Questions about attaching a Hard Drive to Airport Extreme

[ChuckLlama]

Two questions...

Can you attach an external HD to the USB port of an airport extreme to essentially use it as network attached storage?

I have heard that you can access a home computer attached to an airport extreme over the internet. Would I be able to access the external HD as well? What about if there was no computer connected and I just wanted to access the HD?

Thanks.

 

[kgarner]

I don't think it will as I think Apple has restricted it to printers. Additionally, I don't think you would be very happy with the performance anyway. It is a USB 1.1 port so the speed will be even slower than the network can handle anyway.

You might consider one of those stand alone network drives. If there is one that works with Mac then it should work through the Airport. The speed won't be tremendous, but for storing common small files it could be adequate.

 

[Daveman Deluxe]

That USB port is only for attaching a printer to. Nothing else connected to the USB port can be accessed via the network.

Any volumes mounted on a computer on the network can be accessed via the network. Again, you cannot access standalone hard drives via the network unless they're specifically designed to be used that way.

 

[jackieonasses]

Two questions...

Can you attach an external HD to the USB port of an airport extreme to essentially use it as network attached storage?

I have heard that you can access a home computer attached to an airport extreme over the internet. Would I be able to access the external HD as well? What about if there was no computer connected and I just wanted to access the HD?

Thanks.

They do have Hard drives that attach to the Ethernet router, but i don't know if you would want to attach a usb drive to that thing, ( i think it is usb 1.1)

 

[Makosuke]

Although connecting a USB drive to the USB port on the Base Station won't work, a more traditional ethernet NAS device would, and if you shop around wouldn't be wildly more expensive.