External hard Drive on AX (Airport Express)

Hi...I know a lot of replies to this question ahve been a 'no', but I bought Airport Express froman Apple Store after having expressley (no pun intended) explained what I wanted to use my wireless network for – to connect 2 computers (G4 mirrored rdrive door version and ibook G4) and also to share an external hard drive. They recommended Airport Express. Now I find that it seems you can't actually do what I wanted it to do. Is there really no way around this? Can you see hard drives that are connected to the other computer possibly, or is there any software downloads for the Express that might allow a hard drive to be shared between the two computers?
G4 PowerMac Mirrored Drive Doors Mac OS X (10.3.9) Running Airport Express

Klammstein, Welcome to the discussion area!
What are you trying to do?
You can not connect a USB hard drive to the AirPort Express (AX). The AX does not support a USB hard drive.
You could connect an Ethernet hard drive to the AX's Ethernet port IF the AX is using WDS to join a wireless network. This is easy if the source of your wireless network is another AX or an AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS). Unfortunately very, very, very few 3rd party devices support Apple's WDS.
If the hard drive is connected to one of your computers, you must enable File Sharing on that computer and then the other computers can access that drive.

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Will connecting an external hard drive through an airport express work?

Using an airport express can an external hard drive be used successfully to store photo files directly to be used with Iphoto?

The only way a network drive format can be relevant is using a virtual disk. Otherwise it is not offering HFS+ or FAT32 or NTFS or anything else.. it is offering a network protocol for file storage. You can of course create a virtual disk space using methods pondini mentions here.
http://pondini.org/TM/TCQ3.html
I know TM requires HFS+ to work.. and I do have it working on an SMB drive in a NAS.. the NAS has formatted the drives XFS I think or EXT3.. but it will be some linux format.. TM creates the sparsebundle on the disk.. the sparsebundle is a virtual disk which is HFS+ as required..
Whether that is required ofr iphoto I don't have experience with to know. You could well be right.. in which case it explains why iphoto gives so much trouble if people even use TC as a place to store the library.
Nevertheless the NAS itself cannot use HFS+.. the only device that i know of that uses HFS+ for internal format of the disk is Time Capsule. There is no other NAS on the market that uses it because Linux cannot reliably write HFS+.. it can handle HFS. Almost every NAS in existence runs Linux.. again the TC is unusual running NetBSD. Which is probably a requirement so it can run HFS+ on the disk. And so Time Machine can work reliably.

Mounting thumb drive/external hard drive enclosure on Airport express

For unknown reasons it wouldn't see the external enclosure anymore. It totally did before. Now it doesn't even mount a thumb drive.
Am I doing something wrong? I just plug in the usb port and it should work right?

No way, I formated 1.5TB with my mac. Or did I do it with the USB port on the air?
Uhhhhh
Are you sure it's for printer only? Because if that were the case that's a very huge crying shame on Apple. I don't want to use up my only on-board USB port for something as dumb as a mere time machine backup drive.
Unless I hook up my bleeding USB splitter, and that's pretty much not what I want, because I am not entirely sure it will power my external hard drive.

Can I connect an external hard drive to my Airport Express and share it to store files on between two machines via the usb port. The machines are a MacBook and a fairly new Win machine. Printers and Airplay as well as wifi work perfect.

Wondering about the above.

... I bought a hard drive at an Apple store because they told me I could hook it up through my Airport express.
Bzzt. Nope. Bring it back.
Read: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2421
Question: What is an AirPort Express?
Answer: An AirPort Express is a Wi-Fi base station. Besides acting as an Internet access point, it has several specialized features which make it ideal for specific needs.
Printer - Act as a wireless interface for one printer connected to the USB port, making it available to your network
"Hook it up" - in the sense that a wireless device may be wirelessly "hooked up" to an Express - is a different matter; like "hooking up" with a friend.
Words mean things. Imprecise words mean imprecise things. That generally doesn't end well.
Apple ought to read this stuff once in a while.
John Galt wrote:
I thought you were asking about a USB hard disk attached to the Express. That won't work.
I thought right. That won't work. An Extreme or Time Capsule will.

How do I connect an external hard drive to an airport?

Here what's going on. I have an old aiport, Iomega external hard drive and a Netgear N router. My goal is so connect the external hard drive to the airport via the USB port so I can access my photos through the network. I have a Mac Book pro with a full hard drive and a PC laptop. The Netgear N router is currently connected to my cable modem and the Airport is connected to the Netgear Router in bridge mode. However when I connect the External HD to the Airport it cannot be seen. I can see it when I connect it to my mac directly but I would prefer to share my pictures over the network and keep the External HD stationary instead of moving wherever my laptop goes. I also read that the Airport can slow down the internet speed because it is not an "N" so that is why I currently have it in bridge mode. Is there anyway to get this done? Thanks in advance.
Message was edited by: lineaurd81

Can you clarify what model you mean by an old Airport? There's dozens of different AirPort base station models, and the only ones that work with a USB harddrive are the AirPort Extreme's with 802.11 n (flat, square-shaped with 4 ethernet ports). The AirPort Expresses and older dome-shaped base stations do not have that capability.
If you have an AirPort Extreme which meets the requirements of connecting a USB drive, you can verify whether it's connected by configuring it manually using the AirPort Utility and looking under the disks tab.
The following article tells you the various ways of connecting to the disk if it is recognized in the AirPort Utility and properly formatted:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331

Using Time Machine w/external hard drive connected to airport extreme

I hooked up an external hard drive on my airport extreme. I see it in sharing, however, Time Machine doesn't recognize it as a back-up drive unless I have it directly connected to my MacBook Pro. How do I get Time Machine to recognize the external drive when it's connected to the airport?

