[minel]

Hi there,
I have an issue and was wondering if anyone here knows a fix.
I use XBMC on my AppleTV with a CrystalHD. I connect to wifi via Airport Express that connects to ethernet, while AExpress connects to my Airport Extreme. I have my Movie HDD connected to the Airport Extreme. I connect to the shares through SMB with no issues. The problem that I'm having is that my hard drive goes to sleep as I watch a movie and from time to time my movie will stop for 15-20 seconds because the hard disk has to restart spinning and so on. I was wondering if anyone knows a fix for it. I can't find any option in the Airport Extreme settings to not sleep the HDD ever. I guess having it go to sleep is fine when not being in use but when being in use by XBMC... still goes to sleep...

Thanks!

[stormrider_67]

Its likely your external hdd... unless you are running an Extreme G. Which model do you have? The original "flying saucer" Extremes had poor buffer capabilities and often couldn't manage an SMB connection constantly.

Check the firmware. The 1st gen sim dual band Extremes should be 7.4.2, the 2nd gen sim dual band 2 should be 7.5.1

I have setup and run several Extreme/SMB setups and one had this same problem. Changed the drive and issue went away.
I tend to find the old adage "you get what you pay for" applies to external hdds. The drive that caused me grief was an Iomega. Not a great brand. I've always used Western Digital or Maxtor (now Seagate without issue.
Sadly there isn't really a fix for this. You can try hard resetting your Extreme and reconfiguring it, though I doubt it will do anything.