Airport Disk via usb AND Firewire (yep, read my idea inside)?

[defsquad]

So much like everyone else that has an airport extreme base station, I was anxious to use the Air Disk feature, and along with everyone else I was completely disappointed by the transfer rates between my main computer and the mounted Air Disk volumes. With that said, my external hard enclosure, along with most others, has multiple connection interfaces. This one has usb2/fw400/fw800. I was thinking; would it be possible to have the airdisk hooked up as it currently is (usb), AND have that same ext. enclosure plugged straight into my MBP via fw800? This way, my main computer (the mbp) would have direct access to the ext. HD for when I'm working and need the higher xfer rates, while my AppleTV could access the ext. HD since it's also plugged in to the USB port and therefore AirDisk is enabled.

I hope that makes sense, I haven't had my coffee yet this AM and was just trying to figure out a way to get the fastest speeds possible while my MBP is at my desk.

 

[itickings]

Short answer: Not possible. Sorry.

If you need speed for the MBP, get another drive for the Airdisk/Airport Extreme (USB2-only is probably a bit cheaper) and plug your existing one into your MBP using firewire.

It is either that, or disconnecting the drive from the Extreme every time and plugging it into the computer while using it.

 

[defsquad]

ahh well, figured it'd be tough for the ext. enclosure to use both interfaces at the same time, but it was worth a shot to ask and try (yeah i went ahead and tried it out, didn't work as you suggested, but figured i'd try anyway).

 

[itickings]

ahh well, figured it'd be tough for the ext. enclosure to use both interfaces at the same time, but it was worth a shot to ask and try (yeah i went ahead and tried it out, didn't work as you suggested, but figured i'd try anyway).

Actually, I figure it would be pretty easy to design the enclosure to use both interfaces at the same time, provided it was guaranteed to be read-only from both interfaces.

For writing on the other hand, the tricky part would be for the devices/computers using the interfaces from the other end to coordinate. A standard USB/FW harddrive is treated as a normal, exclusive harddrive by the devices/computers connected to it, so they can buffer read and written data for a while without informing the harddrive, and they certainly expect the data to remain unmodified in the meantime.

If you need reasonably quick network-storage, search for a stand-alone NAS with a gigabit-interface. Good ones provide decent transfer rates, but not as good as a directly connected FW-drive.