External Storage over Wireless ?

My new MacBook Pro will arrive in two days.
It is configured with OS -X
Also, the AirPort Wireless Router arrives then.
I wish to be able to store files over the home wirelss net. What External Device could I use, likely in the 200gB range, that I could connect to via the router?
Or, am I also needing another (albeit smaller) Mac to go-between?
Thanks for the help.

Lace Ethernet Disks may be what you're looking for. This should allow for your portability around your home while the drive would be plugged into your router.
I would personally go for a firewire drive that gives you bootability option. OWC has a number of excellent firewire drives that will perform great. I personally went with the miniStackV2 320GB. It is great so far.
If you go the firewire option you will have to connect via cable but the option to boot from external gives peace of mind.
If you are thinking of a Mac Mini to go in between and network with maybe not a bad idea but I don't know much about. If you had a problem you could always to target disk mode via firewire to salvage files if necessary. You would also have to buy a monitor but you could probably get a good one for $200 or less.
A refurb iMac would do the trick as well. For $1099 you could get a 17" Intel iMac.
Either way you got a great computer on the way. Congrats.

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MP3's over Wireless External Hard Drive

I'm trying to figure out the simpliest set-up to access my mp3s on an external hard drive wirelessly without setting up a server.
Can anyone make a recommendation. Are there any particular routers that allow me to plug in a USB 2 hard driver and access it wirelessly from my powerbook?
Thanks

I think you want something like this
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=421
I have never used this so I cant say how it works.
This model looks like a good one for the following reason:
Unlike other Network Storage Adapters, the DNS-G120 preserves all existing files on your USB drives and does not require you to reformat your USB drive.
*The only thing is I am not sure what file system your drive is using. If its OSX format then this would not work
USB Drive File System Support: FAT, FAT32, (NTFS read only)
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Randomly losing network connection over wireless

Shortly after installing the 10.4.5 software update, my G4 iBook with built-in Airport Extreme card has been losing connection with increasing frequency. Built-in Ethernet use is unaffected. I'm calling this problem thrash-and-drop.
1. When it's losing signal, processor activity goes through the roof. I had Activity Monitor running during a thrash-and-drop. kernel_task CPU consumption goes from under 1% before the event, to over 80% during the thrashing, and back under 1% after the thrashing stops. The activity is so bad the cursor can't be controlled: using the track pad sends the pointer all over the screen or nowhere at all.
2. This has been observed to occur with two different wireless base stations: A Linksys WRT54G and an older SMC 802.11b router. Either router is within 10 feet of the computer. Only one is running at a time. There are no other base stations in range.
3. Another iBook G4 (OS 10.3, Airport Extreme card (not built-in)), sitting next to it, shows no change and its wireless behavior is unaffected.
Initially, this seemed more likely to happen when Safari was loading Flash-heavy pages. And after thrashing and dropping a connection, it was able to reconnect after either a reboot or a five minute sleep. Currently, it can't connect to a base station for more than a minute. Most recently, it thrashed and dropped while I was selecting the base station to use. This is true regardless of the application running. In fact, it will thrash-and-drop when there are no user applications running at all, after a fresh reboot.
I've tried the following things to address the problem. None have affected the thrash-and-drop problem. Admittedly, most of this is random:
1. Back up and delete network preferences in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
2. Turn off IPv6 in System Preferences/Network
3. Back up and delete network preferences in ~/Library/Preferences (com.apple.NetInfoManager.plist and com.apple.NetworkUtility.plist)
Has anybody else seen this problem? I want to blame it on the 10.4.5 upgrade but I haven't seen anybody else complaining about 10.4.5 doing this to them. If there's something I can do to fix this in a software setting, I'd much prefer that to yet another roadtrip to the Apple store.
1.33 GHz G4 iBook Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hi!
I have the same problem of randomly losing network connection over wireless, though mine is hardly related to surfing.
I have an external storage drive in which I use for backup of my stuff, and I access the drive via my modem, using the airport. Of late, I noticed that when copying files from my iBook to the external drive, the connection would suddenly drop before the transfer is completed. This began to occur with increasing frequency, particularly when transferring large files.
I have since abandoned wireless connection, and reverted to my trusty cable. Still, I admit that I'm really curious about the cause of the apparent lack of reliability with my wireless connection. Has it something to do with the airport?
1.33 GHz iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5) New to Mac, just switched from Windows 4 months ago.

External Storage Question ....

