HELP! Airport is not picking up USB HDD

Hello,
I've just broken my post hymen with this one.
Since I upgraded my firmware on my Airport Extreme it just won't let me mount my USB Hard Disk. Not a massive problem in itself, appart from the fact that I have all my iTunes library on there and I am a music freak.
Help me jebus!
Thanks,
Tompz

I'm having similar problems with HDD's too.
I have a WD Passport 160Gb drive that can be seen in OS X and accessed no problem. In XP I can see it but not access it (blank explorer window appears). Under Vista I can't even see the drive. This drive is formatted as NTFS.
I bought a bigger drive, an Essentials WD 500Gb, which the Extreme N cannot even see! This drive is formatted as FAT32.
Anyone have any thoughts on why this might be?

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Airport Express and an External USB HDD

Hello All,
If you can help that would be brilliant. I have just been given an Airport Express as a present. Not sure why. I am wondering if there is a way to allow the software / hardware to pick up a USB HDD instead of a USB Printer. I noticed that the Airport software does show you a disk option in settings but it greyed out so you can not select it. I have got the Airtunes working and that is brilliant!!! I just dont want to have to return it if I can get the USB HDD to work with it.
I hope you can help.
Terry

Are there any other pieces of hardware from Apple that do Airtunes and USB HDD that are available?
No. The only device compatible with Airtunes is the AX.

Airport card not picking up any signals after IP configuration changed

Just had cable internet installed in my apartment, and in the course of setting up the IP configuration for the built-in ethernet connection, my airport card has stopped recognizing wireless networks in my building. Before I changed these settings, the card was working, and there are several networks in the building that it recognized. Now, it recognizes none. The menu appears in the top bar, and I can turn the airport on and off, but it simply is not picking up any signals whatsoever.
I have tried a handful of tactics, including changing the Airport TCP/IP configuration in several different ways, rebooting several times, and even removing and reinserting the Airport card.
For info: I'm using an iBook G3 with OS 10.2.8. (I know, pretty old, but it's still chugging along...)
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

Not sure. What's strange is that the very same computer was picking up signals (not accessing them b/c they were all password protected), recognizing networks in the area at least, before I played with the other IP configuration settings. Now it picks up none. It shows that there are none in the area, even though I know that there are.
Also, often, when I click on the Airport icon in the menu bar, the computer hangs for up to a minute before the menu actually pops up.
I have an Airport Express unit that I have hooked up to the cable modem, and my Airport card won't even recognize that signal. I'm just not sure what I changed that made it go haywire. I've been using this computer on wireless networks for the entire time I've owned it. Never had this problem before yesterday.
Thanks for any additional suggestions anyone can offer.

Help - Airport network not working - confused!!

Hello, I wonder if anyone out there can help. I have got a problem with my airport network that doesn't make any sense and I havent seen another post with the same problems.
I have an imac G5 with 10.3.9. I have a wireless network set up, with an airport wireless card and two ax boxes (the second was bought later to boost the signal when we moved the Mac to another room). Initially it set up fine and worked for about 8-9 months. Then I noticed the second ax started behaving strangely. It would occasionally turn from 'green' to flashing amber for no reason - often after it had been on for a while. Turning it off and on did not change anything. Usually though it would work again the next day after being off all night. This continued to happen randomly until a couple of months later it switched to flashing amber continually.
I thought it had 'lost' the network so I tried using the airport set up assistant to reconnect it. However the set up assistant does not recognise ax number 2 any more, so I am not able to reconnect it. At the moment I am running off a faint signal from ax number 1.
I also tried setting up a completely new network from scratch. Again the new network is fine from the base ax bx but ax number 2 is still not recognised by my mac.
I also have a wireless printer connected to the network which does not work any more. This is where things became more confusing. The printer needs a boost signal to operate so when my booster ax went wrong the printer would not work. So I moved the printer and mac nearer ax number 1 to ensure it would pick up the network. However it still didn't work. So I attempted to set up the printer as wireless again, thinking it had become 'disconnected' somehow. However during installation you have to select the network to connect to. The computer would not pick up the apple network at all from ax number 1, yet it easily recognises our neighbours network from the flat above us. Strangely when I tried turning on the faulty ax box, the printer set up program picked up the faulty ax and not the original ax. But obviously I can't use the printer from the faulty ax box because it doesnt connect to the rest of the network.
So now I am confused. I am not sure what has gone wrong and what I need to replace. Originally I thought it was the second ax box that had gone wrong. But as the printer software can identify the second ax box I am not sure that this is the problem. Could there be something wrong with the airport card? I have checked that the card is properly connected and there is nothing visibly wrong there.
If anyone can help - please reply as I am going crazy here with things not working and don't know what to do next.
Thanks, Wrenster

