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.

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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

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".

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?

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).

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.

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)

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

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

HT204057 Time machine back up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme.

Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme? It worked very well.

Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme?
Time Machine backups are supported via USB hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme"ac" version.
Time Machine backups were not supported via USB hard drive connected to earlier versions of the AirPort Extreme.
Some users who tried this on earlier version AirPort Extremes seemed to have some success with Time Machine backups....some had moderate success and some had no success with this. Count me in the "no success" category.
See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5924?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

How do I access external hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme via iPad

Hello,
How do I access external hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme via iPad / windows laptop.
I donot have a Mac and I use windows laptop.

For your iPad, you will need an app, like FileBrowser, to access the external drive.
For your Windows laptop, you would access the drive like any other network share. The basic format is: \\<servername>\<sharename>, where, in this case, the servername is the base station name and the sharename is the name of the external drive.

How do I access my hard drive connected to airport extreme?

I've already imported video to my hard drive. I had it previously connected via firewire. It's there in an imovie 08. However, when I open up imovie in the "Event Library" panel, my hard drive has a yellow triangle with an exclamation point on it. Does anyone know how I can access this?
Do I have to choose "import" first and then copy the movie back into imovie? I think this would defeat the purpose of storing the footage on the external drive, right? I'm trying to make my first movie, so please be gentle if this is an easy question to answer. It's throwing me for a loop right now.
Thanks again!

sorry, the hard drive is connected via USB to my airport extreme. Here's how i can look at the files:
Macintosh HD, under "shared" i select my hard drive, open it and then click on imovie events, then i can access the 19 different folders which contain multiple clips in each folder, along with an imovie thumbs file etc.
However, in imovie when create a new project, then click on import, it will ask me where i want to save the files, and on the drop down arrow, the only choice is my macintosh HD and I can't choose anything else. I really don't want to save them to my computer's hard drive if i don't have to. It seems there should be an easier way to do this, but i'm overlooking something. I just want to be able to make a movie with the clips that are already saved on my hard drive which is connected via airport extreme. Thanks again!

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme.
Sorry, but no.
Time Machine will backup your Mac, but not the hard drive attached to the AirPort Extreme.
Time Machine will back up a hard drive only if it is attached directly to your Mac via USB or FireWire.

Time Machine doesnt see my USB drive, connected to Airport extreme =(

Hello,
I've been trying to figure this one out for almost 3 weeks now, but with no luck. I have a usb hard drive, connected to airport extreme. I've clicked on "setup time machine", select "choose disk", there is no disk to select. So I click on the "set up time capsule, it takes me to airport utility. I then click on the "disk" button and file sharing is enabled.
I can mount the disk through the finder, just fine and able to transfer files back and forth, however time machine cant seem to pick up the drive. Would love to be able to use time machine to do backups, So can someone please help?
osx 10.5.5 with airport utility 5.3.2
Thanks in advance!

Well this has worked for me. I have a Freecom 500Gb usb hard Drive connected through an unpowered 4-way USBhub to an Airport Extreme Base station. After mounting the Air Disk hard drive on my powerbook, I then dragged the disk to my user folder, thereby creating an alias. I have put that alias in my login items and now TimeMachine works beautifully. I've repeated it on a Mac Mini (also using OSX 10.5.5) and that seems to be fine too. Admittedly the back-ups take a long time over airport, but fine via Ethernet.
Good luck everyone who struggles with this.
David

