Airport Extreme Base Station AirDisk issues!

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey guys - If your thinking about using an external hard drive connected to an Apple AEBS for your iTunes library you might want to hold off for the moment. I hadn't tried it in a while and today decided I would make the permanent switch to a USB hard drive, AEBS, and my iTunes library. I didn't notice until now that Leopard gets rid of the Airport Disk Utility which is used to auto mount this drive. Without this feature you need to mount this disk manually. There are some unreliable workarounds but I don't think they are ready for prime time.

 

Also in Leopard the audio is somewhat choppy over wireless if you are using your Mac for anything else such as web browsing.

 

I am working on the issue right now with Apple. I hope to get some information for everyone as this method of disk storage is very attractive for audiophiles.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Update - I got the auto mount working in Leopard by using a very easy automator action. I will write up some step by step instructions with screenshots and post an article this week.

 

Now to work on the performance issue.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

OK - Things are looking better no thanks to anyone at Apple or any forums out there. I have audio playback working perfect now. What I did was disable all wireless security. I was using WPA2 Personal before. This should ease the load on the processor in the AEBS.

 

This is not the perfect scenario, but I did turn on some compensating controls to get me more security than NONE.

 

I enabled MAC address filtering and I'm not broadcasting my SSID. This is not ideal in terms of security, but there is much more low hanging fruit in the neighborhood that hackers will waltz into before my network.

 

Bottom line: Everything works with a USB disk connected to the Airport Extreme Base Station.

 

[Innertuber]

Man, I'm glad you figured this out before I even had to try.

 

Thanks as always Chris

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

No problem innertuber. I was nervous for a while since I had been recommending this method without a good Leopard run-through. it all works flawlessly now. I just hope this doesn't scare people away from using this method. It truly is great. The automator part is real easy to setup as well. I do understand many audiophiles will be confused by some of this (not necessarily you :-) ), but there is a little learning curve with anything new.

 

[Innertuber]

Everything confuses me in a world with too many solutions.

 

We'll likely grab a base station as soon as the Drobo arrives and give that a go.

 

Think it would handle a DVD wireless?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

It depends. The bandwidth is supposedly there, but many people have experienced mixed results. I think if you turn off wireless security such as WPA you'll have pretty good luck.