05-03-2008, 08:00 PM

The title says it all. I can't see the external hard drive connected to the airport extreme on my windows PC. It is Windows XP. We also connect a MacBook to the AEBS and it can read and write to the external drive just fine.

Someone please spell out how to do this in some detail; still a newbie in these matters. Thanks in advance.

05-03-2008, 09:04 PM

did you try to access the drive using UNC path?

start--->RUN--> and type //nameofyourdrive/

I am not sure that would work but you can give it a try.

05-04-2008, 03:22 PM

to get this to work you need to know the ip address or the name of your AEBS and the name of your external drive

1. open My Computer [not IE]
2. click on tools---> map network drive
3. choose the drive letter
4. below type in the location like this \\[ip-address or name of your AEBS]\[name of external drive]
5. if you have your external harddrive password protected you will be asked to type it in now

it should now show up in [my computer]
hope that helps....

12-21-2009, 10:30 PM

dude lampie73 thanks a friggin bunch man jeeze.... finally a clear working answer appreciate it hugely

12-26-2009, 04:02 AM

I'm a newbie too and have the same problem.

I have a HP Laptop on Vista with AEBS and a external HD that can't get seen.

Was on the phone with Apple tried all ways to get it going, internet works fine even have a WIFI printer going fine too.

I even tried to change the HD to another brand to see if that worked.

But here's the thing I plugged in a crappy Kingston Data Traveller 1G usb stick and it worked fine.

Apple have referred it to their engineers to see if the there is anything wrong with the firmware.

Should be interesting what the outcome will be.....

01-23-2010, 06:16 AM

I Have exactly the same problem. I have been talking to Apple support but they couldnt solve the problem. To be honest I dont think it works at all. I have 3 PC´s with XP & Vista and it doesnt work to connect them. I have tried to uninstall Norton but didnt work. Any suggestions?

04-24-2010, 07:38 AM

Torker, i think your problem is your hard drive is not formatted correctly. Thumb drives work because they can be read and written to by both pc's and macs but if you connect a hard drive formatted NTFS to the Airport, it wont' read it.

I had the same problem but i reformatted my hard drive on my mac then plugged it into the Airport Extreme and it worked fine.

12-31-2010, 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by nmc

Torker, i think your problem is your hard drive is not formatted correctly. Thumb drives work because they can be read and written to by both pc's and macs but if you connect a hard drive formatted NTFS to the Airport, it wont' read it.

I had the same problem but i reformatted my hard drive on my mac then plugged it into the Airport Extreme and it worked fine.

TMC, I think I have the same problem as Torker -- when my Seagate external HDD is plugged into the Airport Extreme (model MC340LL/A) my PC cannot read the drive, but my Mac can via the wireless. When connecting the HDD to the PC directly, the PC can now read and use those files but the MAC cannot see the drive. Is this simply a format issue with the hard drive? If I reformat it using my MAC can I still use the drive as a backup for my PC? Thx

01-01-2011, 11:51 AM

Maybe I missed it earlier in the thread but do you guys have AirPort Utility 5.5.2 for Windows installed? I think I had to use that to get Windows to recognize things.

06-09-2011, 06:33 PM

hi i have asus window 7 and airport extreme with seagate external hard drive
i have airport utility 5.2.2 and i can see the seagate hard drive in disk section in airport utility, but no matter howi try i couldnt see the drive in my window, how do i connect? i tried the network map and tool type in ip and hard drive name it shows error because of the modem, but i tried unplug and plug back in still the same, i cant see drive in my window, is it because i need to reformate the external hard drive? but i can see them in airport utility, and is it possible for my apple tv2 with xbmc connect to the external hard drive too? need help pls

08-20-2011, 04:04 PM

My external drive is an iOmega HDD which was formatted as exFat which Airport Extreme doesn't support.
I therefore connected the drive to my Macbook and formatted to MS-DOS. After this, I reconnected the drive to the AEBS and I could connect to the drive from both my Windows 7 PC and my Macbook. The former by typing the ip-address in Explorer's address field (with leading slashes \\) and providing the credentials configured in the Airport Utility. On the Macbook I opened Finder and clicked on the Airport Extreme icon under Shared and selected Connect As... and then providing the credentials.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Christian

08-20-2011, 04:55 PM

If you run multiple OS's I would invest in a networking drive .

01-28-2012, 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by Slydude

Maybe I missed it earlier in the thread but do you guys have AirPort Utility 5.5.2 for Windows installed? I think I had to use that to get Windows to recognize things.

This actually worked really well and was super easy to setup once I downloaded it for the PC. Thanks Mate!