External Drive connected to Airport Extreme, need Time Machine 3 Mac's Help

I own an Airport Extreme and just recently added two new Macs with the Time Machine feature to our household. I would like to use Time Machine to backup to my Airport Extreme that has a 500 GB hard drive connected. It seems Apple has this blocked since they have released the Time Capsule version of the router. Is there a work around this feature so I don't have to go out an purchase what I basically have already got? Please help. We would like to upgrade our older macs to Leopard and us the same system to back them up as well. Please advise. Thank you.

I had my USB drive on my APE working with Time Machine under 10.5.1 very reliably. A few days ago however, I needed to suspend a backup operation, and when I came back to restart it, time machine refused to mount the disk image on the drive. After several attempts to get it to connect with no luck I decided to delete the image (the sparce image file) and start over. Now TM refuses to create a new image.
BTW, on the Mac OSX hints site there have been suggestions to start a backup with the drive directly connected, then stop the backup, move the sparce image file to the root of the drive, reconnect the drive to the APE base station to get it working. I tried this again, but I think Apple has changed something in 10.5.2, because when directly connected TM no longer creates a sparce image file.
Anybody else seen this behavior after upgrading to 10.5.2?

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Problem mapping USB external drive connected to Airport Extreme on my PC

I am having a problem mapping my USB external drive in my PC running WIndows Vista. Here is what I have so far:
USB External Drive connected to my AirPort Extreme which is connected to my Century Link modem/router.
I have installed the USB drive using the Airport Utility. In the Disks section the Enable File Sharing is checked, Secure Shared Disks is set to With a Disk Password, I have entered the password in the next 2 rows, and finally AirPort Disks Gues Access is set to Not Allowed. The section below named These Settings Configure Windows File Sharing is empty. Am I supposed to put something here?
I was also told I need to map the drive in my PC, but when I go to do that via the Computer and the Map Network Drive, I get stuck where it asks me to enter a folder name. I read many of the posts which tell me I need to enter among other things the disk's ip address, but I am unable to find it anywhere. Where do I find what to put here?
Can someone please help this frustrated user?

I had my USB drive on my APE working with Time Machine under 10.5.1 very reliably. A few days ago however, I needed to suspend a backup operation, and when I came back to restart it, time machine refused to mount the disk image on the drive. After several attempts to get it to connect with no luck I decided to delete the image (the sparce image file) and start over. Now TM refuses to create a new image.
BTW, on the Mac OSX hints site there have been suggestions to start a backup with the drive directly connected, then stop the backup, move the sparce image file to the root of the drive, reconnect the drive to the APE base station to get it working. I tried this again, but I think Apple has changed something in 10.5.2, because when directly connected TM no longer creates a sparce image file.
Anybody else seen this behavior after upgrading to 10.5.2?

Imac has crashed..need new hard drive....had external drive connected...was using time machine.....so...itunes file should be on external drive....how do i import them to my new mac mini?

my iMac has crashed...was told I need a new hard drive.....meantime I bought a mac mini.....I had an external drive connected to the mac....and was using time machine for backups....so....how do i move itunes music files to my new mac mini from the external drive?

Turn Time Machine OFF temporarily in its preference pane. Leave the window open.
Navigate in the Finder to your backup disk, and then to the folder named "Backups.backupdb" at the top level of the volume. If you back up over a network, you'll first have to mount the disk image file containing your backups by double-clicking it. Descend into the folder until you see the snapshots, which are represented by folders with a name that begins with the date of the snapshot. Find the one you want to restore from. There's a link named "Latest" representing the most recent snapshot. Use that one, if possible. Otherwise, you'll have to remember the date of the snapshot you choose.
Inside the snapshot folder is a folder hierarchy like the one on the source volume. Find one of the items you can't restore and select it. Open the Info dialog for the selected item. In the Sharing & Permissions section, you may see an entry in the access list that shows "Fetching…" in the Name column. If so, click the lock icon in the lower right corner of the dialog and authenticate. Then delete the "Fetching…" item from the access list. Give yourself read access if you don't already have it. Click the gear icon below the list and select Apply to enclosed items from the popup menu.
Now you should be able either to copy the item in the Finder or to restore it in the time-travel view. If you use the time-travel view, be sure to select the snapshot you just modified. If successful, repeat the operation with the other items you were unable to restore. You can select multiple items in the Finder and open a single Info dialog for all of them by pressing the key combination option-command-I.
When you're done, turn TM back ON and close its preference pane.

