# Connecting external hard drive to Airport extreme



## fccabs

I've treated myself to an airport extreme system and i've managed to set up the wireless network function. However i can't get it to work with my external hard drive. I've plugged it in via a usb hub and when i manually configure the airport extreme base station the hard drive shows in the list of drives but it says that there are no users listed for it and i can;'t work out how i configure the basestation/drive to access it. Can anyone help please???


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## Serge_N_Gin

Hi ffcabs,

I'm guessing here as I don't have direct external HD experience. Is your ext drive mounted on your Macs desktop when you try pair the Airport Extreme with the ext hd?

Have you tried accessing the ext drive from your Mac first, then testing out the Airport Extreme to see if it finds the ext drive?

Hope this helps ....


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## fccabs

H ilovedonna.

When the drive is connected directly to the mac it shows up on my desktop and the aiport extreme doesn't see it. . When i connect the drive to the airport extreme it does see it but it says that there are no users for it and it doesnt mount it on my desktop.


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## fccabs

Just made some progress as by setting up a user account i can now mount the drive via th airport extreme. Unfortunately it seems unable to see anything on the drive which s a drawback as i have my itunes collection on there but its a start.


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## VegasACF

Have you tried removing the hub from the chain (connecting the drive directly to the BaseStation) to see what happens?


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## fccabs

I did try that yesterday but i haven't tried it since i finally got the drive to appear this morning. Also when the dirve appears it appears as a network connection (grey round icon) on my mac rather then a hard drive.(square orange icon) Does anyone know if this is correct???

Also does anyone know if i need to activate the sharing options on my mac to get this to work???


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## Serge_N_Gin

I'm sorry but I'm not sure about whether your ext HD is a Network Connection or a peripheral....having said that it couldn't hurt to activate the sharing option.


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## Pensacola Tiger

fccabs said:


> I did try that yesterday but i haven't tried it since i finally got the drive to appear this morning. Also when the dirve appears it appears as a network connection (grey round icon) on my mac rather then a hard drive.(square orange icon) Does anyone know if this is correct???
> 
> Also does anyone know if i need to activate the sharing options on my mac to get this to work???


Pardon me if I ask if you have followed the directions in the manual:

*Sharing and Securing USB Hard Disks on Your AirPort Extreme
Base Station*

If you connect a USB hard disk to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, computers connected to the network, both wireless and wired, can use it to back up, store, and share files.

To share a USB hard disk on you network:

1 Plug the hard disk into the USB port on the back of the base station.

2 Open AirPort Utility, located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder on a Mac, and in Start > All Programs > AirPort on a computer using Windows

3 Select your base station, and then choose Manual Setup from the Base Station menu, or double-click the base station to open its configuration in a separate window. Enter the base station password if necessary.

4 Click Disks in the toolbar, and then click File Sharing.

5 Choose With a disk password, or With base station password if you want to secure the shared disk with a password, or choose With accounts if you want to secure the disk using accounts.

If you choose to use accounts, click Configure Accounts, click the Add (+) button, and then enter a name and password for each user that will access the disk.

6 Choose Not allowed, Read only, or Read and write to assign guest access to the disk.

7 Select the Share disks over Ethernet WAN port checkbox if you want to provide remote access to the disk over the WAN port.


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## fccabs

No problem Pensacola tiger

I've followed the instructions and when i go into the manual set up of the base station it sees the hard drive and says that there is 70g worth of info on it. I've set up an account and the drive is now mounted on my desk top via the airport extreme. However when i access the drive all i get is a blank finder window and none of my folders show up. 
Now the drive is Fat32 formatted and after a bit of research last night i found that the drives for windows needs to be formatted Fat32 but for macs it needs to be formatted another way (i can't remeber what it said now). So im hoping its just that the drive is incorrectly formatted.


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## fccabs

Well i finally got it to work last night at 1.30am. I set up a new folder in the blank finder window and then reconnected the HD direct to the mac. I found the new folder on the HD drive in a folder called shared, so i dragged some more items into the shared folder and reconnected to the airport extreme and the new items appeared on the drive. 

Thanks for everyones help/suggestions on this


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## fccabs

I've gt a new problem on this in that sincce i updated the airport extreme firmware to 7.1, everytime i disconect and power down my external hard drive it doesn't autmatically reconect when i repower it up. have to go in an fiddle abut with the settings in order to get it to work. So my question is, is it ok to leave my external hardrive on permanently even if im not using it or am i wearing it out just by having it switched on???


