New Airport Extreme

fjmeat

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Jan 13, 2010
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I installed an Airport Extreme (802.11ac wifi) today. It has features to hook up a USB External HDD drive to it. However, I tried two different USB External Hard Drives, but the Airport does not reflect anything being plugged in? What's up?
 

fjmeat

Diamond Member
Jan 13, 2010
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Now that the external drive is working, I'd like to access it from outside my network. I don't think its possible though. I'd like to be able to access the contents of the external HDD plugged directly into the Airport Extreme from anywhere, using either a mac or a pc.

Doing so would let me dump my old computer currently used as file sever with remote desktop function.
 

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
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Now that the external drive is working, I'd like to access it from outside my network. I don't think its possible though. I'd like to be able to access the contents of the external HDD plugged directly into the Airport Extreme from anywhere, using either a mac or a pc.

Doing so would let me dump my old computer currently used as file sever with remote desktop function.

I've got one coming on Wednesday, but I read on the Apple site that it WAS possible to access it from the WAN, not just from the LAN. Probably a firewall setting?
 

Mixolydian

Lifer
Nov 7, 2011
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gilramirez.net
There are several ways to do it. The easy way is with iCloud, which only works on Mac IIRC. Otherwise you can get into doing some more complicated Wide-Area Bonjour setup.

Or simply take the public IP of the router and connect to the share. I believe there is a setting in AirPort utility that says "Allow access to disks over WAN" or something to that affect.
 

dawks

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I'd be interested in seeing the kinds of file transfer speeds you're getting on the external USB drive.
 

Tegeril

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Apr 2, 2003
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I'm also curious for a comparison between internal and external storage. My Time Capsule is due in on Wednesday and I have an external on hand that I may do some comparisons with.
 

RampantAndroid

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Jun 27, 2004
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I'm also curious for a comparison between internal and external storage. My Time Capsule is due in on Wednesday and I have an external on hand that I may do some comparisons with.

It's USB2, so don't expect much - you'll be limited by that if nothing else.
 
Feb 10, 2000
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Do we know whether this new AE will work with a USB-connected drive for Time Machine? I know that is not officially supported, but it's always worked fine on my 802.11n AE.
 

Tegeril

Platinum Member
Apr 2, 2003
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It's USB2, so don't expect much - you'll be limited by that if nothing else.

I know, but USB2 is not going to limit anything if it performs near theoretical maximums for anything via wireless. At least wrt general throughput as it doesn't look like AC can even push much more than 500mbit in the best circumstances.

So yes, via gigabit ethernet, it'll limit, but in general, I'm curious of the performance of the internal drive by comparison.

I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
 

RampantAndroid

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Jun 27, 2004
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For the record, sharing a hard drive from USB is *the worst* experience. Apple articles reference some airport disk utility gone from 10.7 and up...and in the end it seems you need to just use the "back to my mac" functionality. By the time I got sharing to work it was too late to try a benchmark. I've got a Samsung 840 Pro currently hooked up over the USB2 connection, so theoretically all limitations I see will be due to the USB limitations. I'll try it out tonight, if I can.