Access external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme USB via Windows & Mac

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.
I recently bought an ioSafe Solo External Hard Drive and I had to return it because it was only formatted for the PC. When I plugged it into my Airport Extreme, I could see the drive via the Airport Disk Utility but I could not see it from my PC and I could not map a drive to it. When I contacted ioSafe support, they said that what I was trying to do was not possible since I did not have a MAC available to me to reformat the drive.
I hope that I am not trying to accomplish the impossible because I will always need to live in a MAC/PC world.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

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.
Another option is a Linux boot disk.. Linux distributions have very similar command line tools to the Mac OS. (some are identical) and HFS+ has been available for ages in Linux.

Access to external drives connected to Airport Extreme via USB Hub

I have 2 computers connected wirelessly to an Airport Extreme 802.11n base station. I have a Belkin powered USB hub connected to the USB port on the Extreme. There is a Lacie hard drive, a USB printer and a Kingston flash drive connected to the USB hub.
The printer was connected using Bonjour and is working fine. The other devices connected to the USB hub aren't getting picked up. They did work at one point, but are no longer viewable from the computers (MAC Book and Windows XP). How can I re-configure the Extreme or my computers so that they'll work again?

DLNA = Digital Living Network Alliance. DLNA works in a Server-Client fashion with the Server providing the means to stream audio/video files to the client. DLNA servers are also called media servers. The AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS), with an attached USB HDD at best, can perform as a media storage device ... not as a server. You would still need a media server (either hardware or software) to perform this role.
For example, I use a software DLNA-compliant media server, called TwonkyServer. I run this server on one of my Mac minis. It gets its media files that are stored on a USB HDD attached to my 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn). TwonkyServer then streams these video files to my Xbox 360 which performs as a media client/player.

Slow streaming from external drive connected to Airport Extreme

In the last week or so, when I try to play videos stored on my Airport Extreme on my Apple TV, they are extremely slow to load. It takes about 10 minutes before they even play, and at various points throughout it will have to essentially buffer for the same amount of time. The problem seems limited to the Apple TV, though, as I have no problem playing the same videos directly in iTunes.
Has anyone else experienced this lately?

Katie, I have had the same problem with both AIrport Extreme and a new TC.
Have you update the firmware to 7.4.1, if so downgrading back to 7.3.x fixes the problem for now.
I think there is something going on as a result of the 7.4.1 firmware upgrade.

Is using external HD connected to AP Extreme for Time Machine supported?

Hi,
I'm reconfiguring my network and looking at different back up options for the family's computers. I have a few external drives that I use to back up but I'd like to connect them to an Airport Extreme so I can centralize them.
After doing some research I can't seem to get a clear answer on this-
-Can I back up via Time Machine to external HDs that are connected to an Airport Extreme?
-How much of a hack is this/is this officially supported or am I better off going with a time machine?
Thanks.

If you don't have an AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) yet you may want to save some money and simply share the drive from one of your Macs. The other Macs can use that as a destination for Time Machine backups.
I have a TB drive connected to an iMac which shares the drive. Time Machine on my iBook uses that drive as the destination for it's backup. The iBook is wirelessly connected to the network while the iMac is connected via Ethernet to the network.

Using an HD connected to Airport Extreme for time machine... HELP!

So I have an airport extreme, set it up using airport utility, everything is working fine. I have a 500GB HD plugged into the extreme's USB port. I am able to access the drive using finder, however when I try to set it up as a backup drive for time machine, it won't show up in the "use for backup window."
Any ideas?

I answered my own question.
http://www.macworld.com/article/132613/2008/03/airporttime.html

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

Still possible to use airport extreme for time machine?

