New AirPort, old network Page 2 of 2

Mix the new AirPort Extreme with older networking hardware

Share and share alike

One of the most talked-about features of the new AirPort Extreme is its USB port. As with older AirPort Extreme Base Stations, this port lets you share a USB printer with computers on your local network (as long as they’re running Mac OS X 10.4 or later, or Windows XP or later). But a feature called AirPort Disk lets you also share a USB hard drive via that port. Attaching shared printers and drives is pretty much plug-and-play, but you have a few more options to consider when sharing a disk.

When you plug a USB hard drive into the AirPort Extreme, the drive will immediately be available to all computers on your local network. (You should use a drive with its own AC adapter; the base station’s USB port doesn’t provide enough power for most drives.)

Once you’ve connected a drive, the Disks screen of AirPort Utility (visible when you’re in Manual mode) lets you control access to it. You can allow users to con-nect to the drive by using the base station’s own password or a separate disk-only password, or you can set up user accounts for the shared drive. You can also enable guest access.

With the accounts option, each account gets its own private folder on the drive, as well as access to a folder shared by all accounts. You should set up accounts before you save data to the drive; anything saved to the drive beforehand will be hidden when you switch to account-based access.

You can access a shared drive through the Finder’s Network browser (Go: Network); the shared drive should appear in the list of network servers. However, the new AirPort Disk Utility gives you the option of connecting to AirPort Disks automatically when they appear on the network. (The utility can also list, in a new item in the menu bar, base stations sharing disks.)

Once you’re connected to an AirPort disk, it appears in the Finder as a network volume, just as if you’d connected to another Mac or a server; if the disk has multiple partitions, each will mount as a separate drive. (You’ll also see multiple volumes if you’re using account-based access.) Don’t expect the drive to perform as fast as it would if you’d connected it directly to your Mac—large file transfers can take a while, and transfer speeds are affected by other network activity, how far you are from the base station, and wireless interference.

(At the time of this writing, an AirPort bug may make a shared disk appear to be available without letting you connect to it; you receive a password error, even though you’ve entered the correct password. The workaround is to use AirPort Utility to restart your base station and then connect. Hopefully, Apple will fix this bug in the next AirPort software update.)

Want to share more than one USB device? Simply connect a USB hub to the base station’s USB port and then connect your devices to the hub.— Dan Frakes

Manage Shared Disks: The new AirPort Utility can manage any printers and hard drives you plug into the new AirPort Extreme Base Station—for instance, it lets you set passwords and access privileges for a USB drive.