A few questions about Airport Extreme and external hd´s

[elvis12]

Hey
I have a new MBA, a new Airport Extreme and a new WD My Passport. I was hoping to being able to keep photos and movies on my small Passport and then view these files wirelessly on my mba. However, this works extremely bad. Opening a photo takes forever, viewing a video is close to impossible and I experience frequent drop outs and disconnections.

I´ve tried both 2,4 and 5 ghz.

Anyways, I am curious how this is SUPPOSED to work. When the Passport is hooked up to the Airport Extreme -- is then everything supposed to work smooth and nice with no drop outs?

When the passport is connected directly to my mba it is almost as fast as an internal drive.

Thanks!

 

[Woodcrest64]

It 'might' have to with the fact you're using a 2.5" portable HD which gets it power from the USB port. The air port extreme may not like that and may work better with a desktop style external drive that has its own power supply.

I think I'm right. Go here and see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3694392?start=15&tstart=0

Hey
I have a new MBA, a new Airport Extreme and a new WD My Passport. I was hoping to being able to keep photos and movies on my small Passport and then view these files wirelessly on my mba. However, this works extremely bad. Opening a photo takes forever, viewing a video is close to impossible and I experience frequent drop outs and disconnections.

I´ve tried both 2,4 and 5 ghz.

Anyways, I am curious how this is SUPPOSED to work. When the Passport is hooked up to the Airport Extreme -- is then everything supposed to work smooth and nice with no drop outs?

When the passport is connected directly to my mba it is almost as fast as an internal drive.

Thanks!

 

[Jnardis]

Hey
I have a new MBA, a new Airport Extreme and a new WD My Passport. I was hoping to being able to keep photos and movies on my small Passport and then view these files wirelessly on my mba. However, this works extremely bad. Opening a photo takes forever, viewing a video is close to impossible and I experience frequent drop outs and disconnections.

I´ve tried both 2,4 and 5 ghz.

Anyways, I am curious how this is SUPPOSED to work. When the Passport is hooked up to the Airport Extreme -- is then everything supposed to work smooth and nice with no drop outs?

When the passport is connected directly to my mba it is almost as fast as an internal drive.

Thanks!

I had the same setup and having the HD getting power from the Extreme is the main problem. The Extreme can't handle the power which is why sometimes the HD doesn't even show up as accessible. I returned that HD and bought another one that is self powered. It made a big difference, but still not as fast as if the files were on the computer, obviously. I was thinking the Apple Time Capsule would be quicker, but research says it's not noticeable different speed.