I've talked at length with both Apple sales and some Apple server guys about the possibility of doing just that and their responses were in the affirmative. That was pre-release, but word was that you could hook up a USB2 hub and daisy-chain drives.

→ Posted by: Jeredb at March 5, 2007 12:53 AM

as long as you're making sure that there's enough airflow in that cupboard (as even usb drives can, on occasion, get quite hot) i wouldn't think there's any problem with it.

another issue could be: if the extreme doesn't let the drives spin down when not in use (and i don't know whether it does or not, so worth checking), you're looking at a constantly spinning set of drives which may increase your chance of wear and tear (read failure), apparently.

→ Posted by: patrick h. lauke at March 5, 2007 3:12 AM

You might want to look into getting a dedicated networked disk.

Of course you might be wanting to wi-fi that comes with the Airport Express but if that's incidental then a networked disk should work out cheaper. Dabs.com have a 500gb one for under £200
Link.

→ Posted by: Pete Ashton at March 5, 2007 4:57 AM

It sounds great if you don't plan to transfer lots of big files (ie video), and if you do use a network cable not wireless.

As far as sharing files over wireless is concerned, you really need to be happy with the encryption, otherwise don't bother!

→ Posted by: theOlster at March 5, 2007 9:27 AM

I looked into doing this too (attaching a disk, chained by firewire to a bunch of others.) I came across a couple of issues: 1) No Raid support, so it would only be good as a backup. 2) Loads of power supplies. 3) No gigabit ethernet on the Airport Extreme, so there's no alternative to the sluggish performance - by comparison - to a disk directly connected to your mac.

I ended up going for a Buffalo Terastation Home Server that's running an AFP share connected to a gigabit ethernet router. I might add 802.11n, but having the choice of 54g or 1000T is much more useful for me at the moment.

→ Posted by: Brad Haynes at March 5, 2007 10:08 AM

I had thought about this myself! - they seem pretty nice! - My old router (an ugly draytek blue lump) allows for shared printers to be connected via usb, but not hard disks, and this seems a great idea! - I was personally thinking of sticking it in some fire proof cupboard and using it as a safe backup! - but these cupboard tend to be made of thick metal making the wireless reception almost useless!

→ Posted by: Stuart at March 5, 2007 10:32 AM

You need a little app to auto add your airport disks , you don't just 'see' them in you network, which to me makes it quite a bit less instantly useful than it could be. Furthermore there is just the one usb port. Not sure if daisy chaining a whole bunch of disks would actually work. I'd like to see you try though... :)

→ Posted by: Tijs at March 5, 2007 12:03 PM

There's an article on Roughly Drafted about this. It seems like a good idea to me, especially since it supports Wireless N. I would be interested to hear how it works out if you try it.

→ Posted by: Tom Scott at March 5, 2007 1:34 PM

Tom, did you find out anymore on this? I am trying to find out if an Airport Extreme with a Lacie Ethernet Disc RAID (http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10876) would work.

→ Posted by: Pål Degerstrøm at March 9, 2007 12:00 PM

The issue with whether or not the drives spin down is worth looking into - if not, you're more likely to suffer worn out drives.

Also, Nelson Minar says they're bad hardware in general: http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/airportExtremeN.html

More than you might want to know, but where I learned most of what I know: http://www.dansdata.com/gz060.htm

→ Posted by: Tom Carden at March 16, 2007 9:25 PM