Airport extreme help

[watsonjm]

Right, I know this is gonna sound like a stupid question but do you have to plug an Ethernet cable into airport Extreme for it to work?

Basicly I already have wireless around my house. What I want is a device that i can connect my external HDDs to that will let me acsess them wirelessly.

I know i could do this wih a pc but that would mean leaving it on all time which I'm trying to aviod.

Will airport do this? If not can anyone suggest a device that will?

Cheers

 

[spinnerlys]

Does that mean you already have a wireless network, want to connect the AEBS to the same network, thus you can access the HDDs via the network?

The easiest way would be to use the AEBS as router and letting having its own network (maybe even eliminating the old wireless router) and then connecting the computers to the network the AEBS radiates.

 

[watsonjm]

Yeah I want the AEBS to connect to the network. My problem is where the router is connect i wouldn't be able to have my HDDs (there's 3) and it can't be moved cause of the phone line. Hence wanting to know if i can use the AEBS almost like a wireless extender with HDD connected to it.

 

[jsm4182]

An Airport Extreme can be configured to be an extension of an existing wireless network, no need for ethernet cables, it just repeats the wireless signal from the other router.

 

[watsonjm]

Is this easy to do? And once hdd are connected they will accessible over the network?

 

[bohbot16]

What you want to do is straightforward. Just set up the Airport Extreme to "Extend a wireless network", select your existing wireless network from the list of networks that the Airport Extreme can see, and type in the password for your existing wireless network.

For your hard drives - they need to be formatted as HFS (Mac) or FAT32, not NTFS.

 

[watsonjm]

damm forgot hdd formate issues. So the AEBS wont recognise NTFS hdd even if its being acsessed by a mac that can?

 

[bohbot16]

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2426

 

[watsonjm]

Damm, in that case AEBS wont solve my problem. Can you suggest another extender that will work withj NTFS HDDs?

Thanks