I know apple doesn't officially support it but I remember with one of the airport utility updates, it allowed you to use an external HDD with an airport extreme for time machine backups. I tried hooking my external western digital to my airport extreme and it showed up as an airport disk, however I couldn't get time machine to access it. Is there a way I can get this to work?

I followed the instructions found on the link above and had a couple of issues:
1) Instructions state "Make sure 'Share disks over Ethernet WAN port' is checked." Could not find that check box anyplace.
2) Using first disk and then airport passwords as security, the disk does not show up in the Time Machine preferences. Am I to mount the disk first? Does not state that in the instructions.
3) If I mount the disk in the finder (security is a disk password), I am then able to see the drive in Time Machine and the back-up commences. The disk icon appears on my desktop and contains machine.sparcebundle. Another "disk" also appears on my desktop with the name "Time Machine Backups" and which contains the folder Backups.backupdb. I am also able to remotely attach to the machine doing the TM backup from another mac on the network and login.
4) Back-up started and appeared to go well (240G backed up with several partials after that) until I rebooted.
5) After reboot, it was frozen in "Making backup disk available" Opened preferences and it locked up. Had to force a reboot.
6) After restart, manually mounted the extreme external, opened Time Machine prefs, and when selecting back up location saw one with a red "∅" which I could not select and the other the extreme drive with 240G used. Attempted the back-up to the drive and I got "Making backup disk available" on the menu bar and the same message on TM system prefs with a spinning beach ball. Have been able to force quit system prefs and sent to error log to apple, but a forced reboot is still required because the TM icon on the menu continues to spin. Even a "sudu shutdown -r now" in terminal will not reboot the machine. Get to a blue screen with the spinning tick marks and it just sits there.
I wonder if the fact that I could not find "Make sure 'Share disks over Ethernet WAN port' is checked." is the issue. It does not appear to be available in the current version of the extreme base 7.4.2. Could those of you who were able to configure it with a previous version get grandfathered in? I wonder if I need to manually mount the extreme hard disk each time I reboot the machines. I am not sure how to do that but will try and see if it works.
I will be losing internet and e-mail access for a few weeks so will look at this thread again when I return.

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.

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.

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

Don't see files on USB Drive connected to Airport Extreme

I just connected an external drive to my Airport Extreme via USB. It appears as a shared device in the finder sidebar. When I select it, none of the files that reside on the drive appear. It is a 1TB drive with 600GB of files on it, but none of the files show up, only a folder with the drive name. I open the folder and it is empty. The folder window shows 300 GB available. How do I make the existing files visible?

Thanks for the info.
Were you using the drive for Time Machine backups, by chance? Time Machine backups are stored in a different format when the disk is connected directly to a computer. So, you won't be able to continue to use the old backups when the drive location is changed.
You might want to check the drive by connecting directly to your Mac and running Disk Utility to "Verify Disk" and "Repair Disk" if indicated.
Even if the drive has it's own power supply, a powered USB hub is usually needed on the AirPort Extreme because the power at the USB port is quite limited.
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

How to access a USB disk drive connected to Airport Extreme from a Windows 7 PC?

How can I access a USB disk drive connected to Airport Extreme from a Windows 7 PC?

...Called it a roaming network. Wireless mode is create a wireless network. I have checked allow this network to be extended. Probably need to uncheck that?
Yes, that option should be deselected as it only pertains to when both routers are interconnected by wireless. Since you have a roaming network, they of course, would be interconnected by Ethernet.
The other important settings for a roaming network are:
Each router must have a unique station name. For the AirPort, this would be called its Base Station Name. I believe the default station name for Linksys routers is: linksys
Each router must broadcast a wireless network with an identical Network Name. For the Linksys, Network Name is the same as its SSID.
Each router wireless network must use the same Wireless Security type and password. The Linksys WRT-54G is capable of up to WPA2 Personal. If you have it set to this level of security, the AirPort should be at the same setting.
Make sure that each router is not on the same Radio Channel for the 2.4 GHz radio. In the US, there are basically only three non-overlapping channels: 1, 6, or 11. Set each so that they don't use the same channel but use of those three choices.

External Drive connected to Airport Extreme, need Time Machine 3 Mac's Help

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