[abh19]

Hi everyone. I didn't read the entire thread so forgive me if this repeats anything, but I just wanted to share my experiences with putting the OmniFocus database shared on an AirDisk (USB disk connected to Airport Extreme).

First, my setup. I work alternately on a desktop (iMac) and laptop (MacBook) in home. The laptop is mainly for my writing, and the desktop for everything else. First, I tried using two OF databases, one on each computer, but felt there were too many projects that seemed to belong in both databases, that I was creating unnecessary fragmentation of my life. Not wanting to have to manually plug and unplug my USB flash drive when going back and forth (not to mention having it perpetually sticking out of the side of my laptop), I decided to put the omnifocus database on my AirDisk.

In principle, this worked well, once I got it set up right. At first it would throw out "file xyz can't be opened" errors on startup and refuse to open the DB. But after connecting the disk directly to the computer, it seemed to work consistently after returning the disk to the network. I have the backups written to each respective computer's hard drive, but each copy of OmniFocus looks to the network drive for the database.

But even with gigabit ethernet on the iMac and 802.11n on the MacBook, OmniFocus would be pretty sluggish. Now, I'm using a pretty fast HFS+ (journaled) seagate drive inside a MiniStack V3. I read that you can make your AirDisk much faster by turning off journaling. For those who don't know, journaling helps to keep your file system intact during events like improper shutdown, so it improves the reliability of your disk. (BTW, the super-secret code to disable journaling is to hold down the option key while clicking on the File menu in Disk Utility). This did make it faster, but I don't want to run the disk unjournaled because the Airport Extreme firmware seems to have issues when the drive sleeps (which my enclosure V3 does after 15min if neither computer has the disk mounted). I have other, more critical data on that AirDisk too. Anyway, performance was too slow to be a viable option. Nearly every click resulted in a 1 or 2 second pause.

And then it hit me... my MiniStack (the shared AirDisk) has a built-in USB hub. What if I put the OF database on my speedy USB flash drive (a Corsair Flash Voyager) and stick that into the side of the MiniStack? What do you know, it worked! Both disks can be mounted independently on either computer. OmniFocus operation was faster with the (networked) flash drive, but still a mite slow with journaling enabled, but after disabling journaling on the flash drive, it's quite speedy. No noticeable lag time at all. I'm finally in business!

I don't mind that the flash drive is unjournaled, because the OF database is about the only thing on there, and it's getting backed up on both computers twice a day. I don't have it set to backup on quit, because I have to quit the program too frequently--every time I move to the other computer. If I encounter problems, I'll turn that back on.

So, I'm happy to say that OmniFocus now works perfectly over my airport network for my two home computers.