Hello Wrenster,
I understand why you are confused, I was too while reading your post. However I have the solution for you. I believe you are a victim of environmental interference. Someone in your neighborhood just moved in with a another network, someone had a baby and is using a baby monitor, or maybe a local ham radio operator just got his license. Who knows!
This is what you need to do. Get all the devices in the same room and preform a hard restart on each one them per http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108044. Remember to preform a hard restart! After performing a hard restart on all three devices check the wireless networks available. You should have 3 ( one main and 2 airport expresses) ( or two depending on how many airports you own, I am not sure from your post). If you don't have the correct amount you may a bum base station and it may need to be replaced. But if you have the correct number of wireless networks ( Apple network XXXXXXX), use the airport admin utility ( inside of the utility folder ) to locate the main base station and configure it.
You will know when you are on the configuration page when you can read Name, Contact and Location.
First change the name to the location of the main base station, ie; it is the den so name should read DEN. leave the contact and location alone. On the bottom half of the page is where you create your network, so under network name change it to your desired network name ie; when others come over to my house I have them select COWSWEAT from the network list.
Second click on the change wireless security and set the security to WEP 128 BIT and make your password. Once you have configured a successful password be sure to click on the lock on the main configuration page ( the one with password under it) to get the HEX password for your PC friends.
Third ( we are almost done ) Select the WDS tab at the top and enable this base station as a main station. Select allow other wireless client on this base station as well. Now on that empty list box below click the plus sign to the right to add other base stations to this WDS network. From here you should be able to select the other 2 base station that we have not configure yet ( but preformed a hard restart on). After you have added them ( be sure the check box for auto configure is selected) they should read in the list that was empty on the WDS page.
Now update this should start the update process and may take 5-10 mins, it should provide a summery pop-up when with each station is done.
( Also you may get a message that there is update for the base station, please preform the updates for the selected base stations)
Now when it is completed check to see how many networks you have available ( it should only be one ). Select the network and confirm that all of your base stations appear under the select a base station in Airport admin utility, then move them back to their homes around the house. Giving them 45 secs to restart they should turn green if not , they could out of range of each other or the environmental interference could be affecting them. So you my need to rearrange them until they all green.
Good Luck,
Cowsweat

Why Airport Utility not pick up AirPort Extreme?

Suddenly AirPort Utility on MacPro not picking up AirPort Extreme for wireless. Other Macs in house connecting just fine.

Restart the AE and try again.

MY new AirPort will not pick up HP C-4385 printer. Printer shows no I.P. address

My new Airport will not pickup HP C-4385 printer. Printer shows on I.P. address

I am assuming that your HP C-4385 AiO printer has wireless capability built-in and your goal is to connect it to the wireless network provided by the AirPort Express Base Station (AXn) ... correct?
If so, when you are configuring the HP for wireless, does the AXn's wireless network appear in the printer's setup window?

How do I Setup USB HDD on Airport EXTREME TIME CAPSULE? USB HDD Not showing up

How can I get the HDD to work with my airport extreme? Does it need formatted a specific way for mac? Are there certain hdd types that work best with the I have a WD usb hard drive which doesn't show up when connected to airport extreme. I'm trying to setup time capsule, but Having no luck. I'm new to the Imac.
Message was edited by: clower80

A couple of pointers.
The hard drive must be specifically formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to work with the AirPort Extreme's USB port. Check the documentation that came with the drive to find out how it is formatted at the present time.....it is likely formatted to work with Windows, which is not compatible with the AirPort Extreme.
Unfortunately, even if the drive is formatted correctly, Apple does not officially support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme, so that will be the next hurdle to deal with.
Some users actually do seem to be able to make this work, but overall, it is not a reliable method to backup your data if it is important to you.

Airport Card not picking up networks...Someone please help!!

