Airport Extreme and infuriating USB-disc connection

So I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex portable (1TB) and one Seagate FeeAgent GoFlex desk (3TB). I want to use the larger disc for movies with a Mac-partition and a FAT32-partition, but when I connect it to my Airport Extreme, only the Mac-partition shows up.

I have created a FAT32-partition in exactly the same way on the smaller disc as well and that shows up fine! How can that be?

The only real difference is that the larger disc is powered and the smaller is not, but surely that can not make any difference? Anyone come across this?

I think you hit on why the 1 TB doesn't show up. It may not be getting enough USB current for it to spin up. Since the 3 TB is self powered that's not a problem.

Yeah, but unfortunately it is the other way around. It is on the powered 3TB disc that the FAT32-partition is not showing up.....

How big are the partitions you have created?

Sorry, but I read through your original post too quickly. I seem to remember reading somewhere about creating/using FAT-32 partitions on drives larger than 1 or 2 TB, that there was a problem with OS X being able to read them.

I'll try to dig around and see if I can find that article and get back to you.

Actually, why do you need a Mac and a FAT-32 partition?

I need it to watch movies on my TV that can only read FAT32. I would save down the movies on the Mac-partition, copy to FAT32 what I might want to watch on the TV, pull the disc out of the dock connected to the Airport extreme and slot it in to the dock I have connected to the TV and watch. I thought it would work out quite neatly like that....

The FAT32 partitions are just over 200GB on both disc and they both read fine when connected directly to the Mac.

For the APEx to use a drive, it has to format it to Mac, which is why you only see the Mac partition from over the network.

Before adding too many things, what are the odds that you can get an Apple TV 2 ($99) and just use AirPlay streaming to the TV?

Thanks, but you can actually (or at least in most cases....) connect an external disc to an Airport Extreme and use a FAT32-partition with it.

As regards the AppleTV, I thought you could not stream any movie saved on a hard drive, but that it would only work through iTunes. Is that not correct?

If you are moving things around, including HDs, why not keep the large one as 1 big partition and use it for the storage drive connected to the APEx, and use the smaller one as a Fat32 drive and copy the movies you want to watch onto it via the computer with the small drive hooked up to the computer for the copy? You are manually transferring and moving the hardware anyway.

I have a ton of movies and shows in my iTunes library and stream to my ATV2 all the time. Never had a problem. And my iTunes library is on a 4TB HD attached to my APEx.

rogerinlondon said:

Thanks, but you can actually (or at least in most cases....) connect an external disc to an Airport Extreme and use a FAT32-partition with it.

Click to expand...

Ah, but how many partitions? As far as I know, you can only use 1 partition with the APEx. I cannot view mine from here to verify.

As I mentioned in my first post, my Seagate Portable 1TB has two partitions with one FAT32 and they both show up fine when connected to the Airport Express.

The reason I wanted to use the 3TB is that I can easily swap it between the docking stations without having to fiddle around with cables when I connect it to the TV and the Airport Express respectively.

Anyway, thanks for the tip about the AppleTV, I might take a closer look at that possibility