Air Disk: A Sales Feature or Vaporware?

March 23rd, 2008 | by Greg Balanko-Dickson |

Having a large external disk available on my network via AirPort Extreme (APE) was one of the reasons I upgraded from my old Air Port to APE. Certainly the ?n? specification and speed boost set high expectations.

I had just purchased a MacBookPro (MBP)and enjoyed the boost in productivity from the MBP Intel Processor and anything I could do to speed file transfer was a no brainer. Especially considering the amount of time I spend in front of a computer monitor. I did not expect to be surprised by the limitations of my wireless APE network.

APE Wireless Limitations

I had attached my LaCie 320MB drive to APE and set it up as an ?air disk?. I did a few file transfer tests and it seemed to work quite nicely. It was only when I had a 32GB file to back up that I discovered APE?s wireless limitations.

It seemed to just freeze at around 4GB but I still had 28GB to go.

The LaCie drive seemed to be still running, I could hear the drive spinning. But nothing was happening and the file progress bar never moved. I restarted the APE and LaCie drive and started over.

It froze again at around the 4GB mark. I was miffed. I started over again for the third time - without success.

Resorted to Direct Connection

I really needed to backup the 32GB file and so I grabbed the LaCie drive and plugged it into the MBP using the same USB cable. This time the entire file was successfully copied and I noticed that the transfer speed was substantially better.

I used the stop watch on my iPhone to time to speed of transferring a 264.5 MB folder via USB and Firewire 800:

  1. USB 17.7 seconds
  2. Firewire 800: 13.4 seconds

The Firewire 800 was 32.08 % faster in my tests.

Sadly, since upgrading to Leopard, I have not been able to get the Air Disk to mount. I recently used software update to install the Time Machine and Air Port update 1.0. I was hopeful this software update would resolve this quirky Air Disk issue.

Despite, many documented accounts in Apple discussions of people successfully getting Air Disk working again I have had no luck. Even if it did work, I think I would still revert to the old fashioned, direct connect via the Firewire 800 connection because I am certain the file transfer speed would be better by wire than wireless.

Feature or Vaporware?

I think Air Disk is a real feature and NOT vaporware - especially now that Apple has the new Time Capsule on the market they will be much more motivated to get it working right ?out of the box?.

Personally, the jury is still out whether I will get my Air Disk to actually work again. I just do not have the time to invest in trying to trouble shoot Apple?s problem with APE and Air Disk.

Until that day, I recommend using old fashioned wires to transfer your files. Who knows perhaps we will be surprised soon with an update that resolves the issue.

What has been your experience with APE and Air Disk?

Live Large! Because shrinking does not become you.
Greg Balanko-Dickson has been using Mac’s since 1995 and has invested a few bucks on fruit from the Orchard. He is the author of two business books and a Licensed Professional Business Coach who is committed to supporting solo entrepreneurs and small business owners.

  1. 2 Responses to “Air Disk: A Sales Feature or Vaporware?”

  2. By Ben Pickering on Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

    I managed to get this working on Leopard. The two things I think I did differently in my successful attempt were:

    - connect the Extreme via Ethernet cable to the Mac and install the recent software updates and firmware updates to the base station. When I had tried to update the firmware wirelessly it crashed with an unexplained error.

    - mount the disk with SMB rather than AFP (Use Connect To Server in Finder with an address like smb://xx.xx.xx.xx/ where the IP address is visible in AirPort Utility)

    This seems to work for me, I can see the files reliably. Before, once the Mac dropped the connection to the base station it couldn’t remount it.

    I do have some issues with copying files, however. On several occasions it has said ‘unable to copy, file is in use’ when this is clearly not the case as immediately retrying usually succeeds.

  3. By Greg Balanko-Dickson on Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

    @Ben thanks for the feedback of what worked for you.

    When I get some time I might give that a try.

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