airport base extreme and hard drive

[dolemite45]

Hi everyone, sorry if this has been posted.

I bought a new HDD (1 TB seagate) because I want to hook it up to my airport so that I can start a movies collection. I want to be able to access it from my macbook pro ( via wireless) and from my windows desktop (via wired). But I have a lot of movies in 720p and its larger than 4gb. I understand that the airport can only recognize FAT32 drives but FAT32 cant have files larger than 4gb.

Is there a format for my 1tb seagate that I can use that can be read by my airport so that it can store files larger than 4gb and I can access it through my desktop PC and macbook pro.


Thanks in advance.

 

[alust2013]

I'd venture a guess that exfat should work, and it has a very large size limitation

 

[dolemite45]

@ alust, alright cool. Thanks for your advice. I'll try it and report back

 

[eatbacon]

Why wouldn't you use HFS+? The airport extreme will share an HFS+ drive with windows via SMB, but AFAIK, it will not share a FAT32 drive with AFP.

 

[dolemite45]

Why wouldn't you use HFS+? The airport extreme will share an HFS+ drive with windows via SMB, but AFAIK, it will not share a FAT32 drive with AFP.

how do I format my drive to HFS+? I all see in disk utilities are..

Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (case sen -Jorunaled)
Mac OS Extended (case sen)
MS-DOS
exFat
free space
NTFS

 

[alust2013]

how do I format my drive to HFS+? I all see in disk utilities are..

Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (case sen -Jorunaled)
Mac OS Extended (case sen)
MS-DOS
exFat
free space
NTFS

Formatting to the first option you listed will make it HFS+. The only problem with that is that windows can only read from HFS+, and will not write to it.

 

[dolemite45]

I did that. I installed Macdrive 8 but my PC cant even find the external

 

[alust2013]

I did that. I installed Macdrive 8 but my PC cant even find the external

Have you installed airport utility on your PC?

 

[dolemite45]

yep, did it the first day i bought the airport

 

[skorpien]

Okay, I'm just going to clear up a HUGE misconception. Windows cannot read HFS+ ONLY IF the drive is connected directly to the machine. AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule will share HFS+ volumes using SMB for Windows and AFP for Macs. Windows will incorrectly identify a shared drive as FAT32, but it is indeed HFS+ and can be accessed by both platforms. No need to install any third party software on either machines.

In order to see the drive in Windows, install AirPort Base Station Agent, which will have installed when you installed AirPort Utility. There will be a light blue icon on your task bar that allows you to connect to the drive using whichever securities you've set up in AirPort Utility. However, in order for any of this to work, you'll need to have enabled file sharing for the connected hard drive within AirPort Utility itself. Also, you may need to add your AirPort Extreme's IP address to the safe list of any software firewalls that may be installed.