Multiple User Access to 802.11n Hard Drive?

[thebreadking]

Hi there,
I have a quick question or four about accessing a hard drive that's connected to a wireless router. Say I have an Airport Extreme with an external hard drive plugged into it: can everyone who is on the Airport's network have simultaneous access to the drive (i.e. 5 different computers reading/writing to the drive at once)?

Is there a benefit to using an Extreme as the router in this situation, or can any wireless router with a USB 2.0 connector work?

Is there an easier/faster/cheaper way to network a handful of computers in adjacent offices to allow simultaneous access to a hard drive, or daisy chained set of drives?

Obviously I have no clue, and I wasn't sure whether to put this here or in Basics, so I hope that you guys can give me a hand. Thanks a bunch for the help.

 

[milk242]

I'm not sure about the simultaneous access to the airdisk.

Extreme is good because its pretty hassle free while other routers with a usb port aren't as supported and/or has a great big community for support. You could find a router with usb such as one of those asus routers and setup dd-wrt on it and look through their forums.

If your just looking for a file server, I would build my own with cheap computer parts and load up freenas.