Airport Extreme connected drive - optimum speed?

[askywalker]

Does the hard drive speed matter on an external hard drive that is connected to the Airport Extreme? I am going to buy the AEBS and connect a drive to it - does the drive speed matter at all, or will the USB on the AEBS (and the LAN connections) make that irrelevant?

Also - does anyone know if I can access the external drive from Windows 2003, XP and Vista boxes? I sure hope so!

 

[flopticalcube]

Does the hard drive speed matter on an external hard drive that is connected to the Airport Extreme? I am going to buy the AEBS and connect a drive to it - does the drive speed matter at all, or will the USB on the AEBS (and the LAN connections) make that irrelevant?

Also - does anyone know if I can access the external drive from Windows 2003, XP and Vista boxes? I sure hope so!

No. The AEBS CPU can't even keep the USB connection running at full speed. Expect top speeds of 5-10MBps max regardless of drive.

 

[Veritas&Equitas]

No. The AEBS CPU can't even keep the USB connection running at full speed. Expect top speeds of 5-10MBps max regardless of drive.

Really? Even with 802.11n? That's disappointing...I was looking at getting the 802.11n for a faster network in my house

 

[askywalker]

Really? Even with 802.11n? That's disappointing...I was looking at getting the 802.11n for a faster network in my house

Yah - my place is also wired, so I was hoping the gigabit lan speed would be helpful. I suppose I need to invest in a proper NAS, but was hoping to cheap-out on the Airport Extreme...

I wonder if any NAS devices will be any better? I suppose that if I want to have 'fast' access I will have to use e-sata or fw800 - which means carrying around the drive with me... kinda killing the portability of the mbp.