Airport Extreme & USB Drive

[Mr-Kerrse]

Right hopefully i got this right part of the forum for this, i have just changed my set up at home as my imac hardrive was getting to full !..

I now have a verbatim 1tb drive connected to my airport extreme, i have set it all up correctly & both my jailbroken ATV2's can access the drive with ease. My problem is i can not connect my (wired) imac on the same network to the verbatim drive.

In airport utility in the disk column the verbatim drive shows as being there & the airport extreme shows up in the devices in the left hand column of finder but the imac will not connect & the drive folders don't show up.

Any idea's what i can do as it was driving nuts yesterday !

Thanks in advance

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

Right hopefully i got this right part of the forum for this, i have just changed my set up at home as my imac hardrive was getting to full !..

I now have a verbatim 1tb drive connected to my airport extreme, i have set it all up correctly & both my jailbroken ATV2's can access the drive with ease. My problem is i can not connect my (wired) imac on the same network to the verbatim drive.

In airport utility in the disk column the verbatim drive shows as being there & the airport extreme shows up in the devices in the left hand column of finder but the imac will not connect & the drive folders don't show up.

Any idea's what i can do as it was driving nuts yesterday !

Thanks in advance

Not that i got any help but all sorted & all it took was the IT special, a reboot

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

It would seem that was a lucky connection, as i am back to not being able to connect via my imac, even with rebooting

Is this down to the underpowered usb ? I don't understand why both my ATV2's connect fine but my Imac doesn't, I have ordered a powered usb hub to try rectify this, plus i can then add a printer into the network as well.

Any thoughts ?

 

[skorpien]

How is your drive formatted? It may need to be HFS+ if it isn't so already.

That does seem strange that the ATVs are able to access it but your iMac isn't. That's what makes me suspect the filesystem of the drive rather than a power issue.

Also, in your Finder preferences, are Connected servers checked?

(Apologies for the basic questions, just trying to troubleshoot.)

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

How is your drive formatted? It may need to be HFS+ if it isn't so already.

That does seem strange that the ATVs are able to access it but your iMac isn't. That's what makes me suspect the filesystem of the drive rather than a power issue.

Also, in your Finder preferences, are Connected servers checked?

(Apologies for the basic questions, just trying to troubleshoot.)

I have checked finder & yes the connected servers are ticked, I am going to transfer everything off the drive back onto the mac then try start from scratch & reformat?

 

[skorpien]

That would be what I would try, but if you've already ordered the hub, you might as well just wait for it to come first. I'm not sure how much data you have on there so I'm not sure how much of a hassle moving it over will be.

Also, make sure you back it up somewhere else too. You never know if something will go wrong with the move/reformat so it's best to make sure.

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

That would be what I would try, but if you've already ordered the hub, you might as well just wait for it to come first. I'm not sure how much data you have on there so I'm not sure how much of a hassle moving it over will be.

Also, make sure you back it up somewhere else too. You never know if something will go wrong with the move/reformat so it's best to make sure.

It was a lot of movies so had to transfer them back as I had deleted them from the mac to create space everything else's on there was just back ups I'm not running the drive as time machine just manually updating it as its mainly to run as a network media drive

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

Right i have wiped the drive & reformatted using this process, it was the same way i did it before, It still wont connect

I only went as far as the first stage Mac OS Extended Journal as it is for apple product use only.

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive-for-mac-os-x/

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

I have taken a few screen shots maybe that can help solve this as i am baffled

 

[skorpien]

Very strange. What happens when you click "Connect As..." ?

Does it or has it ever asked you for a password? If so, which are you using? In your setup, it would require you to input your Extreme's password.

Another thing I would try is to open Keychain on your Mac in your Utilities folder and delete any entries associated with the Extreme. Then try retyping the passwords when prompted.

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

Very strange. What happens when you click "Connect As..." ?

Does it or has it ever asked you for a password? If so, which are you using? In your setup, it would require you to input your Extreme's password.

Another thing I would try is to open Keychain on your Mac in your Utilities folder and delete any entries associated with the Extreme. Then try retyping the passwords when prompted.

The one time it did work it asked for a password & I put it in correctly as I was able to transfer files onto it, normally it just hangs & does nothing.

I know it can't be a problem with the drive as I can connect with both Apple TV's & play films from it so it must be an issue with my Mac I think

I will try open the keychain tonight when I get home from work as now willing to try anything to get it to work !

 

[Gav2k]

Ok don't worry about drive format it doesn't matter.

Change the access password completely.

What happens if you disconnect the cable and run your iMac wireless?? I've a feeling you've a dodgy network cable

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

Ok don't worry about drive format it doesn't matter.

Change the access password completely.

