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Help! Connect to Hard Drive via Airport Express, or chain Extreme & Express?

post #1 of 2
6/15/09 at 11:33pm
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I went and bought a new 17" MBP and couldn't really spend another $500 on a Time Capsule, and I wanted the Airtunes feature anyway (not on the Time Capsule or Airport Extreme for some stupid reason) so I bought an Airport Express and a $149 1TB MyBook to do wireless backups, and use Airtunes with my stereo. I think I just found out you can't use hard drives with the USB on the Airport Express, but I also already had an Airport Extreme... so I guess I need to have an Airport Express plugged into my Airport Extreme to do the wireless backups and use Airtunes? Seems redundant...

Can anyone recommend the easiest possible way to use the Airport Express and Extreme together to achieve Airtunes and Wireless backups to my hard drive? And to verify, there is no way to use my HD with the Airport Express?
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post #2 of 2
7/6/09 at 7:28am
I've been researching this issue for a while and I can confirm that it is not currently possible to connect a USB hard drive to your network via Airport Express. In order to achieve what you want with your setup, you'll need to create a WDS network using the Extreme as a base station and the Express as a remote station. Luckily, Apple tells you exactly how to do this here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2044?viewlocale=en_US

A bonus of this arrangement is that the Airport Express will act as a repeater and extend the range of your wifi network. I'm using a similar setup with an Express connected wirelessly to a Belkin wifi router and can I can use Airtunes perfectly.

I agree that it's kinda ridiculous that the Extreme doesn't support Airtunes, and I'm also surprised Apple hasn't yet included support for USB hard drives with the Express. I've read that it might be possible to connect an ethernet capable hard drive to the Express for wireless backups (if you don't need the port for wired connection to a router, which sounds like your situation) but I haven't been able to try it and haven't found any reports that it actually works. Anyway, I'm just going to save myself the effort and buy a Time Capsule.
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