Apple AirPort Networks User Manual

    AirPort Network Designs 

 

Sharing and Securing USB Hard Disks on Your Network

If you connect a USB hard disk to your AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule, 
computers connected to the network—both wireless and wired, Mac and Windows—
can use it to back up, store, and share files. 

If you’re using a Time Capsule, you don’t need to connect a hard disk to it. Every Time 
Capsule includes an internal AirPort disk.

Plug the hard disk into the USB port on the back of the AirPort Extreme Base Station 
or Time Capsule.

Open AirPort Utility, located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder on a Mac, 
or in Start > All Programs > AirPort on a Windows computer.

Select your AirPort Extreme Base Station or your Time Capsule, and then choose Base 
Station > Manual Setup, or double-click the device icon to open its configuration in a 
separate window. Enter the password if necessary.

Click the Disks button, and then click File Sharing.

Choose “With a disk password,” or “With base station password” if you want to secure 
the shared disk with a password, or choose “With accounts” if you want to secure the 
disk using accounts.

 If you choose to use accounts, click Configure Accounts, click the Add (+) button, 

and then enter a name and password for each user that will access the disk.

Choose “Not allowed,” “Read only,” or “Read and write” to assign guest access to 
the disk.

Select the “Share disks over Ethernet WAN port” checkbox if you want to provide 
remote access to the disk over the WAN port.

Data transfer speed may vary, depending on the network.

to Internet

DSL or cable modem

AirPort Extreme

USB hard disk

Ethernet WAN port

<

2.4 or 5 GHz

2.4 or 5 GHz