I would like to get an external HDD for storing movies, photos, and music. I have a mix or purchased and my own content.
I am looking at these two drives:
G-Tech G-DRIVE 500GB FW400/800 Hard Drive
Western Digital My Book 500GB Pro Edition...
Can anyone help me sort through the ocean of options?
When I started looking, I thought I wanted an ethernet attached device so I could just attach it to my home router. But, it appears I can attach the drive to my airport extreme, which is acting as just a print server, and then connect the printer to the new hard drive. This solves the 'i only have one USB port on the old airport extreme' base station.
However, will my transfer rates suffer if I have wireless hop?
I don't need to hit the drive too often. I will do one big back-up, then incrementals each week.
There are no PC's on my network. Just two macbooks, and maybe a MacBook Pro or large mac destop (coming soon).
any help is appecriated.
-john

Most of the cheap NAS ethernet devices only support FAT32 formatted internal drives, which you access via a built-in SAMBA server. The maximum size of an individual file under this format is 4Gb. This is probably too small if you are using Apple's Backup, as this can easily create a file ten times this size. They are also slow, although you can usually connect them directly via USB as well. So you can do 'big' copies with them directly attached, and then less intensive use with them attached via NAS.
The Airport USB does not suffer from this 4Gb file limit problem, because it expects attached discs to be HFS+ format, the same as you mac. If you want to connect a printer at the same time you will need a USB hub, you can't 'daisy chain' USB the way you can with firewire. The hub must be USB 2.0 and preferably externally powered. With this setup you could connect the drive directly to your mac to do the first backup, and then attach it to the airport for subsequent 'incremental' backups, which would normally be much smaller. In fact if I were you I would first make a bootable copy of my mac hard disk to the (directly connected) external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, then run a full Apple Backup to the drive, then connect the drive to the airport for future use.
In practice I don't find much of a speed difference accessing network attached storage over wired 100Mb ethernet or airport extreme.
The above would be the easiest approach and would make best use of the stuff you already have available.
Another alternative would be to buy something like the Linksys NSLU2 as a slightly more capable file server - you can read more about it at my website http://www.zonko.ath.cx ! (Shameless plug!)

How to use AirPort Time Capsule 2TB as an external storage hard drive only?

I have a new AirPort Time Capsule 3TB, now I want to use my AirPort Time Capsule 2TB as an external storage hard drive only, how do I it?
I would like to connect the AirPort Time Capsule 2TB directly to my Mac Pro. using OS X 10.7.5.
I have erase disk and reset the 2TB to factory default, after that, I cannot make it to connect to my Mac. Please help.

The 2TB Time Capsule needs to connect to your 3TB Time Capsule using a wired Ethernet connection.
Connect from a LAN <--> port on the 3 TB Time Capsule to the WAN "O" port on the 2 TB Time Capsule and configure the 2TB Time Capsule in Bridge Mode and turn off the wireless function on the device as well.
Once that is done, you can connect your Mac directly to the 2TB Time Capsule using another Ethernet cable, or your Mac can connect to the network using the normal wireless network, if you prefer.

Itunes crashes on addition of artwork to movie folder and apple tv (2nd generation) will not see itunes while itunes plays playlist over wireless network to airport express??

I have 4 non apple pc exhibiting same issue. Whether you have ten movies on board the pc or 500 on external storage Itunes locks up after you "get info" and try to add video cover from IMDB whether the art is in my pictures on PC or off USB key / external storage. Very frustrating to the extent that I bought a macbook thinking that it may be a non apple issue and bingo same issue whether films on macbook or on nas/ external usb. Effectively itunes may be made to crash by adding artwork!
2nd Issue noticed at weekend I have a small music library of approx. 35gb music in itunes music folder when a playlist was being played within itunes and airplay was selected to an airport express that is connected to distributed music system in house all works well during party. Guest have access to DJ app via remote app or control of content being player. My kids disappeared into the front room and while playlist on notices 2 things. The ipod touch ( 4 mths old) would not connect to apple tv player 2nd generation while airplay on to music system and the infra red remote remote worked fine but apple tv would not see video files in itunes while airplay on. When airplay disabled all absolutley fine , re- enabled airplay and apple tv bumped again. I have a wireless N router and have successfully had 2 apple tv 2nd generation working off itunes video files without issue. There are delays but both are seen in remote app and both players see itunes folders. I would have thought video streaming to apple tv players sucked up more bandwidth that one airplay to airport express and one apple tv 2nd gen.
Anyone experienced same

OK - I managed to fix this. Will document for others.
I started to think it was a firewall thing. So I turned off both my Windows 7 firewall and my BT Home hub firewall. It started working!
So turned back on the BT home hub firewall - still working. So it must be a windows 7 firewall.
Went in and checked that Itunes was there as an exception... Yep. So why still not working?
Found out that the entry in my Windows 7 firewall said I-Tunes - but when you looked at the details button it wasnt pointing to a program - it was just blank.
So added a new entry and pointed that at the I-Tunes exe file.
Now all working...

