Airport cannot see external hard drive files

[ayeying]

Hey. I have an airport extreme, gigabit/wireless-n router. I thought about plugging in my 500GB external hard drive, the one where I keep all my movies/tv shows that I didn't want to store on the macbook's internal hard drive. Well, I plugged it in, the windows and mac side detected it, but it can't read any of the files originally I had on there. Its blank. The space is taken, I just can't see my older files.

Any ideas?

 

[samh004]

What is the drive formatted as ?

How have you selected in Airport Utility to connect to the drive ? There's a list of options that range from leaving it open, to using users or just using a password.

 

[McGiord]

Sadly there is a big issue with the AirDisk feature with these Airports.

Check other threads about this issue.

Other users have done this and say they solved the issue:
-downgrade the firmware
-unmount the disk, rename it and mount it again

Apple hasn't fix it yet, and this isn't new.

I mean you are able to see there is a disk connected but you aren't able to see its content.
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Mercury Comet picture

 

[samh004]

I must say I did have a similar issue one day last year, but I just kept on plugging it in and out until it showed me my files. It was tedious and I didn't downgrade, but it's still working for me.

I have hourly backups over the network to it too.

One thing I have noticed is sometimes I will click on my disk in the finder and it'll load, but nothing will be there. However if I then click on my "Macintosh HD" and command+click on the top of the finder window I can get to "my computers name" where I see "Macintosh HD", "Network" and the "airport disk" and if I click on that I can see all my files. I attribute this to a small bug in the finder, but it always loads fine after that.

 

[ayeying]

Actually, the unplugging, restarting router, then plugging it back in fixed it for me. So far, its not stable (like when i transfer stuff into it, it crashes).. guess Im going back to the old fashioned way.

 

[syount]

This works for me too! "One thing I have noticed is sometimes I will click on my disk in the finder and it'll load, but nothing will be there. However if I then click on my "Macintosh HD" and command+click on the top of the finder window I can get to "my computers name" where I see "Macintosh HD", "Network" and the "airport disk" and if I click on that I can see all my files. I attribute this to a small bug in the finder, but it always loads fine after that" If you control click at the top where it says your Hard drive's name in the finder window, then I can see my computer and the external hard drive and all its files! So thank you!

 

[McGiord]

Anyone knows about any solid solution from Apple? Now with Time Capsule this problem should be solved...
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vapir no2

 

[Stokie]

Hi

Did you resolve this problem? If so, how? I have the same problem

 

[McGiord]

Hi

Did you resolve this problem? If so, how? I have the same problem

Yes, by updating all firmware and software.
This was a very annoying problem but it has been solved to the point that you can do Time Machine backups ala TimeCapsule with your AirDisk.