Alright heres the deal. I just bought my first MAC, a Mac Pro With 2 2.66 Xeon processors, yes this thing should fly the space shuttle(you'd think). But why does Apple not have a preinstalled Airport Card in their top of line unit? Who knows. Anyway, I went to the Apple store and purchased one and installed it, no problem. It should work, right? WRONG. My nightmare has started. The computer definitely reads that the card is there. ID and all. But I am not seeing and IP address in the dialog box/tab TCP??. I have called Apple Care to no avail, folks at the store, don't have a clue, so i thought i'd give this forum one more shot at the hopes that someone here will know how to configure this thing and get me on line. NAturally i am writing this from my trusty ol' PC...which never fails me, btw. FYI, the other two computers in my houselhold, this trusty Sony Viao and an iMAC laptop, have no problem at all picking up network signals. And folks come over all the time with their MAC laptops and never have a problem accessing our network..so why can't my MAC PRO? Is there a driver to install, and if so why did it not come in the box with the Card? Someone please help me out before i take this thing back and get a PC. I am on the verge. Thanks.
MAC PRO Mac OS X (10.4.7) Self Installed Aiport Card

Let's double-check your AirPort settings:
To setup AirPort for High-Speed Cable Internet connectivity:
System Preferences > Network > Show > Network Port Configurations
- Verify that an AirPort option exists. If it does not, click "New" to create one. (Note: If you are unable to create an AirPort configuration, the AirPort card in your computer either doesn't exist or it is not recognized.)
- Verify that AirPort is "On" (checked)
- Verify that AirPort is at the top of the list. If it isn't, you can drag it to the top.
Systems Preferences > Network > Show > AirPort
AirPort tab
- By default, join: Automatic
TCP/IP tab
- Configure IPv4: Using DHCP
- Configure IPv6: Automatically or Off
Proxies tab
- Configure Proxies: Manually
- Select a proxy server to configure: <All proxies should be unchecked unless you specifically require a proxy for Internet access.>
- Exclude simple hostnames (unchecked)
- Bypass proxy settings for these Hosts & Domains: <leave blank>
- Use Passive FTP Mode (PASV) (checked)

My Airport is not finding my external HDDs any more

Hello,
I just moved into a new place and I didn't plug my external HDD into my Airport since then. But yesterday i wanted to do so and then it didn't recognize the hard drive any more. It was not showing up in the hard drive section of the Airport configuration utility. The strange thing is that the external hard drive gets recognized on my MacBook Pro. I also can't hear any noise (spinning up) from the HDD when I plug it into my Airport Extreme.
The only difference since I last used my external hard drive with my Airport before moving into my new place was that there was a firmware update in the meantime. Not I have the latest verion (7.5.2)
Could this have anything to do with it?

Plug the drive into your computer
Open Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
Click on your drive on the left side of the window and then click Repair Disk at the lower right hand corner of the main window
It may take 30-45 minutes for this to complete. Then try the drive again at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme. Be sure to power everything off when you do this and restart things one at a time.
If that does not help, your last resort is to plug the drive into your computer again and open Disk Utility again. This time click Repair Disk Permissions. Then try again.
Are you trying to use Time Machine with the drive attached to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme?
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

Help! Time Capsule set up help: Airport Utility not cooperating

Hi Everyone,
I'm desperate for help with this issue. I have a Time Capsule, Base Station and Airport Express (all previous generation)at different points throughout the house. At first the issue was with the base station that refused to find my network so I called the helpdesk and got it fixed and all was well until the next day when the Time Capsule and Airport Express began to malfunction.
While everything connected to the network fine, our iphones couldn't find the network while downstairs. I tried to fix the issue but then I realized that while the base station wireless mode said 'extend network' the time capsule and airport express wireless mode said 'join network.'
I believed I overdid it on hitting the time capsule's reset button for a soft reset one too many times and now the slow flicker amber light will not steady itself or move to green and the computer is unable to successfully attach itself to our network. I've tried to restore the factory default settings but this only results in an error message 'there was an error trying to detect apple wireless devices, make sure network connection is valid and try again.'
All computers and phones have been updated with current firmwares etc. At this point, I'm stressed because I rely heavily on the internet for school and research and I don't know what else to do. Should I do a hard reset or just contact apple support?
Thanks,
Michelle

