the AE and then adding your drive to the hub works.. but this seems like a rediculous work-around.
Does anyone know WHY this is happening? Very frustrated that the Airport Extreme does not JUST WORK.
Tim

We understand that the drive works if you plug it into your Mac.
Please list each and every step that you are performing when you now attempt to connect the drive to the AirPort Extreme.
Where are you expecting to "see" the drive on your Mac?

New Airport Extreme, Powerbook G4 & LaCie external Drive

Will the new airport extreme be compatible with a Powerbook G4? (I have bluetooth)
Also, how about an External LaCie drive with a firewire connector? Could I connect that to the new airport extreme?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

The new AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) has absolutely nothing to do with Bluetooth.
The new AEBS supports 802.11b/g so it is compatible with your PowerBook G4.
Also, how about an External LaCie drive with a firewire connector? Could I connect that to the new airport extreme?
No, the new AEBS does not have a FireWire port.

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).

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.

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 - NAS Drives or External USB?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for