Can't save to external hard drive connected to Airport Ex from networked pc

Hi,
I have always been able to access the files on my external harddrive that's connected to my Airport Extreme from my wirelessly networked laptop pc and make changes, deletions, save files, etc.
Sometime in the past couple of weeks, it changed. I still can get to my files on the ext drive and open them, but I cannot save a file that I edited. For example, if I'm on my pc laptop and I'm in Photoshop, I can still get to the files on the external drive that's connected to my Airport Extreme, but once I make my changes to the graphic and hit save, I cannot save the file to the external drive. As a matter of fact, I've now discovered that I can open files, but not save them, change the file name, etc. on the external drive. I have always been able to. My connections, hardware, etc have not changed.
When I connect to the external drive from my laptop pc, I connect with my mac user name and password. I am an administrator. Thoughts?

Hello,
Try running Disk Utility and Repairing Disk Permissions...
Launch Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities) Select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select FirstAid, then click: Repair Disk Permissions. Quit DU when it's finished and reboot.
Carolyn

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nealmay wrote:
Currently I have a hub connected to my airport extreme. There are 2 external hard drives connected to the hub. One has my iTunes library on it, and the other is being used for time machine backups.
I have no problem doing the backup wirelessly to the one hard drive. In time machine, I could pick either external drive to back up to. What I am trying to do is back up the external drive too. Time machine is only seeing the hard drive on my laptop. The exclude list is blank and when I try to add the itunes HD to the exclude list (to remove it), it won't let me select it-- it is greyed out.
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Hi all,
This is probably the first time ever that I have to ask a question myself. Usually when I have any problems I can find a solution in other people's solved threads. But not this time and I'm really frustrated. If any of you can help me with this I will be eternally grateful.
I have a 1TB WD external hard drive with 500Gb of millions of files, really important data that is not copied anywhere else right now.
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Then I went to disk utility and tried to repair the disk, thinking something was wrong with it. The first time I could verify, but not repair. It didn't solve anything obviously. The second time I couldn't even verify it.
Then I decided to upgrade to Yosemite thinking this might solve a possible Maverick's problem.
My God, it didn't. Now, not only it keeps saying that the files are in use. Now every time I plug the HDD, it takes around 15 minutes without recognising it, until finally a message pops up "This disk can't be repaired. You can still copy files from it, but backup as many as you can and then erase the volume". (It seems it automatically tries to repair it now?)
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If you can help me solve this issue, I really would be in debt forever. I haven't end up in a dead end like now and I really need to recover the data.
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The device may be formatted for Windows, as NTFS. The format is readable, but not natively writable on a Mac. To write to the device, you must either reformat it (erasing all the contents) or install third-party software to enable write access to NTFS.

I want to use external hard drive connected to airport extreme that contains iTunes library to airplay library to apple tv

I have a macbook 4.1 with 4gb ram running lion. I have a 3 tb external drive that i use for time machine bakcups and a partition for my itunes library. When I want to watch a movie I connect the external hard drive to my macbook, open itunes and airplay it to my apple tv. However, this solution is not optimal because I lose the use of my macbook when it has to be connected via usb to my hard drive.
What I want to do is be able to watch a movie on my apple tv via my external hard drive wirelessly.
I realize that hooking up an airport extreme to a harddrive for time capsule purposes is not supported and thats fine.
However, will this work for the purpose of airplaying itunes library to apple tv.
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Yea I'm just going to wait for a solution I like better. The easiest way would be for apple to have some kind of itunes server software. Theres no reason that my computer running itunes shouldn't be able to communicate with with hard drive wirelessly just as it would with a usb cable. Kind of like wireless itunes synching with my iphone.
I don't want to use Itunes match because music is not my concern. It is the 1,000 movies that I want to watch on apple tv without tying up my laptop.
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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.
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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.
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IMac Media Server, or External Hard Drive Connected to Airport Extreme?

I would like to create a central repository for all of my movies/music which I would like to stream to an apple tv. For now, it is all iTunes compatible stuff. At the same time, i want to be able to access those media files from my iPad, iPhone, and other Mac machines throughout my house.
I currently have an iMac that is not often used. I had an idea to use it as a media server through which I could stream all of my media to the apple tv. The plan would be to buy a 3 or 4 TB hard drive, and connect the hard drive directly to the iMac (ideally via firewire), and then upload all of my movies/music to the hard drive, while keeping the libraries intact on the iMac. In addition, I would like to keep the library on my MBP, but direct the hard drive to utilize the media files on that same hard drive (so, essentially, using one set of media files, in two iTunes libraries). This way (I'm thinking), I should be able to stream my media from either library on my Apple TV (but in reality, the media is all on the one hard drive) and to my iDevices in my home.
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Which is the better set up for home streaming? Will one be faster than the other?
Is there a better way of doing this?
If I downloaded the Plex Media server to the iMac in the first option, would I be able to access all of the media on my Smart TV w/o the Apple TV?
Thanks in advance for your input.

Which is the better set up for home streaming? Will one be faster than the other?
Both will be about the same. The issue I would be sure to look at is how well the external hard drive's wake from sleep mode works. It is annoying if the drive sometimes goes to sleep and will not wake up without you waking over to the computer.
The direct connect via firewire is a slightly faster more reliable option, but not really something you will notice given the ATV would only need a fraction of the bandwith either have.
The more important thing for performace woudl be to use eithernet instead of WiFi. You will make your life a lot easer if you do not try to do streaming HD video over WiFi.
If I downloaded the Plex Media server to the iMac in the first option, would I be able to access all of the media on my Smart TV w/o the Apple TV?
No. ATV can only see content that is in your local iTunes setup or in iCloud. So in of these setups you will need the content on these drives to be added to iTunes.

What is the best way to manage itunes content using an external hard drive connected to airport extreme?

Just a little history on what I've already tried. I have my itunes folder on my external hard drive with an alias linking to my macbook pro. My hard drive is networked from airport extreme. Streaming content is not a problem. Syncing my iphone is the problem. I just get the pinwheel and a message stating sync unsuccessful because itunes was unable to connect. It takes a very long time to change any settings in itunes for mu phone.I have 8g of ram so that shouldn't be a problem. Any help would be appricated.

The best solution would be two different types of backups, one local (in your own home) and one elsewhere. So, option 3 is the "best" solution.
I, personally, use Crashplan to backup all of my computers because it's much more convenient than an external hard drive.
With an external hard drive, you can either use Time Machine to create the historical/incremental backups OR you can create a bootable clone periodically using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.
I don't know of any way to make the machines mirror images of one another - as far as I know, the best you could do is transfer data from one to the other at time of purchase and then use something like DropBox to keep files in sync.
~Lyssa

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