Trinifoto wrote:
I have a Time Capsule, Base Station and Airport Express
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
Please identify the "Base Station". Do you mean an AirPort Extreme Base Station? Are all those 802.11n-capable devices?
the base station wireless mode said 'extend network' the time capsule and airport express wireless mode said 'join network.'
That suggests to me that none of those devices is your "primary" router. If that's the case, what is the brand and model of the device that's connected to your Internet feed or Internet modem?
I believed I overdid it on hitting the time capsule's reset button for a soft reset one too many times and now the slow flicker amber light will not steady itself or move to green and the computer is unable to successfully attach itself to our network.
What does AirPort Utility say about the status of the Time Capsule? (If you have trouble connecting to the Time Capsule with AirPort Utility, try plugging an Ethernet cable from a LAN port of the Time Capsule to the Ethernet port of your MacBook Pro.)
I've tried to restore the factory default settings but this only results in an error message 'there was an error trying to detect apple wireless devices, make sure network connection is valid and try again.'
Did you do that reset by holding in the reset button until the status light flashed rapidly several times? Normally after a reset, you have to select the network for that device (usually named in the form "Apple Network xxxxxx") for AirPort Utility to "see" it. That's why an Ethernet cable can be useful.

Help! Time Capsule Setup Help: Airport Utility Not Finding Wireless Device

Hi folks, I'm hoping some of you more experience Mac techies can help me out. I just bought a (refurbished previous generation) Time Capsule, and I'm trying to set it up for the first time. I don't really have a complicated network configuration-- I'm just going to plug my cable modem into the Time Capsule and use it as the wireless router. The problem is, my Mac's Airport Utility isn't recognizing the Time Capsule after I plug the cable modem into it. The Airport Utility on my MacBook Pro is the latest version (5.5.2) or at least recent enough that it should be compatible with the Time Capsule. Since I can't get the Airport Utility to discover the Time Capsule, I don't know if it's the laptop or the Time Capsule.
Prior to trying to set up the Time Capsule, I was using a very old generation Airport Base Station. I decided to replace it with the Time Capsule because I wasn't getting the connection speeds I wanted, and the old Airport Base Station only offered WEP security. When I tried to configure the old Airport using the Airport Utility, I couldn't get my laptop to discover the router as well. But I just figured it was a problem with the old Airport.
As far as I can tell, the Airport card in my laptop can find wireless network connections just fine. It can see my old Airport Base Station as well as all the other routers in my range. It just can't use the Airport Utility to configure the Airport routers themselves.
I'm a little bit befuddled because it seems like setup should be a no-brainer. Either I've completely overlooked something really simple or something else is really wrong. I've set up a case to get help from Apple techs, but I'd appreciate any insight if anyone has some solutions to share.
Thanks!
Bryan

Welcome to the discussions, Bryan!
I suggest that you "hard reset" the Time Capsule (TC) by holding in the reset button on the TC until until you see the amber light begin to flash more quickly and keep holding another 4-5 seconds when this occurs before you release the reset button.
Give the TC about 30 seconds to stabilize. If you are using wireless to configure the TC, open AirPort Utility and see if it now appears. If not, click the fan shaped Airport icon at the top of your Mac's screen and look for for a wireless network with a name like Apple Network xxxxxx to join. That's the default network that the TC broadcasts so that you can configure it using wireless. Try AirPort Utility again.
If you have a spare ethernet cable handy, temporarily connect it from your Mac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the TC and open AirPort Utility. Once you have the TC configured, you can disconnect the temporary ethernet cable.
See if one of the methods above will get you going. Post back if you need more assistance.

Airport Extreme n: error with USB HDD; Update 5.1 crashes

Ok, seems to be a few bugs for me:
I have no Macs as yet, so operating with an old IBM T30 WinXP laptop until WWDC in June when (hopefully) Steve will announce a new MBP
1) Cannot connect to my 300Gb Maxstor external HDD, keep getting the 'disk needs repair' error with the Airport Utility. It's previously formatted to NTFS, cannot format to FAT32 as the volume is too big according to Windows....
2) I can't update the Utility to 5.1 so can't update the Firmware either. Have tried unsuccessfully to update to 5.1 but when I do, it just crashes when I try to run it so I'm stuck with v5.0 for the meantime.
Any ideas or peeps getting the same from their Windows machines ?
Most important for me is to see the external HD, it's got all my media on it.
Cheers in advance

Hi!
I've found a good tutorial that can help you format harddrives to FAT32, for volumes under 2TB. You have to download a small application called fat32format.exe, and execute it in a command prompt in Win XP. But take a look at the tutorial:
http://www.crapcontrol.com/content.php?article.14
-Martin
PC Windows XP

My MacBook pro airport is not picking up IP address, how do I fix this?

