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External disk on AE as extender?

dwman

dwman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 15, 2007
361
185
San Francisco
So I just recently purchased a second Airport Extreme as an extender to my current one which is located in my basement. I have an external disk plugged into the main AE, but want to plug in another disk into the AE that's extending my network so my wife can back her MBP wirelessly with Time Machine.
The issue is that the second AE is not even showing up in Finder and it's not recognizing the external drive that's plugged into it. I can see my main AE router and hard disk just fine in Finder.

So can the second AE be used to to backup my wife's mac with another external disk or does that feature only work with the main AE?
 
dwman said:
So can the second AE be used to to backup my wife's mac with another external disk or does that feature only work with the main AE?
Click to expand...

Yes. You should be able to connect it to the second AirPort Extreme. Verify that the drive works properly when connected to the main AirPort Extreme. It may be in your best interest to plug it into the main Extreme and use a powered USB hub.
 
Altemose said:
Yes. You should be able to connect it to the second AirPort Extreme. Verify that the drive works properly when connected to the main AirPort Extreme. It may be in your best interest to plug it into the main Extreme and use a powered USB hub.
Click to expand...

This is my fear. The drive plugged into the main AE is powered, my wife's is not. Hard to believe the AE would not have enough power to support a USB hard drive.
 
Altemose said:
Personally, I would get a powered USB hub and plug both drives into there.
Click to expand...
I just tested it out on my main AE and it didn't work so the problem was clearly the fact that it's not powered. Definetly getting a powered USB hub now. Thanks.
 
dwman said:
I just tested it out on my main AE and it didn't work so the problem was clearly the fact that it's not powered. Definetly getting a powered USB hub now. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Verify that the drive is indeed working when connected to a computer directly as well as the fact that it does not have a supplemental power port.
 
dwman said:
I just tested it out on my main AE and it didn't work so the problem was clearly the fact that it's not powered. Definetly getting a powered USB hub now. Thanks.
Click to expand...
I simply use a 3.5" drive. That needs external power supply anyway and doesn't care about powered USB. Size and performance per $ also exceeds those of 2.5" drives.
My AE+drive combo is indeed connected to UPS as well.
 
May be a problem with my AE then. I purchased a powered USB supply, hooked it up to my AE "extender" and still nothing. Doesn't even recognize it in Finder. The drive works fine when plugged in to the computer and is recognized. But when I plug it in to the AE, nada....light comes on but the second AE is not even recognized in Finder. *sigh* may need to take a trip to the Apple store. I just don't believe it's this hard to do something so easy, unless I'm really doing something wrong.
 
Didn't realize a different format was potentially needed connecting directly to a Mac vs AE. It's a Passpport for Mac, so I think it came pre-formatted. Always worked fine when backing up directly from her Mac so I think that could be the issue. Will check when I get home tonight. Thanks.
 
So I think I think I figured out the problem which is the disk was encrypted. I turned off the encryption, but I guess the disk is still formatted as such. Do I have to reformat the drive without encryption in order for it to be recognized on the AE?
 
dwman said:
Do I have to reformat the drive without encryption in order for it to be recognized on the AE?
Click to expand...
I would. And while at that, I would also re-partition it. On a Mac computer.
Single GUID partition + HFS+ Journaled filesystem.
That also will make sure all OEM software, that drive manufacturer "forgot" on the drive, gets cleaned out.
 
dwman said:
So I think I think I figured out the problem which is the disk was encrypted. I turned off the encryption, but I guess the disk is still formatted as such. Do I have to reformat the drive without encryption in order for it to be recognized on the AE?
Click to expand...
Yes.
 
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