What happens if you disconnect the cable and run your iMac wireless?? I've a feeling you've a dodgy network cable

Ok will try & change the password tonight & remove the network cable & try it wirelessly.

Thanks to both of you for your help, this connection issue has not helped my 2nd week of being a non smoker

 

[EmpyreanUK]

If none of the other suggestions work, I would advise that you temporarily change your settings in the Airport Utility to remove the password requirement for network access to the attached disk, save the settings, reboot the Mac and then try connecting again.

If after this you're still having problems, I would then try creating a new user account on your Mac, logging into it and trying to access the network disk that way (with the Airport Utility still set to not requiring a password for disk access).

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

If none of the other suggestions work, I would advise that you temporarily change your settings in the Airport Utility to remove the password requirement for network access to the attached disk, save the settings, reboot the Mac and then try connecting again.

If after this you're still having problems, I would then try creating a new user account on your Mac, logging into it and trying to access the network disk that way (with the Airport Utility still set to not requiring a password for disk access).

I will give that a go later, thanks

I will also try the new user option & see if that works, i hope one of these solutions work as running out of options

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

If after this you're still having problems, I would then try creating a new user account on your Mac, logging into it and trying to access the network disk that way .

Thanks
This worked first time ! created a new account the drive was there, so how do i get it to work on my normal account ?

I could transfer everything to the new account, unless hopefully you have a better idea !

 

[EmpyreanUK]

Thanks
This worked first time ! created a new account the drive was there, so how do i get it to work on my normal account ?

I could transfer everything to the new account, unless hopefully you have a better idea !

I'm glad to hear it worked! The fact that a new account can access the network drive suggests that there's something stored in your real account that is preventing access. My suspicion is that it's something inside that account's Keychain. As long as you know the passwords for 1) the admin log-in on your Airport Extreme, 2) the WiFi password and 3) the password for the disk access (or did you disable the password requirement?), I would go into the Keychain Access app (from Launchpad click the 'Other' folder to find the app) and delete any entries related to your Airport Extreme. I'll have to wait until I get home to check where exactly these items are stored in the Keychain and how they're named.

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

I'm glad to hear it worked! The fact that a new account can access the network drive suggests that there's something stored in your real account that is preventing access. My suspicion is that it's something inside that account's Keychain. As long as you know the passwords for 1) the admin log-in on your Airport Extreme, 2) the WiFi password and 3) the password for the disk access (or did you disable the password requirement?), I would go into the Keychain Access app (from Launchpad click the 'Other' folder to find the app) and delete any entries related to your Airport Extreme. I'll have to wait until I get home to check where exactly these items are stored in the Keychain and how they're named.

I did clear all the key chain passwords last night, well thought i had. The odd thing was when i logged in using the new account it didn't even ask for the drive password

Thanks for looking, i will check in later when i get home to see if i have dleted the right parts

If the worst comes to worst i will transfer everything onto the new account, shouldn't take to long as the bulk of my storage is back on the drive now.

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

I'm glad to hear it worked! The fact that a new account can access the network drive suggests that there's something stored in your real account that is preventing access. My suspicion is that it's something inside that account's Keychain. As long as you know the passwords for 1) the admin log-in on your Airport Extreme, 2) the WiFi password and 3) the password for the disk access (or did you disable the password requirement?), I would go into the Keychain Access app (from Launchpad click the 'Other' folder to find the app) and delete any entries related to your Airport Extreme. I'll have to wait until I get home to check where exactly these items are stored in the Keychain and how they're named.

Any luck ? as i can't work it out i will wait till the weekend if i haven't sorted it i am going to move everything to the new account

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

Well i decided to bite the bullet & move everything to the new account, all went perfectly now the hard drive is showing & working as it should.

Thanks for your help

 

[EmpyreanUK]

Well i decided to bite the bullet & move everything to the new account, all went perfectly now the hard drive is showing & working as it should.

Thanks for your help

Hi, sorry that I haven't gotten back to you until now, the last few days have been pretty busy and I haven't had the chance to get onto my home computer to check out the Keychain settings.

Obviously it's by-the-by now that you've moved all of your stuff over to the new user account, but I've just had a look and have seen that all Airport and Airdisk items are stored in the 'login' Keychain. This is what my suspicion was when I suggested you tried setting up a new user account, because as far as I understand things, this account would have a completely new 'login' Keychain, and you'd thus be able to have a fresh start with Airdisk settings.

However, as you've said you already tried deleting all of the Airport keychain items in your existing user account without any success, I'm not sure what I could have been, and so wouldn't have been able to help you any further anyway. Hopefully it wasn't too much ball-ache to move your stuff over to the new account, and it sounds as though everything's working now. Huzzah!