# Why is transfer to a USB disk on Airport Extreme so slow?



## ldphoto (Jul 9, 2009)

I have a large USB HDD connected to my airport Extreme (Gigabit, single-band "n"). When cpoying files from my Mac Pro to the disk, I get speeds of about 5-6 MB/s, even though the Pro is connected to the Airport Extreme via GigE. I know it's not the networking part that's slow, because I can reach 40MB/s to another computer that's also wired to the Extreme. Connecting the USB disk directly to the computer will reach about 30 MB/s.

Could the USB controller in the Extreme be that slow? It seems pointless to have a shared disk if it takes hours to copy data to/from it...

Luc


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## Rukus (Aug 10, 2007)

Misread your OP. Oops


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## Griz (Apr 2, 2008)

Yup.

I have a good HD hooked up to my AEBS too. Set it up as an Airdisk with high expectations.

Thing is so slow I may as well unplug the F'n HD and hook it up USB to one computer and WALK it to the other end of my house...

It would be faster anyway.

Apple's way of saying "buy our Time Capsule".... 

I really, really, really wanted to share an iPhoto library with my wife via the Airdisk feature. It's so completely clunky that there's just no point in doing so.

I can only hope that a firmware upgrade one day unrestricts the obviously restricted use of a USB disk.


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## Benito (Nov 17, 2007)

Yes I find the same thing, even sending photos to the HD connected to the Airport is super duper slow. Very frustrating, I have to admit that I was very disappointed in this part of the Airport.


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## Manatus (May 11, 2009)

I agree, it's very disappointing. I just got a nice new WD 1TB hooked up externally via Airport, and it's really only good for backups and storage, can't even play a movie without skipping. I did manage to get iTunes to store its music library on there, and that seems to work fine at least.


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## ldphoto (Jul 9, 2009)

It's not even viable for backup. I move many gigabytes of data to/from my Mac Pro on a daily basis and Time Machine to an AirDisk runs too slow to be usable. I had hoped of keeping my Aperture Library on there, but that's obviously not going to work at all.

Luc


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## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

I was hoping to keep my media on a drive attached in this fashion. No go. Way too slow. In order to stream video without having multiple copies across my machines I have to have everything on one system and leave it running all the time as a server. I have tried a couple of NAS devices attached via ethernet and they are only so-so at best. My only acceptable option is going to be a NAS drive that specifically supports iTunes serving (ie. shows up in other systems iTunes as a shared system).


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## Manatus (May 11, 2009)

Does Time Capsule suffer from the same problems?

And if anyone knows, is there a way to automatically mount Airport drives? I've tried adding them as login items, but even with "hide" checked they still open up fully. I'd just like them to sit happily on the desktop like other drives do.


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

The underlying problem is that reading and writing USB is a processor-intense operation (compared to Firewire or SATA) and the tiny little brain in an AEBS or TimeCapsule is not up to the job of maintaining maximum speed when you are transferring a lot of data.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

USB sucks for hard drives - go Firewire and don't bother looking back...


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

And how is one to do that on an Airport with out a firewire port. I agree on the desktop, though. This may be why Apple doesn't officially support Time Machine on the AEBS.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

^^^
As I said, USB sucks for hard drives - therefore connecting a USB hard drive to an Airport will also suck...


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## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

hayesk said:


> And how is one to do that on an Airport with out a firewire port. I agree on the desktop, though. This may be why Apple doesn't officially support Time Machine on the AEBS.


I could have sworn that Apple at one point did officially supported Time Machine via AEBS, but I cannot find the article that describes this, so I could be wrong.

I did however find an article that supports your statement _hayesk_
Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks

However, in that article they also claim you cannot even choose to use a Hard drive connected via AEBS to back up to, eventhough I had been doing just that for about a year.

It would seem to me that Apple might have flipped back and forth on this issue just to sell more Time Capsules.


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## ldphoto (Jul 9, 2009)

I am doing my backups to an AEBS disk, it's just that it's slow. I'm not sure whether it's officially supported or not, but it works, and is fast enough for wireless backups of laptops. It just wish it was faster on gigE.

Luc


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## Darien Red Sox (Oct 24, 2006)

Anything over a wireless newtwork will be ssssllllooowwww as can be, it took me over 2 hours to copy an 800MB of iPhoto files from my Moms iMac to my MBP using a g router, even using an n router the network transfer speed is slower than that of USB 2.0. For the best speed use a separate network attached storage device, check Macword for reviews, and then plug you mac in using Ethernet. If you airport supports disk sharing it will most likely support gigabyte Ethernet so you should have no problem on speed. If this is too mutch of an investment for you try connecting to your Airport directly via Ethernet.


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## Griz (Apr 2, 2008)

Manatus said:


> Does Time Capsule suffer from the same problems?
> 
> And if anyone knows, is there a way to automatically mount Airport drives? I've tried adding them as login items, but even with "hide" checked they still open up fully. I'd just like them to sit happily on the desktop like other drives do.



No TC does not suffer this problem.

Yes, there is a way. I got mine mounting every time.

I know I put it in the login items, and I set something else in prefs, but since I'm not at my Mac, and can't spur my memory on a crappy PC...I'll try to remember to post it when I get to my Mac and check.


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