Help with Airport Extreme and USB HD

[kidzdoc]

Not even sure where to begin. I guess I'm so frustrated with this whole setup.

I went out and purchased a Airport Extreme 802.11n and a G-Tech 250GB USB 2.0 hard drive with the hope of creating a shared network drive for myself (MBP 15") and my wife Dell laptop (Win XP). I can get the AE setup for both of us to the internet without any problems. The issue is with the USB HD. Supposedly, I should just be able to connect the HD to the AE and have my MBP see it and mount it. A USB HD icon does not show up on my desktop, even when I run Airport Disk Utility. I was on the phone with the Apple Level 1 tech without success. He suggested I contact the Level 2 guys in the AM (thanks ). When I connect the HD directly to my computer, it mounts without any problems. Anybody have any thoughts of what I'm doing wrong? I can only imagine trying to set this for my wife's Windows PC later. Ugh!

Michael

 

[kolax]

I'll talk you through how to set it up on your Mac - I haven't tried on a PC yet.

Plug the USB hard drive (assuming it's formatted in FAT32) into your Airport Extreme. Then load up the Airport Utility. When it finds your AE station, press CMD + L to load up the configuration file.

Click on the Disks icon, and you should see something like the below:

Click on the File Sharing tab and you should see something like the below:

You will need to specify a password to access the disk (can make it the same as your AE connection one so anyone can access it etc..). You can also allow Guest access (let them read files, or only write files, or read and write files).


Now run the Airport Disk Utility

Check the box that says "Show Airport Disks in the menu bar" - this allows you to easily connect to disks found on your network, without having to go through Utilities etc.


What it should look like below:

That's pretty much how I got mine setup - took a matter of minutes. Not too sure how exactly to get it working on a PC though.

 

[kidzdoc]

Thanks, Kila. I did that it seemed to work. But, should there be a USB disk icon on my desktop when I'm connected? I can see the HD in my Sidebar, but not on the desktop.

 

[kolax]

There should be an icon on your desktop - not a USB one but a network style icon with your disk name, and you browse that as if it was the USB icon folder for your hard drive.

Not sure why it won't appear though...?

 

[aristobrat]

Supposedly, I should just be able to connect the HD to the AE and have my MBP see it and mount it. A USB HD icon does not show up on my desktop, even when I run Airport Disk Utility.

When you run the AirPort Disk Utility, does it see anything (like in Kila's example)?

 

[jeremy.king]

Thanks, Kila. I did that it seemed to work. But, should there be a USB disk icon on my desktop when I'm connected? I can see the HD in my Sidebar, but not on the desktop.

Whats the volume name? Keep in mind, if it starts with a '.' it won't show up on the Desktop.

 

[kidzdoc]

Figured it out

Thanks for all your help guys. The answer was REALLY stupid why I couldn't see the network drive icon. In Finder->Preferences is an option to display network drive icons. I clicked the box and "Voila".

Now time to transfer all my data to the new network drive.

Michael