Hard drive attached to airport has random delay

matt@clockhouse · Aug 6, 2007

I have an external hard drive attached to an airport extreme. Three laptops access this external hard drive through the airport.

When one laptop saves a file to the external hard drive there is a long delay, ranging from 12 minutes to 12 hours, before the other two can see the new file.

All three have good internet access through the airport so I am puzzled as to where the problem lies. Could it be the external hard drives fault?

Many thanks
Matt

cwa107 · Aug 6, 2007

matt@clockhouse said:
I have an external hard drive attached to an airport extreme. Three laptops access this external hard drive through the airport.

When one laptop saves a file to the external hard drive there is a long delay, ranging from 12 minutes to 12 hours, before the other two can see the new file.

All three have good internet access through the airport so I am puzzled as to where the problem lies. Could it be the external hard drives fault?

Many thanks
Matt

I would attach it directly to one of the machines and run Disk Utility on it, just to make sure it's healthy. It might not be network related at all.

matt@clockhouse · Aug 6, 2007

OK I have had the hard drive attached to one of the laptops and it has passed with no problems, so I guess that rules any problems with that out leaving a networking issue?

matt@clockhouse · Aug 7, 2007

Any more thoughts on this problem? The external hard drive and a printer are both connected to a USB hub which is plugged into the airport. Could the USB hub be effecting the hard drive's refresh. Alternatively it could be something to do with the laptops that are connected to the airport. Help!

cwa107 · Aug 7, 2007

matt@clockhouse said:
Any more thoughts on this problem? The external hard drive and a printer are both connected to a USB hub which is plugged into the airport. Could the USB hub be effecting the hard drive's refresh. Alternatively it could be something to do with the laptops that are connected to the airport. Help!

Is it a USB 2.0 hub? Is it self-powered or does it draw power from the host?

matt@clockhouse · Aug 7, 2007

It is a brand new USB 2.0 hub and it is self powered but can be powered via the host. I set the network up in the US for some colleagues and I am now back in the UK, so it is quite possible that they could have unplugged the hub...

cwa107 · Aug 7, 2007

matt@clockhouse said:
It is a brand new USB 2.0 hub and it is self powered but can be powered via the host. I set the network up in the US for some colleagues and I am now back in the UK, so it is quite possible that they could have unplugged the hub...

Keep in mind that when you plug in a USB hub, your bandwidth is split between the devices on that hub. So, if they've got printing activities going on during periods of heavy disk usage, you may take a performance hit there too.

matt@clockhouse · Aug 7, 2007

So the next thing to try is plugging the external hard drive straight into the airport and try and emulate the problem.

My initial thought was to plug the hard drive to one of the laptops, however when the other two machines logged onto that laptop they could not see the attached hard drive so that put paid to that idea.

cwa107 · Aug 7, 2007

matt@clockhouse said:
So the next thing to try is plugging the external hard drive straight into the airport and try and emulate the problem.

My initial thought was to plug the hard drive to one of the laptops, however when the other two machines logged onto that laptop they could not see the attached hard drive so that put paid to that idea.

Yes, that's right. Try to narrow it down to a specific device.