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Airport Extreme attached disk format

Epoch KW

Epoch KW

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 2, 2011
50
34
Hi, well after a bit of searching and reading, i'm forced to check my understanding with another file format post (sorry)

I've two old Windows (XP home) machines at home plus a Lion MBP.

I've just picked up an Iomega Mini Max 2TB drive (it comes formatted HSF+ according to the instructions).
I'm planning to attached the HDD to my Airport Extreme and then move 60gb of pictures from the desktop XP machine as it's hard drive is getting full (I'll back this all up to a portable HDD before removing from the PC obviously so i have a duplicate copy).

The premise is then currently i'll only be accessing the drive through the network with the Windows laptop, desktop and MBP

The plan is to replace the desktop XP machine with an iMac in the future.

Should i reformat the drive for FAT32 so it will work with all machines now and in the future or does accessing through the Airport extreme enable me to do something more clever?

(I back up my MBP to a another portable HDD and will not change this procedure until the iMac arrives probably adding a Time Capsule to the network at that point.)

Thanks
 
Epoch KW said:
Hi, well after a bit of searching and reading, i'm forced to check my understanding with another file format post (sorry)

I've two old Windows (XP home) machines at home plus a Lion MBP.

I've just picked up an Iomega Mini Max 2TB drive (it comes formatted HSF+ according to the instructions).
I'm planning to attached the HDD to my Airport Extreme and then move 60gb of pictures from the desktop XP machine as it's hard drive is getting full (I'll back this all up to a portable HDD before removing from the PC obviously so i have a duplicate copy).

The premise is then currently i'll only be accessing the drive through the network with the Windows laptop, desktop and MBP

The plan is to replace the desktop XP machine with an iMac in the future.

Should i reformat the drive for FAT32 so it will work with all machines now and in the future or does accessing through the Airport extreme enable me to do something more clever?

(I back up my MBP to a another portable HDD and will not change this procedure until the iMac arrives probably adding a Time Capsule to the network at that point.)

Thanks
Click to expand...

Your problem is a non-problem :) If you connect it to your AEBS you will be able to read from and write to it with your Windows computers, despite the file system being what it is.
 
hafr said:
Your problem is a non-problem :) If you connect it to your AEBS you will be able to read from and write to it with your Windows computers, despite the file system being what it is.
Click to expand...


This is true, but it's too bad Macs can't seem to see or use it in my case.
 
Many thanks for the replies, first of all then I'll try plugging it in and testing it as it is (in HFS+). I'm away for a few days but will report back when I get to try it :)
 
NitroZip said:
This is true, but it's too bad Macs can't seem to see or use it in my case.
Click to expand...
It works fine for me. Have you tried all the usual things, like rebooting, reformatting the drive, reseting SMC and so on?

Sorry I can't be of any more "specific" help. I just formatted my drive in HFS+ via Disk Utility, connected it to the AEBS, activated file sharing and hey presto - it worked, and it has worked ever since.
 
hafr said:
It works fine for me. Have you tried all the usual things, like rebooting, reformatting the drive, reseting SMC and so on?

Sorry I can't be of any more "specific" help. I just formatted my drive in HFS+ via Disk Utility, connected it to the AEBS, activated file sharing and hey presto - it worked, and it has worked ever since.
Click to expand...

Yes, tried all of that, Windows Vista can see it, read/write to it, but the Macbook Pro doesn't even see it unless it is hooked up directly to it.
 
NitroZip said:
Yes, tried all of that, Windows Vista can see it, read/write to it, but the Macbook Pro doesn't even see it unless it is hooked up directly to it.
Click to expand...
That sucks...

Don't be offended, I'm just asking this to make sure :) When you open a Finder window, on the left hand side you should see the name of your Airport Extreme under the title Shared. If you click on that, the drive is not there? Or don't you see the AEBS at all there?
 
hafr said:
That sucks...

Don't be offended, I'm just asking this to make sure :) When you open a Finder window, on the left hand side you should see the name of your Airport Extreme under the title Shared. If you click on that, the drive is not there? Or don't you see the AEBS at all there?
Click to expand...


The AEBS is there, when I click on it, it says connection failed.
 
Got home, plugged it in, appeared on MBP in finder, appeared on XP desktop as a mapped network drive, began copying 38gb of pictures and it's whirring away as i type

Simples

Thank you hafr

Windows machines sees the drive as FAT32
 
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