08-24-2008, 08:34 PM

I bought a 4 port USB hub in order to hook up 2 external drives as well as a HP wireless printer. I just plugged the hub into the usb port on the back of the Airport Extreme, then rebooted it. (it had been unplugged) Waited for the green light, then flipped the switch on an external drive which is plugged into the hub etc..

Nothing happened though. Is it not plug and play ? Do I need something else, like a driver or something ? I'm really looking forward to hooking them up because I just installed Aperture 2, and am going to use the other external drive as my iTunes music server.

Doug

08-24-2008, 10:10 PM

Is the hub powered? As in, does it have an AC adapter of its own? If not, that could be the problem.

08-24-2008, 10:24 PM

Crud. You could be right about that. I thought that the external HD being powered would be enough. Though, in the manual of the hub (this tiny thing I got from home depot) it says it might be necessary to get the associated power adapter. I plugged it into my front usb port of my pc and it worked fine though, so I assumed it was bunk.

Going to try hooking it up directly, without the hub and see what happens.

doug

08-24-2008, 10:28 PM

Hmm. Still nothing. I unplugged the usb hub, then plugged the external HD directly into the A.E.'s usb port. Man, I hope the port's not faulty.

doug

08-24-2008, 10:28 PM

I've got a powered hub and powered external hard drives. If I were to disconnect the power to the hub, my hard drives would disconnect from the computer. I figured you were having the same issue.

Hmm, perhaps try hooking up the printer. Also, what file system is the hard drive? I don't have an Airport Extreme, but perhaps there needs to be a specific format?

08-24-2008, 10:54 PM

I'm having a horrible time here. I tried plugging the external directly into the MBP thinking it was a hd issue, but it mounts and reads just fine. Plug it into the Airport Extreme, and nothing.

doug

08-24-2008, 11:04 PM

Have you tried plugging it in and then rebooting your router? What is the drive formatted as?

08-24-2008, 11:06 PM

I was thinking that perhaps there was something to be done in the Airport utility, but now for the life of me, every password I enter for it is wrong ! I recall having to reset the AP once due to an update knocking it offline, and that involved a hard reset. Now I can't remember what to do. I just want to uninstall the device from my Macbook Pro and reinstall it. I already sent the utility to the trash and reinstalled it, but that's not the proper way to do it.

Might just call customer support.

Doug

Reset the Airport, set new passwords and such. STILL no luck in hooking up the external, which by the way MS DOS FAT 32

08-26-2008, 11:08 AM

Apple store people seem to be useless. Straight up to the "genius" bar. The repeated answer I got was, " I think you can only do that with Time Machine". Um...no, that's not true I insisted, but was then told that they weren't sure. I called tech support on the phone after that, but wasn't home in order to trouble shoot. Regardless, I was at least informed that I should be able to daisy chain up to 4 devices via the USB connection in the back of the Airport Extreme. Was told to do a couple things, which I had already tried, but again, wasn't home to try again.

To those of you who are hooking up external drives via their Airport Extreme's, are any of the drives formatted to FAT 32 ? I was also told that it's possible that not all external drives will work. This leaves far too many variables and different drives to try. It also limits my options if I have to buy a straight mac formatted external.

Any suggestions on a good external that isn't necessarily Mac "certified" ?

Doug

08-26-2008, 12:05 PM

Which Airport Extreme do you have, the newer square one or the older "Spaceship" one? If it is the older one, you can't run a drive off it, but the newer one should do it.

If you plug any of the USB devices directly into the APEx do they work at all?

08-26-2008, 12:10 PM

It's the brand new flat square one. I don't even recall what the spaceship one looks like. And forgive me for asking but, what is the "APEx" ? If that is referring to plugging the drives directly into my MBP, then yes. they both work.

Both external drives are FAT 32, and the MBP will play music from them both. However, tech support seems to think that the reason it won't work is because they're both "Master Boot Record" partitions. It was suggested that I change the partition type (HFS I guess) and use GUID, referred to in This article

I'm currently moving the contents of one of the HD's to my MBP and will proceed with this action, and hope to heck it works.

Doug

08-26-2008, 12:29 PM

APEx is the abbreviation for "Airport Extreme".

Have you tried the manual method listed here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331

08-26-2008, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by baggss

APEx is the abbreviation for "Airport Extreme".

Have you tried the manual method listed here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331

Derr... I'm an idiot ! Yeah, I've only tried to plug one external HD in at a time directly into the "APEx", and this is the problem. I did have a look at the content of the page you linked. Problem was, I couldn't find the option which says: "From the main window of AirPort Disk Utility enable "Show AirPort Disks in the menu bar"." I just don't see that option.

It will be 2 more minutes before all my files from one of the drives is moved over to my MBP, so I'll just continue along that path, for now. Thanks for the link to that page again though, it's just that I don't really see that first option. Is it possible I wonder, that in a firmware update, they disabled this option ? I was told by one of the guys at the Apple store that this might be a possibility in the future (this was a month or so ago), so that they'd be able to sell more Time Capsules. That ... would suck, and I think warrant a return of the product considering there would have been no warning that they'd do this. Just speculation though, unless the option is there and I just don't see it ?

Doug

edit: Uuhch.. Why does it take so long for disk utility to erase free space ! ? 2 Hours .. My god. Furthermore, I see nothing about GUID in disk utility. I have to go to work, and won't be able to finish this now. What a silly nightmare. Why must this be so complicated ?

Ok, it wound up canceling the erase and I was able to get into the options for GUID, but now I'm getting an error when I go to partition the drive it is giving me an error stating that the drive can not be unmounted. I can't even eject the drive now because OS X says it's in use and to quit any applications. I already quit disk utility, and see nothing else that might be using it.

08-26-2008, 01:17 PM

Just unplug the drive and then plug it back in.

You should not have to actually erase the drive, just reformat/partition it.

08-26-2008, 01:34 PM

I think I've got it ! But it's not the way I thought it would work. Have to jet to work, but will post later with what I did. Well, basically I had to go into the main Mac HD, then there is the APEx in the shared column on the left, I then had to enter the password for the APEx and I was in. This was after reformatting and partitioning the drive however. So I'll try it later with the other drive which is FAT 32 to see if that makes a difference. Still a hassle though, if you asked me, but at least I know it works now. Whew !

Doug

Edit: i couldn't wait ! And... it works ! So it had NOTHING to do with formatting, GUID or anything. I'm surprised that the tech support people don't know enough to ask questions which would point to something as simple as what I did ? Really makes me wary of what I'm paying for, tech support wise. Seems more like a crap shoot if you asked me.