FWIW, the AEBS has known problems sharing a directly connected HD. Take a look over in the AEBS forums, and you'll see that this is a very common problem. Perhaps Apple will update the firmware and rectify this problem.
Cheers,
Andreas

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.

Does Time Machine support an external hard drive attached to Airport?

I was interested in setting up my external hard drive to my Airport Extreme base station and use Time Machine wirelessly. I have seen a few different answers on the forum and I'm wondering whether this is possible. (I do not have Time Capsule.) If so, can you provide an easy step by step as to how to set it up. Thanks!

Yes it's possible. Connect the drive and open Airport Utility. Click on the Manual Setup button. Then click on the Disks icon in the toolbar. Select the disk and turn on Sharing.
You can then open TM preferences where the shared drive should appear in the list of drives. If it does not show up then you will need to "mount" the drive by selecting Connect to Server from the Finder's Go menu, then double-clicking on the shared drive's icon to login as a registered user.
Note that this is not supported by Apple.

Can I share my external hard drive over the Airport Extreme via the internet to someone in a different city?

Can I share my external hard drive over the Airport Extreme via the internet to someone in a different city?

Yes. Please see the following AirPort User Tip for details on several methods to do so.

I have installed an external hard drive on my AirPort Extreme. How do I access it and tranfer photos and file to it from my Mac.

I have installed an external hard drive to my AirPort Extreme but cannot figure out how to transfer file/ photos, etc from my Mac, iPad or other IOS devices or to the hard drive. Any help?

From the Finder, go to the Go menu and select Network.

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.
Also would this work with most other wireless routers that support external hard drives? Not asking for specifics here, because i know no one can know every device. But is there any technical problem that would prevent it.
Thanks

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.
Thanks anyway

Can Time Machine back up a external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme

I recently purchased a new macbook pro, and airport extreme.
I attached a 750 GB external hard drive to the macbook pro, and reformatted it so time machine made the initial back up and hourly back ups from there.
Is it possible to now to unattach the external hard drive and attach it to the airport extreme, where the mac book time machine will back up to the external hard drive through airport extreme?
i have seen conflicting posts is if this is possible.

That would probably be safest.
Note that Apple's position on this got even more negative with Snow Leopard: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
It does work well for some folks, not so well for some, and not at all for others.
I got a refurb dual-band model in September. It worked well for about 3 months, but lately I get the error 109 and corrupted backups every few days, that Disk Utility can't fix. Once, Disk Warrior could, but since then, if they're corrupted, nothing helps. That's on a year-old Seagate drive that seems fine otherwise, especially when connected directly.
And I have an excellent wireless connection; it's only about 10 feet from my Mac, speeds are great, S/N ratio is good, etc.
It makes no sense to me that a TC would work better, but they seem to.

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.

External hard drive networked via AirPort Extreme gives "The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)" roughly every two days

My lab has about 10 Mac computers. We all access a central hard drive by the way of wifi provided by AirPort. It's just a regular external hard drive (Seagate Desktop Drive) that I turned into our central storage space by plugging it into AirPort (USB). It works pretty well. We seem to be fine with viewing the file directories, opening files, saving, deleting etc., for a day or two. But then after a day or two, when when trying to modify files or move new files onto the central hard drive, we get the error message: "The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)"
Any suggestions as to what may be causing this problem?
All of the computers are 2011 iMacs & MacPros. The AirPort is 802.11n WiFi. The hard drive is a Seagate USB 3.0 Desktop Drive.
Thank you for your insight/suggestions.

Thanks for your reply. I agree about the communication issue. Let me explain my setup and what I am trying to do and perhaps you can answer my questions or make suggestions.
I have a MAC Mini with a Sony TV for the video monitor. The Mac Mini is hard wired to the AE (Airport Extreme). The AE has a 2 TB HD hooked up to the USB Port. I have a 17" Mac Book Pro on the WIFI Network.
I am trying to use the MAc Mini as a "Media Server" of sorts. Once I get iTunes running the way I plan I am goign to hook up my Apple TV (2nd Generation) to my television downstairs.
What I am trying to accomplish is have iTunes on all my computers look to the External HD on the AE for the files. This is why I am having my (-50 errors).
So far I have noticed that if I go and try to download from iTunes purchased videos that are not ont he computer (to the external HD) it will also occassionaly give me teh -50 error.
Is there a way to change where the files go when I download them? Say I want to download videos to the computer but not to the external HD? However I would want to still be able to move them to the External HD.

Using an external hard drive with an airport extreme and HP computer

- I recently bought the airport extreme, and also bought a Seagate external hard drive for my music files. I can see the hard drive on the airport utility but cannot access it or find where to access it. I am using an HP computer with windows 7.
Help please!

The AirPort Extreme cannot share out the attached Seagate USB hard drive if it is formatted in NTFS or ExFat. Please check to see that it is formatted in either FAT32 or HFS+ (Apple format).
If it is already formatted in either of the latter two formats, then verify that the AirPort Utility can properly identify the hard drive by using the AirPort Utility for Windows.
Finally please checkout the following Apple Support article for details on accessing this shared drive from a Windows PC.

External hard Drive on AX (Airport Express)

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