Color LaserJet 3600 and 10.6 over wireless (Broadcom Wireless Chipset)

Checking the archives, I've found that I'm not the only person who has experienced problems printing to a Color LaserJet 3600 via wireless. Those threads were archived with no solution so I couldn't reply, but I wanted to expand on what I discovered.
It is not so much Mac OS X 10.6, but the way HP's horrible host-based printing drivers are tied to the wireless. I've discovered that laptops with 10.6 that are also using the newer Broadcom BCM43xx chipset will garble their print command, causing the print queue to mess up on the host machine, and the printer to become unresponsive to all other machines (it perpetually thinks there's something in the queue, so no other print commands will go through.) The three laptops I tested were the unibody aluminum 13" MacBook Pro, unibody aluminum 15" MacBook Pro, and the plastic unibody 13" MacBook; all with clean installs of 10.6.2. All three laptops have the same printing error.
Laptops with the Atheros 5416 chipset work fine, even with 10.6. Laptops tested with this chipset were the aluminum 15" MacBook Pro, aluminum 17" MacBook Pro, and the white MacBook.
This is not any fault of Apple, it is HPs abysmal host-based printing system. The solution to this problem until HP updates their printer drivers is to use the open source HPIJS drivers (HP drivers for the Linux Foundation Open Printing.) You'll need HPIJS, Foomatic-RIP, and Ghostscript; all installers are listed and come with uninstallers should any unexpected errors occur.
I don't know Apple's policy on linking to external websites, but a simple Google search for HPIJS will give the desired link.
This may be a good solution for 10.4 and 10.5 clients working across subnets, as the HPIJS drivers can be used via simple LPD/LPR instead of the HP IP Printing System that relies on mDNS.
Once installed, when you type in the IP address of your Color LaserJet 3600, you'll be presented with the option of choosing the HPIJS driver.
Additionally, if you use the HP drivers for the LaserJet 3600 over both wired and wireless network, you must add the printer while on the wireless network only; it is important that you disconnect the ethernet cable. If you add the printer while using a wired connection, the printer will not work over wireless; however, if you add the printer while on a wireless connection, the printer will work on either wireless or wired.
Yes, the HP host-based drivers are that ridiculous.

Unfortunately 10.6.3 did not fix the problem.
I've also, unfortunately, found out that the HPIJS will also eventually fail to print.
This is beyond frustrating since we invested several thousands of dollars in these printers and we can't use them.

WRT1900AC External Storage and Windows 8.1

I just upgraded this router after Time Warner gave me a free upgrade to 200 Mbps.
Everything is faster, make that FASTER!!!
My new laptop got 206 Mbps on wireless 5.0 GHz.
But, the laptop is running Windows 8.1, and I think that is the External Storage issue.
I plugged a 32GB USB3 thumb drive and a 1TB hard drive into both USB1 and USB2 with the same result.
On My Desktop I see an icon for the Twonky Media Server and a file folder for the external storage.
On my laptop I see the Twonky icon, but no file folder.
The laptop can music, video, and pictures. But it has no way to access any non media files.
The desktop has a "Home" network, but the Windows 8.1 laptop has a "Private" network.
I set the laptop to share, and can transfer back and forth between the two computers.
I don't see this as a deal breaker, but it would nice to get it working.
I have no experience networking Windows 8/8.1. I was a Windows 7 fanboy.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

To access none media files from any computer on your network. Look in the router's storage section and use the links provided there to access the files.
Please remember to Kudo those that help you.
Linksys
Communities Technical Support

Is it possible to setup the time capsule as an external hard drive (wireless)

Hi, I have purchased a time capsule and looking to use it to automatically backup my data but also would like to see it on my mac book pro as an external hard drive (wireless); is that possible????????????? if yes how???

