Imagine you have Airport Extreme Base Station which provides wireless access to the Web up to 50 computers whether they're PCs or Macs and you want to share a hard disk to the whole network.
What is necessary for sharing a HDD:
-external USB-HDD;
-Airport Extreme Base Station;
-PCs, Macs.
Necessary software for Windows and Mac:
-Airport utility.
For Mac: Download Airport Utility for Mac version 5.4.2 here.
For Windows: Download Airport Utility for Windows version 5.4.2 here.
Steps below describe how to share HDD using Airport Extreme on Mac computers:
1. Connect HDD to the USB-port on back side of the Airport Extreme Base Station:
2. Run Airport Utility from Applications: Utilities folder. Select your Base Station on the left pane and then press "Manual Setup" button.
3. Click "Disks" in the toolbar at the top of the Airport Utility.
4. Switch to "File Sharing" tab and make sure that "Enable File Sharing" option is enabled:
5. In "Secure Shared Disks" sub-menu from the drop-down list choose With A Disk Password or With Base Station Password in case you want to secure shared disk with a password,or choose With Accouts - if you want to secure disks with Accounts.
6. Choose Not Allowed, Read Only or Read and Write to assign guest access to the disk:
7. There is a possibility to share the disk over the Internet by selecting "Share Disks over Ethernet WAN port" check-box if you want to provide remote access and if you do share disks over Ethernet you can also "Advertise disks globally using Bonjour".
8. Set the WORKGROUP and WINS-server for Windows File Sharing.
9. Press the Update button to apply changes. AirPort will require to reboot Base Station. Confirm Reboot.
10. USB-HDD is now mounted as a sharepoint in OS X.