Is anyone actually happy with their Airdisk's performance from the AEBS?

I'm trying to set up a USB disk as a shared itunes library from the Airdisk. It's truly maddening that Apple would release such a horribly underperforming feature on one of their products.

First off the only way to get a stable connection to the airdisk where you don;t have to reboot all the computers and AEBS every day or so is to connect via SMB instead of thru the finder's "shared" feature. No big deal i guess i can deal with that.

Performance speed is HORRIBLE. no where near the speed i used to get from the drive when it was hooked up as a NAS drive.

But when I'm streaming music i get drop outs all the time. I still have full bars on my airports signal strength and music is streaming to the macbook ok, but if i stream from there to my Airport express and try to surf at the same time i get constant drop outs on audio.

And the icing on the cake is the USB drive attached to the airdisk is ALWAYS spinning. Never goes to sleep. even if it hasn't been used for hours it's still spinning. So if i keep this up it'll probably die in a couple of months (or less).

And if anyone thinks I'm asking too much for a wireless itunes server, i had the same set up in Tiger with a NAS drive and it worked MUCH better. I was happy with it, but upgrading to Leopard broke the NAS connection.

I guess with Time Capsule Apple has basically just told all us early AEBS adopters to go take a flying f__K, because they've known of these problems for well over a year.

Not sure what you are doing wrong, but it seems to work for me. I have an AEBS (using 5ghz N only), with a WD My Book external hard drive hooked up. All my music is stored on that drive, and I play my music thorough itunes with no problems. I even update my ipod this way, and have no issues. Yes its slower than an internal hard drive, but seems to work for me. My WD My Book seems to stop spinning automatically when not in use.

I had a thermaltake enclosure with a 320gb hard drive before, hooked up to the AEBS as well. That hard drive would not stop spinning automatically, it would keep spinning like yours. Maybe get an external like a WD My Book.

What firmware do you have on your AEBS? Are you mounting the drive thru the 'shared' option or with the AEBS IP address?

you're not streaming to an airport express are you? (since you're using a 5ghz network).

I did read that certain USB enclosures work better than others. I'd like to see a list on the ones that read fast and will spin down if anyone knows if such thing exists.

Using the latest firmware, under shared, and no airport express.

5 GHz > 2.4 GHz in terms of streaming.

I can stream 800 mb movies to my xBox 360 without any lag using a/n.

The same movies using g/n are crap.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, my MBP his 270 mbps using 5 GHz, and 130 mbps on the 2.4 GHz.

I do not know if this information can help you get better air disk performance.

Different USB enclosures perform differently with power saving. I have noticed Leopard being worse than Tiger for this. Try plugging it directly into the mac to see if it goes to sleep.

Ed

5 GHz > 2.4 GHz in terms of streaming.

I can stream 800 mb movies to my xBox 360 without any lag using a/n.

The same movies using g/n are crap.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, my MBP his 270 mbps using 5 GHz, and 130 mbps on the 2.4 GHz.

I do not know if this information can help you get better air disk performance.

I didn't know a Xbox 360 could receive a n signal. can it?

Also, i'm trying to find a good enclosure that works well as an airdisk. Something that has an automatic fan and goes to sleep when not being used, Any suggestions? (also from what i've read there seems to be a lot of issues with teh WD my books)

5 GHz >For some reason unbeknownst to me, my MBP his 270 mbps using 5 GHz, and 130 mbps on the 2.4 GHz.performance.

You need to use wide channels to achieve rates higher than 130Mbps, and that's only an option with 5Ghz. If you disable wide channels while you're in 5Ghz you'll notice the same cap.

I didn't know a Xbox 360 could receive a n signal. can it?


It can't with the microsoft wireless adapter. It can only receive G wireless signal. You can attach an N wireless access point to the 360 though.

It can't with the microsoft wireless adapter. It can only receive G wireless signal. You can attach an N wireless access point to the 360 though.

the microsoft wireless adaptor can receive A aswell - I was surprised at first.