OK.. the TC is really designed for wired connection.
There is a hidden option.. hold the option key, when you select wireless mode, to join a wireless network. This is hidden because it is poor.. you join the TC to the mifi myfy and then yes, you can access it over wireless network.. but it is now half the speed of direct access due to double hop wireless. The TC is also going to not allow access directly by wireless or ethernet. So the option is there .. it is hidden due to being bad.
You will particularly notice what happens now is during backups your internet will crawl.. because you are saturating the local connection.
If I was in your situation.. I would buy thunderbolt to ethernet adapter and plug directly into the TC.. or scrap the TC and plug directly into a hard disk. The TC now gains you nothing.. it is unsuited to this sort of network.
But another solution is to buy USB wireless stick.. these are tiny things.. and cheap and plenty are Mac OS compatible. Plug it in and use it as a secondary wireless client.. with fixed IP you can now connect directly to the TC .. single hop wireless.. much faster and no interference on the myfi link.
You also don't have another wire plugged into your laptop which is messy.
OR
Scrap the myfy for a proper 3G router with ethernet.. you can usually just swap the sim over.. this is a much better solution as you put the TC back to its native correct operating mode..
Well there are some possible solutions.

External storage device not showing up in finder

I have an imac with an external storage device for back-up. Up to now when I turned on the device it would show up in Finder. Now it's not. I have checked the connections (firewire), restarted the computer but it's not showing up. What should I do or try?

TRY THIS SOLUTION, EASY!
I'm a GOOD mac user. Not a genius, but pretty good, used it for years.
BUT SOMEHOW THIS ESCAPED ME:
In the finder, on the left side, scrol down to DEVICES.
Mouse over slowly to the right of that word and it says SHOW/HIDE.
Well.. Mine were hidden!
That's it!

RMBP 256GB+external storage or 512GB?

Here's the deal!
So Im set on buying my first macbook pro, and I went for the RMBP base model with 256GB HD.
I know that the macbook pro isnt really a gaming machine, hence the pro name and so on....
Main use would be some gaming, photoediting, video etc. Im planning on installing Win7 via bootcamp!(to keep my options open, gamewise)
All of a sudden Im a bit worried if I'm running out of space, and should have went for the 512GB capacity...(I know this can only be answered by me)
Questions:
1)     Considering my setup with bootcamp and mainuse, should I really go for the 512GB of HD model instead? Im also considering that the OS takes up like         30GB with generic programs installed??...
2)   ...Or, what's the best external storage option, If I want to take advantage of the Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 ports??? I could settle for 500-1TB of HD
     (Not yet a millionaire, something in the range of 400USD max, would be pretty sweet)
ps. I looked at the LAcie 1TB porsche design 2.0 USB storage device? (but that wouldnt really benefit from the ports rite???)
3) What's the deal with Timecapsule??? Obviously transferspeeds are slower, but is it a must/wisebuy for a Mac Newbie???
Thnx!

1. I would have gone for the 512GB as you're stuck with what you order. The machine is not user upgradeable. If it's possible, change your order for 512GB.
2. You'll need at least one external drive for back-up. I recommend using Time Machine. Most people recommend an external drive that is 2-3x the size of your internal drive for TM back-ups, hence you'd need a 1-2 Terabyte external drive (for all things about Time Machine, click here). Thunderbolt drives are still far too expensive at this time, in my opinion, yet several people here have reported problems with some USB 3.0 external drives. Look for one from a reputable Mac drive company, such as LaCie or OWC. I would actually call both companies and see what they have in the way of USB 3.0 drives and see what they recommend.
3. Time Capsule is a nifty little back-up system, using Time Machine, that include Airport services. But I wouldn't want wireless back-up - for one reason, as you note, wireless back-ups are slow. There are thousands of happy TC users, but I'd just buy a fast USB 3.0 external. Not a must or wise buy in my opinion.
Hope this helps somewhat,
Clinton

Time machine does not recognize external HD over wifi

So I leanred the valubale lesson of not backing up my data frequently enough due ot my failing macbook HD. I am trying to setup my seagate external HD over the wifi and use time machine to ack it up weekly. My setup is using a addonics NAS from my verizon router to my seagate external. Problem is time capsule does not see it, but the computer does. I have tried formatting it in both types (apple OS and the addonics way) both were not recognized. Any ideas?

The only official wireless backup solution is a timecapsul.
That said, there is at least one other way. Use a linux system to emulate, via netatalk, the required protocol for TimeMachine, (it works, that's how I do my backups).
You might be able to find other alternatives, but I don't know them off-hand.
Suffice it to say, though, that simply providng a netword accessible drive is not sufficient for TimeMachine.