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## Pensacola Tiger

fccabs said:


> I've gt a new problem on this in that sincce i updated the airport extreme firmware to 7.1, everytime i disconect and power down my external hard drive it doesn't autmatically reconect when i repower it up. have to go in an fiddle abut with the settings in order to get it to work. So my question is, is it ok to leave my external hardrive on permanently even if im not using it or am i wearing it out just by having it switched on???


As long as the external case has adequate cooling, there's no reason not to leave it on 24/7. Do get a UPS and plug the AirPort and external drive into it to insulate them from any power glitches.


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## fccabs

Cheers Pensacola Tiger.

When you say UPS do you mean a surge protector and when you say adequate cooling do you mean a built in fan or just in a cool room???


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## VegasACF

fccabs said:


> Cheers Pensacola Tiger.
> 
> When you say UPS do you mean a surge protector and when you say adequate cooling do you mean a built in fan or just in a cool room???


UPS = _U_ninterruptable _P_ower _S_upply - usually a surge protector combined with a battery backup system that will keep the equipment running for a short time in case of power outages. With luck the power will come back on (often with quite a spike in power, hence the surge protection/suppression) before the battery runs out, or you can get to the equipment and properly shut it down before the battery runs out.

Adequate cooling means whatever it takes not to cause the gear to overheat. In most cases, this means whatever the gear shipped with, however there have been instances of inadequate cooling through poor design. Also, if you have a stack of gear in a reasonably closed space the heat from one unit may interfere with the cooling of its neighbor(s). Most devices adequately dissipate heat from their own mechanism(s), but can be ill-equipped to dissipate the heat added by other pieces of equipment.


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## z1ross

YES it's ok to leave your USB HD powered on all the time. That is how the unit is designed to work. Apple volumes connect easy enough but they don't like being disconnected improperly. 

I Just got the new Airport Extreme (with the 10/100/1000 ports) and Love it (except for the heat). The Airport disk is Awsome! 

The USB drive I have connected to the unit runs really warm when it's running. I was worried about the Drive running all the time but I decided to leave my unit on and I plane on getting a cooler running USB case for the drive down the road. But the Next morning, I got up and when I checked the HD it was room temp maybe even a little cooler & I noticed the drive wasn't spinning any more. My First thought was "SH!+" drives gone bad, but hmmmm Maybe!?!..... So before I did anything, I checked my computer and clicked into the drive & YEA the usb drive started spinning right up!! 

So I know the newest ABS does put the USB drives to sleep when they are not being accessed. Some day I'll get around to timing the ABS to see what that amount of time is. Maybe Apple will just add the setting to the Airport software so you can tell it 5mins or up to 60 mins of in activity before sleeping, But that would make to much sense....lol 

Hope that helps!

Now What I want to know:
...How to hack the unit to run usb drives as a raid 1 array!!!!


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## jclay5

I have a 320 GB Lacie USB Hard Drive that I connected to my airport extreme with no problems at all. Everytime I turn on my computer the Lacie hard drive icon pops right up on my desktop as long as I'm connected to my base station. Now today all of a sudden when I turn my computer on its asking for my password to connect to my wireless disk (which it didn't used to do) so I think ok type in my password, that is the same password I use for my network. and it says "Unknown user, incorrect password, or login is disabled." I have not changed any settings on my comp and I have gone through and reconfigured the disk on the base station just like I did the first time I ever set it up and I am still getting the same error message. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?


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## z1ross

Hello, This behavior has been documented on my Apple post:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1106671

Log into your AirportExtreme (AE) unit > Go to the disk section > Click the "Disconnect All Users" Button > Then Restart the AE with the restart option from the menu, don't power cycle it. That should restore use of your air port disk.

There are several actions that can cause this behavior. One of them is a small power outage. you should put the AE unit and the USB drive on a UPS. Read through the Apple post and post that your also having issues and Call Apple and file a support case with them.


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## czarjosh

Can this be done with an airport express?


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## dannyn

sorry.. i didnt read the whole post it was very long.. i have the same airport... and one thing have to say it that the hdd has to be plugged in and turned on before the airport can be turned on.


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## heathjames

Hiya. I realise this thread is quite old now ... but ... I have an old style 'dome' Airport Extreme BS .. when I attach a USB HD to it, nothing seems to be recognised (although a printer is recognised) ... is there ANY way of convincing the AEBS that it can use and share the HD?

Thanks!!


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## dannyn

Yes, 
Start your own thread though


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