My Lacie Big Extreme Hard drive does not show connection speed

*My Concern*
Hi I have a Lacie Big Extreme Hard drive, which although works fine is not showing its connection, shows up in the system profiler as 'Connection Speed Unknown'. -Should I be worried? I have other drives connected to my G5 Dual 2 gig machine and no problem their they all show their connection speeds.
*Other Firewire 'Unknown Speed connection' related Problem*
I had a DVD LaCie Dual layer portable Firewire drive which recently suffered from the same problem and I had to send it back. This was due to it slowly developing a fault of not being able to burn dual layer disks properly.
*What I have done to try and remedy the situation.*
I have been able to do the following but I am afraid with no change in the system Profiler;-
1 Trashed the whole system and rebuild
2 repair my permissions
3 empty out all my caches with OnyX (third party app) version 1.8.5
4 Disconnected all drives and reconnected them one by one to see if there are any anomalies within the system
5 switched my G5 off removed the plug from the wall waited 30 sec for it to reset itself this was the 1st attempt. On my 2nd attempt I then cold booted the machine and reset Pram settings
6 used Tech Tools Pro 4 version 4.1.2
7. Replaced Power supply of the offending unit (didn't have to but I wanted to be safe and eliminate this fronm the equation.
9.tried changing around the order in the chain to which the drives were connected to the G5but alas no joy!
Summery
So my concern is if a device which is Firewire shows up in the system profiler as connection speed unknown should I begin to worry even though it appears to be functioning.
Thank you ahead of time for any help on this matter
*Supporting evidence*
Please see below a shot of my System profiler so you can see what I mean:-
*(Important Note)*
The Lacie Big disk has 800/400 Firewire connection speeds I have connected it straight to my G5s firewire 800 port then daisy chained the LaCie's via its other 800 port to the two other 800 Firewire Hard drives.
When the LaCie DVD DL drive was connected, I connected it straight to the 400 firewire port. As it needed direct access to the G5 for it to function optimally.
*System Profiler Info under OSX Tiger 10.4.11*
FireWire Bus:
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0:
Manufacturer: LaCie Group SA
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0xD04B710B061FB5
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x102
Product Revision Level: P22O
Sub-units:
LaCie d2 Extreme LUN 0 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 153.38 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk2
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
disk2s6:
Capacity: 153.38 GB
Available: 102.21 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
d2 quadra (button):
Manufacturer: LaCie
Model: 0x4136
GUID: 0xD04B840A07A9A5
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
d2 quadra (button) Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x484944
Unit Spec ID: 0xD04B
d2 quadra Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x110
Product Revision Level:
Sub-units:
d2 quadra SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 465.76 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk4
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
disk4s3:
Capacity: 465.64 GB
Available: 250.79 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
LaCie Big Disk Extreme LUN 0:
Manufacturer: LaCie Group SA
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0xD04B741A058BFC
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
*Connection Speed: Unknown --------------------------**{this is where my concern lies}*
Sub-units:
LaCie Big Disk Extreme LUN 0 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x102
Product Revision Level: 912
Sub-units:
LaCie Big Disk Extreme LUN 0 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 931.52 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk3
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
disk3s6:
Capacity: 931.52 GB
Available: 181.67 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+

Hi BDAqua - thanks a lot for replying - really appreciate your help. I was using Time machine to back up on the old lacie drives that I have - I just backed up on both lacies and they backed up faster for some reason but that might have been because they were very small back ups as I did full back ups on Tuesday night - this is the info under the USB section > hardware > about my mac - it didn't show the speed like the example you gave me though but it still backed none the less :
USB Bus:
Host Controller Location: Built In USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBOHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x0035
PCI Revision ID: 0x0043
PCI Vendor ID: 0x1033
Bus Number: 0x15
Bluetooth USB Host Controller:
Product ID: 0x8207
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 19.65
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
Location ID: 0x15200000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 0
I also got a reply back from WD on the hard drive and they said the following - exactly the same as you about it being a problem with the power supplied hence why the disk won't mount - so you were spot on - so I'm thinking I should go ahead and get the newertech 7 USB port 4 amps as you suggested - let me know what you think and then I'll just order it - and thank you - really do appreciate your help on this - thanks Jayas
Dear Jayas
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is James.
If the drive is working fine on one system but failing on another especially with the "clicking" sound this is an issue with the system not being able to supply enough power to power the device.
These devices require power from the machine to make them operate if there isn't enough power supplied the drive will fail to work. This is why you are having no issues with one system but are on another.

Connect to Airport Extreme Hard drive

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