Airport Extreme - Airdisk dissappearing act

I recently bought an AE for the gigabit and "n" connectivity potential in conjunction with its ability to provide a network-based storage solution. However I have not been able to get anything close to reliable airdisk functionality.

Initial setup was flawless for wired and wireless networking, DHCP and internet access. I have a wired imac G5 and wireless MBP. The AE is firmware 7.2 out of the box. I then added a 250GB USB/FW acomdata enclosed hard disk (not sure of brand) HFS (journalled) formatted and was able to access from both computers without a problem. I did run into the "missing directory" issue temporarily but solved that by using a disk password (not account or base station password) which I discovered reading this very helpfull space. Then began the more difficult obstacles to overcome ... which I'll cover here in sequence trying to "capture" what I learned along the way in order to hopefully bring this to a systematic elimination of causes and solution.

Day 1

To increase bandwidth while I copied over a high volume of data after the initially successfull setup mentionned above, I switched the MBP to ethernet (shut down MBP airport, plugged in cable). Airdisk dissappeared and reappeared in the disk utility during this process, but in trying to connect I got a variety of errors from "the operation cannot be completed because one or more required items cannot be found (Error code -35)" to the one claiming an incorrect password, to one related to a corrupt alias (with question to delete or repair, either to no avail). Connecting directly from Finder "Go" menu also did not work. Sorry if I forget the exact wording of the errors but they are the sames ones everyone has been reporting and if memory serves they all occur after being presented with the password screen and then "seeing" the airdisk in a dialog box right before finally mounting it. The AE/HD restart "solution" did not work for me at this point. I connected the drive directly to the MBP and it was fine. I ran disk utility verify disk (no errors) and repair disk (nothing repaired). Plugged it back into AE after power-cycling both .. and then was able to access it again. I was also able to switch between ethernet and wireless successfully, but this time by carefully ejecting the Airdisk before making the switch.

CONCLUSION: I had been careless in switching modes ... always use eject in the future.

I then set the MBP off on a file copy mission which was to last through the night and went to bed.

Day 2

Woke up with no Airdisk in the Finder. And again, could not connect using all the possible methods. Same errors. After a day of searching the net I came up with a long list of potential causal factors. Took no chance and implemented all of them.

1a. turn off IPv6
1b. ensure DHCP lease was as long as possible (365 days ... was previously set to 4 hours .. had I lost the connection over night ?)
1c. replaced the hard drive with a different 250GB in a generic USB-only enclosure (previous one was USB/FW)
1d. reformatted to HFS (no journalling) ... (previously Journalling was enabled ... and btw I kept the same volume name as the previous one - this to ensure I don't "loose" my itunes library)
1e. repaired permissions on MBP
1f. verified/repaired USB disk with disk utility
1g. and it's worth noting that both these disks have been operating flawlessly when connected directly to either the MBP or iMac for 6 months.

After much file shuffling the new drive was ready and running fine on the MBP. So I proceeded to eject, powerdown AE, plug HD into AE, powerup drive, then AE and tried to connect to the Airdisk with MBP. Again, errors as above with a new twist this time. Beachball during mounting leading to Finder "not responding / crash" (is that possible on a mac?) requiring a hard reboot. No candy. I plugged the HD back into MBP, ran verify. At this point the disk utility reported not being able to unmount the disk. A few HD power-cycles later I was able to successfully run the verify/repair sequence. Plugged back into AE. This time I was able to connect first time using the "Go" menu approach (I had at this point given up even tring through the disk utility .. and no, it actually never auto-mounted for me). I tested ejecting / remounting a number of times and switching between wireless and ethernet connection on MBP. Success every time. Now although I felt I was about at the same point as the night before I had higher confidence that I had fixed "something" in the process of changing settings, reformatting, etc... So again I set the MBP off on an overnight file copy mission.

CONCLUSION: Must have been the USB/FW interface wreaking havoc or the DHCP lease timing out the night before.

Day 3

Woke up this morning with Airdisk gone from finder. Can see it in disk utility. Can call it up through "Go" ... I get the password screen, the list of drives where it appears but I cannot mount it. I get the (Error -35) message. Again.

Extreme frustration to say the least. And from what appears to be erratic behavior totally out of character for an apple product (I am ... or was ... a Mac convert). But surely something is triggering this behavior and I can't give up yet. If I was never able to see the drive in the first place I would have less hope. That said, I'm quickly running out of ideas and the only next steps I could come up with based on more googling are:

2a. Enable share disks over WAN (I don't need to but somebody on this space reports this setup change works for him)
2b. Change the volume name and disk sharing password(same name bringing back memories of failure, inspiring the AE to fail again ... ?? sounds a bit voodoo but ...)
2c. Try with a USB "stick" to isolate the problem to the drive/AE combination

I also tried to determine if the HD was powering down overnight, possibly causing this. I wasn't there so I can affirm it, but previous behavior from both these drives when connected to the macs was that they never powerdown. Also, drive was not in powered down state both mornings I woke up to the problem.

My appologies if this is long-winded but I wanted to avoid going back and forth on first order solutions, many of which I've already tried. I also wanted to try and narrow this down as much as possible and maybe with all our heads together we can crack this thing ('cause I know I'm not alone .. Apple, pay attention, a bunch of people here are doing your job while you're being awfully quiet about that wart on your nose !).

So in hope that somebody out there has a lead onto something I haven't tried. I'll add it to my list of "fixes" for tonight and will report back tomorrow.

Thanks in advance