Can't find harddrive with Airport Extreme

WarrenC · Mar 15, 2011

I've found a bunch of posts, albeit much older on this subject and none of the solutions are working for me. I just purchased an airport extreme and installed it as per instructions. Everything seems to be working, but I can't find my shared WD external harddrive on my Mac. The harddrive works fine when connected directly to the Mac so because of this, I'm assuming the drive is formatted ok. When I hook it up to the router, Airport Utilities finds the drive and I'm able to set up file sharing etc. However, the drive does not show up in Finder under shared devices. I checked the properties and all the boxes are checked to show everything. My Mac is wired to the router and not using the wireless function although I can't see this having anything to do with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

JohnCL · Mar 15, 2011

WarrenC said:
I've found a bunch of posts, albeit much older on this subject and none of the solutions are working for me. I just purchased an airport extreme and installed it as per instructions. Everything seems to be working, but I can't find my shared WD external harddrive on my Mac. The harddrive works fine when connected directly to the Mac so because of this, I'm assuming the drive is formatted ok. When I hook it up to the router, Airport Utilities finds the drive and I'm able to set up file sharing etc. However, the drive does not show up in Finder under shared devices. I checked the properties and all the boxes are checked to show everything. My Mac is wired to the router and not using the wireless function although I can't see this having anything to do with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

If you go to "Network" do you see your Airport Extreme in the shared devices? If so, double click and see if the drive shows up.

WarrenC · Mar 15, 2011

Nothing shows up under Network. I was doing some more research for formatting. Is it possible that the format I have, even though is readable by both PC and Mac if connected directly, is not the correct version . . .that I need to format it with my Mac. I can't remember what I did, but I did use a PC to format it originally.

WarrenC · Mar 16, 2011

Reformatted the harddrive under Mac and it now shows up in my shared devices. Go figure!

cristovao · Mar 19, 2011

Hi Warren,

I'm actually thinking of doing this myself (connecting a USB drive to an Airport Extreme and storing files and music for all computers on the network to use). Since you've sorted out this issue, I'd like to know first-hand how you like using this config. Does it work well? Are you happy with the speeds? Have you encountered any other problems?

Thanks!

WarrenC · Mar 19, 2011

I'm happy with the setup. Haven't really tested it too much, but my download speeds seem way faster. Only issue I have now is one of my PC's is locking up when I access the hard drive thru Explorer. I think it's the PC problem, because this is the same computer I had doing the same thing when I tried reading a flash drive I borrowed from my nephew.

cristovao · Mar 19, 2011

OK,
I intend on using this setup on a two-Mac network. Right now, all media sits on a 1TB drive in my PowerMac G5 bit I don't like keeping it running all the time an equally dislike having to run to the basement when I want to power up/wake the thing in order to access music or photos wirelessly from my MacBook Pro.