All this started after an automated update by the computer. Anyone else with this problem?

As this article says, your device must be turned on, locked, connected to a power source, and WiFi.
iCloud: iCloud Backup

Airport Extreme + USB HDD = Time Capsule?

Hi!
(Sorry for my poor English, I hope it's possible to understand my problem/question).
I bought a MacBook in January 09. It's connected to the Internet via WLAN and a Fritz.Box (Wireless Router with built-in DSL Modem, unfortunately it uses the old slow LAN and WLAN protocol and a USB1-Port).
I want to backup my files with Time Machine via WLAN. I tried to connect a USB-Drive to my Fritz.Box but it was terribly slow (USB1...)
It's important, that the backups go automatically when I'm at home and connected to my WLAN.
Now I think of buying something that's more useful. I have three ideas and I'm not sure what to do...
1) Buying the Time Capsule. Pro: I think, it will work perfectly. I don't need to worry about a thing. Contra: It's terribly expensive. In Germany 1TB will cost about 600$. (Maybe I should buy the 500GB-Version and update it by myself to 1GB or 2GB).
2) Buying the Airport Extreme. Unfortunately I'm not sure if a Airport Extreme + USB-HDD is the same as the Time Capsule. Apple writes: "Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be used to back up to many kinds of Mac OS Extended-formatted drives, but you cannot choose AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk as a Time Machine backup volume. " On the other hand some Users wrote that they managed to get their TM-Backup on a AE-HDD (but did this work via WLAN?). With the Airport Extreme it would be easy to manage a itunes-stream-server (the Airport Express is not too expensive). And the Airport Extreme isn't too expensive as well.
3) Using a Network-HDD. It would be not too good, since I had to use my slow WLAN-Connection and since this wouldn't be supported by Apple at all. On the other hand this would be the least expensive version.
What should I do? Is it possible to work with the Airport Extreme and an external USB-HDD via WLAN and without any problems (like mounting the drive manually each time I connect to my Network).
It would be much more fun, if everything ran automatically, when I got in reach of my Network...
Thanks in advance! Gerrit

A couple of pointers.
The hard drive must be specifically formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to work with the AirPort Extreme's USB port. Check the documentation that came with the drive to find out how it is formatted at the present time.....it is likely formatted to work with Windows, which is not compatible with the AirPort Extreme.
Unfortunately, even if the drive is formatted correctly, Apple does not officially support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme, so that will be the next hurdle to deal with.
Some users actually do seem to be able to make this work, but overall, it is not a reliable method to backup your data if it is important to you.

Optical drive trashed and MB Pro will not boot from USB image

Hello,
New here but I have searched and tried all I know to get this MBP working right again. My disk drive is trashed and has been for some time now, this is why I have a bootable version of Snow Leopard on an 8G flash drive. When my MBP began acting funny recently and I went to disk utility to verify permissions and the disk. Both failed = must boot from disk to repair, thus my issue. For some reason by MBP will not boot from the usb image I have used previously??? Pressing C or Option during startup does not work. If I press Option, I only get the harddrive option, C yields nothing and the computer boots normally.
Please!! let me know how / what you would do to resolve this. I don't understand why I have previously been able to boot from this same file on the same drive previously to repair my disk / permissions but cannot do so now. FWIW, I tried placing the file (OSX) on my external HDD to boot from, this did not work either (USB HDD).
Thank you in advance for your input!!

It isn't clear what you mean about your HD being trashed or which disk (HD or USB drive) you are trying to repair, but either way you need to start up from your Snow Leopard installer DVD & instead of installing anything go to the Utilities menu & run Disk Utility from there to repair either or both of the disks.

HELP! Airport is not picking up USB HDD

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