Ext. hard drive + bluetooth dongle = ?

I thought I'd check because it seems like it might work but google isn't giving me anything - anyway to set up an external USB hard drive with a USB dongle thus making a wireless external hard drive?

A USB bus requires a host to control the bus traffic. So the answer to your question is almost certainly not, as the usb hdd won't be able to function as a usb host. You could try looking at network enabled hard drives and plug them into a wifi router?

Same reason you can't plug external hard drives into smartphones etc - the host functionality wasn't included. Shame really.

you can get a special enclouser that does this but it's $$$

this was never gonna work.

epic fail

that sucks... thanks tho

Same reason you can't plug external hard drives into smartphones etc - the host functionality wasn't included. Shame really.
It's coming. As is wireless USB.

http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/backup.html

It's coming. As is wireless USB.

It's something they could (and should) have included from early on. It's not a complex or particularly costly addition to make to the board.

I'm reserving judgement on wireless usb for the time being, the reason usb is so great is because you just plug it in and (usually) it works. No faffing around with authing or anything. It will be interesting to see how they implement the stack.