Airport Extreme Base Station

I've just purchased a used older style base station with a USB port that I wish to connect to an external hard disk. When the disk is attached, my macbook does not recognise / see / find the hard disk.

The airport utility only refers to sharing a printer via the USB with the disk option under the settings drop down list being greyed out.

Have I purchased a unit that does not support sharing of the a an external disk or do I need to make some configuration changes to base station?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

I suspect that your airport base station is indeed too old.

Just out of curiousity, why are you posting this here, rather than in the hardware section where it belongs?