USB Drive connected to AirPort Extreme Base

[seamuskrat]

I am having trouble with my new Airport Extreme abse station.

I want to connect a 1 gig WD My Book drive via USB and share it among the household.

I either want to put my media library for iTunes on there or use it for TimeMachine.

Problem is that when I plug it in, I cannot see the drive on the network. I had thought it would show up on the desktop. Even in network I have to find it and log in and if I reboot do the same. I was hoping for a more seamless install.

Any thoughts?

 

[gwihannom]

1GB or 1TB USB drive?
1GB to use it with Time Machine or iTunes Library is too small, so I would think you mean the 1TB USB External Hard drive?
It won't show in your desktop.
Rather, it will show up in Finder, under "SHARED"
When you log into it for the first time, make sure you set a password and have your computer remember it.
If you're running Windows XP or Vista, you have to install Airport Utility for Windows from Apple site. That will install "Airport Disks" to your Control Panel.

 

[seamuskrat]

Sorry. 1 TB. Fighting off a bad cold makes my head fuzzy.

I can get the disk mounted on the desktop as a shared drive, but timemachine does not see it.

 

[mik34]

Try hard restart of AEBS

I had similar issues when I put my USB external HDD on my Airport Extreme. I restarted both my cable modem and my extreme, then the network recognized my drive.

 

[skorpien]

I can get the disk mounted on the desktop as a shared drive, but timemachine does not see it.

Is the drive formatted HFS+ (Journaled)? That is the only way Time Machine will recognize the drive as a target backup drive. Also make sure to have the latest firmware installed on your AEBS.

BTW, don't worry about Windows compatibility. The AEBS itself will handle how Windows computers access the drive. It uses AFP for Mac and SMB for Windows, and both will access the drive wirelessly even though the drive is HFS+

 

[cjskoog]

I am afraid I have no answer, I do however have a similar problem.

I had a working Airport_extreme-WD_Mybook set up for time machine before moving. At the old place I just plugged the router to my ISP network outlet.

Now, I have a DSL connection with a Thomson TG784 DSL-modem/Router.
I Configured the TG784 to act as Router/DHCP and let the Airport extreme work as a bridged wireless 11N connection.

With this set up, everything works except my time machine. The disk will not show in time machine prefs. It shows in finder and is accessible so I can't see the problem for time machine.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue?
Thanks in advance!