I have the Passport SE for Mac 1 TB external Harddrive connect via USB to my Apple Airport Extreme Router. It works fine but the Smartware Software did not recognize the Harddrive and so i cannot use functions like Hardware Encryption and Backup. :cry:
When i connect the Passport directly via USB to my Mac, all works fine, but this is not the use case for which i bought this product.
Is there a hack available or future Software Updates planned for solving this issue? I am not alone, many Mac Users (who i know personally) would use the Passport like this way (e.g. for Backup and Time Machine). Without a solution i would have to switch to an other product from the competitors.
Hi there, as far as I know Smartware needs a direct connection with the drive in order to work, the only exception so far is with the MyBook Live.
However, If the drive is working then you should be able to use Time Machine even if Smartware is not working, so what you want is already possible… Smartware is not needed for that.
Additionally, if you use the encryption then it won’t help you for Time Machine because you will need to unlock the Passport each time you need to make a backup and may not work on the network while locked… That’s the reason the MyBook Live (Being a Network drive) does not have encryption even though it has Smartware.
Sounds to me like you want to use both sofwares… If Time Machine works then I would not use Smartware.
I want to use the Hardware Enrcyption via the Smartware-Software. I hope that further releases could recognize the Passport connected to the Airport Extreme.
You can suggest it as an update on the ideas section.
On the other hand, the encryption only needs to be activated once, after that you can even uninstall Smartware and the drive still keeps the encryption because you can manually unlock the drive…
What if you set the encryption and then check if the Smartware VCD/Unlocker is still seen when you connect the Passport to the Airport Extreme? If it is seen, then you should be able to open it to manually unlock the drive, which does not need Smartware…
Give it a try :)
