Why won't my Airport Extreme mount my USB 3.0 External Hard Drive?

I just decided to upgrade to a USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure. I regularly use my Airport Extreme to share the hard drive using an older enclosure. I know that the Airport Extreme won't have USB 3.0, but I expected it to be backwards compatible. Am I wrong, or is something else amiss?

I'm using this Thermaltake Max 5G, and it mounts when I attach it to a MacBook Pro running Lion.

Per Thermaltake support:

The Airport Extreme Base Station cannot provide the proper driver support for the docking unit. The docking station was designed to be directly connected to a computer's USB port.

Not a very satisfactory answer, but I guess it is the answer. I expected it to simply function as USB 2.0 speeds, rather than not working at all.

Maybe the reason your MacBook can see it but not airport extreme may be because of the type of partition scheme - just read that you need to set it to GUID rather than DOS-style Master Boot Record - see here: http://lowendmac.com/2009/things-to-know-when-connecting-usb-hard-drive-to-airport-extreme/

Try plugging an old externally powered USB 2.0 hub into the airport extreme and then plugging the external drive into the hub. This is the only way I could get my new (Sept. 2014) USB 3.0 hard drive to work with my 5th generation airport extreme. The drive came with its own externally powered USB connector but it would not work with the airport extreme for some reason.

Oh oh oh! I got it to work! You can format it HFS+ (Mac OS Journaled), but when you connect it to the Airport Extreme, and want to see files on it, the AE creates a /Shared directory. Throw all your stuff in there and you're done.