External HD not showing up on AirPort Extreme

I know this has been covered but my situation is a little different from the thread I have read. I have a western digital passport 1tb drive. There is no power supply. I have this connected into an Airport Extreme. When I first set this up the drive showed up correctly and I was successfully using the drive for the time machine drive. About 2 weeks ago time machine failed to backup. At the time I didn't notice. I was checking my backup today and realized it had not backed up for 2 weeks. I ran the disk utility and the drive was not listed. I then plugged the drive directly into my mac mini and the drive was immediately recognized. So.... why would a drive be recognized when it is plugged directly into the mac but not through the airport extreme router. remember that at one time it was recognized.

much thanks for the help
john

This seems like a power issue to me. I've seen numerous reports from folks using drives that are entirely powered from the USB hub behave very erratically. Typically the drive is recognized on some occasions and not others. I suspect that the USB port may not be providing enough power. This also happens with some laptops.

No guarantee this will work but here's something to try. Get a USB hub that has an external power supply and plug the drive into that. Plug the hub into the Airport Extreme and see if things power up correctly.

Personal rant here FWIW: Even if the powered USB hub works I would be looking for a different backup arrangement. Using Time Machine and a drive connected to the Airport is fine. Just get a drive with its own power supply.

I plugged a powered hub into the AE and plugged the external hd into it. The disk was still not recognized. I also inserted a thumb drive and that wasn't showing either. I then plugged the hub directly in the mac mini and the hd and thumb drive were immediately displayed. ****! seems like I won't be able to backup through the AE. I was using it to backup the mini and a macbook. I obviously can have the hd directly connected to the mini but that leaves me without a backup for the macbook.

oh, one more strange thing, I notice that when I do plug something into the AE and then view the partitions in the AE utility the drive is shown. it just isn't recognized/shown by the mac mini.

thanks for the reply

john

Seems like things should be showing if you are seeing the drive in the utility. When you are in that section of the Airport Utility do you have disk sharing turned on/enabled? If not try enabling that to see if the drive appears.

I have my Time Machine Backups stored on a Time Capsule and it works well. There are two things that I have set up differently:
1. The drive has its own power supply so it is not relying on the USB port for power. In fact that particular enclosure has two drives installed so I can access some files over the network.
2. The drive enclosure is plugged into a USB hub which has its own power supply.