Gary, a buddy of mine bought an Airport and bought a 1Tb hard drive to connect to it. He ask me about setting up. I told just plug it in and make sure the hard drive was formatted as FAT32 and he should be able to see the hard drive on his windows PC. he can not though. Do you have any suggestions?
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Michael
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Using a airport extreme NAS in windows world
Comments: 9 Responses to “Using a airport extreme NAS in windows world”
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I'm not sure. I've never had to set up an Airport Extreme without a Mac. Usually you use the Airport Utility application, but that is a Mac application. I wonder why he got an Airport Extreme if he doesn't own a Mac.
I don't think format matters as it is a network drive, not one hooked directly to the AE. Perhaps the AE expects it to be Mac formatted? I'd have him call Apple for support on this.
Also I made sure he enabled file sharing on the extreme and the extreme can see the drive, just that he can not see it from his window PC.
How does he know that the Extreme can see the drive? I would do that in Airport Utility, but what is he using?
Yea I think in the end he will have to call Apple. Apple support says it should work in a windows environment. It's just that the Airport extreme does not support NTSF but does support FAT32. He bought it because of the NAS function, duel radio, and one day he wants to move to a Mac. (I guess I am partial to blame for that:)). I am just not that familiar with windows to know how to see network drives on a PC.
There is a Airport Utility for Windows that allows him to set up Extreme. Oh it's works. He is connected to Internet and has 2.4 and 5 Ghz enabled. Matter of fact he loves the easy setup. But in Airport Utility under "Disk" tab the Extreme sees his External drive and he has file sharing enabled just can not see drive from his Windows PC. There must be something in windows where you have to set enable "network drive" function. That's is where I am not much help, for one I am not there to see and help and two I am not the best Windows guy.
I know in Airport Utility on the Mac there is a File Sharing tab and in it are settings for Windows sharing: workgroup and "WINS server" name. He probably has to match this with how he does sharing on his Windows machine. But you're asking the wrong guy on that one :)
Oh so in the "Airport Untility", the app that sets up Extreme, are you saying in file sharing there are settings for WINS server? Really? I am not in front of my Mac now but Idid not see this! That must be it because I believe by default Apple routers, obviously, use Apple file sharing protocol that I doubt is windows friendly. Can you please tell me steps to activate this function and I will try when I get on front of computer. Thanks.
Well, just have him look in the File Sharing section of the interface and he should see it. I'm not sure what to set them to, though.
Ok cool. Thanks. I am thinking that may be it