How do I share a drive over wireless?

I recently read an article on CNet that showed how to share a drive over wireless...on Windows. I have a Macintosh and Airport Express 2g router. Is it possible to share a drive over the USB port in the Airport express to other Mac or iOS devices? For reference, I have linked to the CNet Windows sharing article below. They didn't give any Apple instructions, so I am asking here. Thanks in advance!
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/share-an-external-hard-drive-over-a-wi-fi-network/

You can share files.. with the following notes..
Sometimes what you can do is not what you should do.
Store files on the TC.
This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk on the TC. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no control. In fact the TC is so lacking in controls for even the router side.. that you cannot do more than the most basic of setups.
The following are controls on the hard disk side.
Reformat it. You can name the share. You can do a full archive of the whole disk. This will go at a speed of aprox. 30-50GB/Hr so calculate how long an archive of a full 2TB will take.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
Even apple btw say don’t do it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Internet sharing over wireless

Didn't see anyone post this but is anyone else having problems with Internet Sharing over wireless?
Trying to have the macbook connect to the iMac over wireless and use the iMac's wired internet connection. On the iMac, the Airport card is on, and in network preferences, internet sharing is turned on. However, the options for sharing over wireless is grayed out and I can't get into those options to customize it. On the macbook, it doesn't see it in the available networks list to connect.
Am I missing something? Do I need to "create a network" on the imac now? I didn't have to do this in 10.4.10

After much consternation and countless trials I finally have everything back up and working. Here is what I did finally to get it to work. (Note that I am not a network configuration expert - I am only reporting exactly how I have it configured and it works without complaint).
1. I trashed my \Library\Preferences\System Preferences folder and restarted my Mac since I had updated from 10.4 and I wanted to start from a fresh set of preferences. ( I backed up that folder separately)
2. I opened the Network Preference pane and configured my Ethernet connection (connected to my external AirPort Express which I am using as a wireless router to my other computers) as follows:
-Configure: Using DHCP
-IP Address: 192.168.0.197
-Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
-Router: 192.168.0.1
DNS Server: 192.168.0.1 (grayed out and so I am not sure what this means)
I set these settings by clicking on the Advanced button.
Under the TCP/IP tab I had chosen:
- Configure IPv4: Using DHCP
(This set the IPv4 Address, Subnet mask and Router)
- Configure IPv6: Automatically
3. On the Sharing Preference pane, I configured the following:
-Share your connection from: Novatel Wireless EXPD (because I have a 3G wireless connection; otherwise I would have chosen the standard Internet connection)
-To computers using: "Ethernet"
And then I turned on the Internet Sharing Service and confirmed in the pop-up dialog that I wanted to share my Internet connection.
4. Using Airport Utility, I configured the Airport Express by first clicking the Internet button to show the Internet Connection page and set the following:
- Connect Using: Ethernet
- Configure IPv4: Manually
- IP Address: 192.168.0.179
- Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
- Router Address: 192.168.0.1
- DNS Server: 192.168.0.1
- Ethernet Wan Port: Automatic (Default)
- Connection Sharing: Off (Bridge)
I also configured my Base Station and Wireless with names and Passwords.
I then clicked Update in AirPort Utility and after it restarted everything magically worked!
I think that the problem lay with my original IPv4 settings where I had chosen DHCP rather than Manually hoping that everything would automatically be set as it had worked previously. The clue was that on my MacBook Pro I noticed that the DHCP was not enabled when connected to the AirPort Express. Even my iPod Touch is now connected to the Internet!
If anyone can explain all of this I would appreciate it.

Is there any external storage that is compatible with the ipad2

is there any external storage that is compatible with the ipad2

the Wifi storage options are interesting but it seems they only allow to read files from the device on the iPad but not transfer files to the storage device via WiFi.
I'm looking for a possibility to use the iPad for photography while traveling, without the access to a computer.
Shooting photo's in RAW format crates pretty big files that will fill up the iPad's memory pretty fast if you shoot a lot during a (let's say) month long trip.
my idea was to use load the photo's to the iPad so i could view them and sort out any bad ones. then copy them over to the storage device so i can continue using my CF cards for shooting. I have an image thank for copying the photo's directly to the HDD but it would be so sweet to be able to check them on the iPad before hand.
any suggestions?

External Storage over Wireless ?

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