AirPort Extreme has AirPort Disk: USB hard drive sharing

HI

I just bought an APE and would like to fully utilize the USB port for external disk(s) and iTUNES. Can anyone recommend an external disk storage solution that has USB and RAID configuration for the enclosure/disks? I want perform and more than 2 disk supported, but I can't seem to find any external disk solution that encompasses RAID and would allow me to use this storage for my Windows environment, eventually to become MAC and iTUNES external storage.

I truly want to make sure my external disk is/can be backed up so I can very easily restore in the event of a hard drive failure. If I could find something with 2 RAID set configurations in a nice, sleek, clean enclosure; 1 set of disks would be for iTunes and Apple TV and the other set of disks could be for movies and backups.... Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!!!!!

Does this mean that it only supports Network Attached Storage via USB, and not ethernet? I'm guessing that's what the gigabit frustration is about, but it's a bit over my head.


Thanks

I, too, would love to have had gigabit on the Airport Extreme Basestation. I have resigned myself to using a USB-attached hard disk only for media streaming. The only thing connected to any of the AEB's LAN ports is a $40 gigabit switch from Netgear. The rest of my wired network is all gigabit and hangs off of that switch.

Ironic that theoretically I'll be able to get at the USB-attached hard disk FASTER when I have an N-capable machine in the house.

Scott W...there is no need to be rude to Bob. Sheesh, the guy is just giving his opinion.

Actually, I too would have liked Gigabit on this new device. I have been looking for a NAS/Printer Sharing solution. Unfortunately I like the gigabit speed between our two iMacs. Now, perhaps I can continue to use our gigabit switch and plug that into the new Airport Extreme. Anyone know if that may be possible?

What to do about the NAS though. Would a USB 2.0 Hard Disk plugged into the Airport Extreme shared over 10/100 be quicker than a Gigabit NAS (like the LaCie 1 GB Big Disk) ?

The 802.11n would be used for the Apple TV.

Does anyone know if I will be able to upgrade the airport card in my 1st gen MacBook Pro with a new card that has 802.11n capability and use it?

LaCie desktop harddrives exactcly match the device!!
It also haves the same size as the mac-min...

http://www.lacie.com/nl/products/product.htm?pid=10727

surely they can make a usb2 802.11n adapter for us on older macs?

something like this....
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=299126

seems crazy to constrict your market to those who have only purchased a mac in the past 6 months to be able to use it..

Oh and anyone thinking of using this as a NAS drive - having owned one for over a year, I can tell you that transferring gigabytes of information onto a NAS drive thats limited to 100BaseT takes forever... 1000BaseT should be a MINIMUM for a NAS drive built today.

A speed comparison - to backup my iTunes Library - approx 13,000 files. Takes under 20 minutes using Firewire-800, it takes well over 3 hours using 100BaseT, and occasionally errors out.

In 2007, I'd be ashamed to release a new product that didn't have wired Gigabit networking. Even the Mac mini has Gigabit now!

The 802.11n spec has a maximum bandwidth cap of 540Mbits/sec. If I'm not mistaken, 100BaseT using Full Duplex maxes out at 200Mbits/sec.

And my house is half Gigabit wired because Wireless networking sucks at video (and that includes using iChat!)

So yeah, this is a bottleneck! If Apple dropped the ball here cheaping out on 100BaseT networking, there's not going to be any business customers who'll buy this thing.

Funny. The new Airport Extreme is not a gigabit router, so your wired connection will max out at 100 mbps. You'll get a faster connection with wireless from this thing. I wonder why they chose to omit gigabit when all the new macs come with it?