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# Connecting a USB hard disk to your base station

If your base station supports it, you can connect a USB hard disk to the USB port on your base station and computers on your network (both wired and wireless) can connect to it to access, share, and store files and data.

If you’re using a Time Capsule, it already contains an internal AirPort disk. You can connect additional USB disks to the USB port on your Time Capsule.

## To connect a USB hard disk to your base station or Time Capsule:

Plug the hard disk into the USB port on the back of the device. If you connect a USB hub to the device, you can connect several hard disks to it, and then access them from the wireless network.

AirPort Utility does not support formatting disks. Format the hard disk using your computer. On a Macintosh, format the hard disk using Mac OS Extended format, also called HFS Plus. On a Computer using Windows, use FAT32.

If you’re using a Time Capsule, you can erase the contents of the internal AirPort disk from the Disk pane of AirPort Utility.

To see information about the hard disk, open AirPort Utility, select your base station, and then choose Base Station > Manual Setup. Enter the base station password if necessary. Click Disks in the toolbar.

You can set access privileges for the hard disk, and give it a workgroup name on the File Sharing pane.

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

### Related Topics

shared USB devices

user accounts