Airport Time Capsule as Hard Drive and Wireless Router

Hello,
My girlfriend and I want to buy Macbooks. A Macbook Pro 128 GB and a Macbook Air 128 GB. 128GB each is not enough for our needs and are also interested in buying an Airport Time Capsule with 2 TB rather than upgrading to 256GB/512GB, which is more money for less storage space.
My question is, can we use the Airport Time Capsule as a wireless router AND as a wireless hard drive?
Will I be able to keep the Time Capsule at home working as a wireless router for my girlfriend to surf the web and at the same, if I am at the library, as a wireless hard drive via internet so I can download the files i need?
If the network is down I would like to be able to use it via cable as a wired hard drive. Is that possible?
I searched for days for an answer but I could not find a definitive answer to my question.
Thank you!
Best regards,
Liviu

My question is, can we use the Airport Time Capsule as a wireless router AND as a wireless hard drive?
Yes. The Time Capsule has a built-in hard drive and you can add additional USB hard drives (via a USB hub) to its USB port. All of these drives can be shared out and will appear in the Finder as network drives.
Will I be able to keep the Time Capsule at home working as a wireless router for my girlfriend to surf the web and at the same, if I am at the library, as a wireless hard drive via internet so I can download the files i need?
Yes, that is also possible. Please check out the following AirPort User tip for more details on how this can be set up.
If the network is down I would like to be able to use it via cable as a wired hard drive. Is that possible?
If you mean if the wireless network is down can you still access the Time Capsule's hard drive via an Ethernet connection, then the answer is yes.

Similar Messages

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    I have a netgear D6300 router, which i use to connect to internet - which is excellent so far for my downloads and games etc for my PS4 and hence am keen to continue using it. I bought the Airport time capsule for wireless storage, and when i set it up, I was advised on setup to connect the TC to my router, and it did what it needed to do.
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    I want to use TC as a backup storage for my mac (its a 3TB TC), but also, my laptop has only 500gb hard drive which is now half full from downloads, so i want to transfer all my downloads to my TC and use it as an external hard drive, and future downloads to TC - but when i connect to wifi of TC, i can copy my folder on my mac, but not paste it to TC in finder. (the only thing in TC is an image of tmg of my macbook from first backup.).
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    And I don't really want to connect TC to my router via ethernet cable, as too many cables.
    Sorry but you have very little choice.
    The TC can join to a wireless network.. but it is flakey, poor, slow and highly NOT recommended way to do things.
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    See Pondini instructions here.
    Q http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

  • Time capsule external hard drive backup

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  • AirPort Time Capsule. Read everything and tried everything. Can't get a guest network to work. Switched from bridge mode and still doesn't work. Anyone able to set up a guest network?

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  • Can i format my time capsule's hard drive from fat32 to exFAT

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  • Need help on connecting USB: 300GB external hard drive to wireless router

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  • Full Restore from Time Capsule after hard drive failure

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    Mbps = Mega bits per second
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  • Time Capsule as two functions, and wireless question.

    Hi,
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    2. Is there any other options using the Time Capsule?
    - Currently I have connected the TC to the Internet through my original Wi-Fi router (with an Ethernet cable).
    - Then created a new network in addition to my original network.
    - What I'm wondering about is if there is any chance of having the TC completely wireless and not having the Ethernet cable connected, only the power cable?
    If anyone knows anything, I would be very grateful!
    Thank you very much in advance!
    Best,
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    MrNord wrote:
    Hi,
    I've just bought an 2TB Airport Time Capsule and I am a bit curious of the user options of it.
    1. Can I use my Airport Time Capsule (5th gen) as both as an external hard disc, and using Time Machine to do backups?
    Yes, you can store files on the TC.. it was never really designed to do it.. If you mean by usb no, the TC is always network drive.
    You can plug in USB drive to the TC to maintain a separate area for files. That is somewhat safer than loading them to the internal disk. But is slow.
    TC cannot back itself up. TM cannot backup network drives. So if you store files on the TC how are you going to back them up.
    TC cannot be partititioned.
    Read Pondini about using it this way. Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
    - What I'm wondering about is if there is any chance of having the TC completely wireless and not having the Ethernet cable connected, only the power cable?
    Yes, you can make the TC completely wireless. It will become a dumb client of the existing router. When you setup like this the TC will stop working as a WAP.. it will stop being dual band.. it will stop the ethernet ports working. Basically you will reduce the TC to a hard disk..wirelessly connected to the existing router.
    All files copied to the TC will now go at half the normal wireless speed to your normal router due to double hop wireless. It no longer directly possible to communicate with it.. all packets go via the main router.
    It is already subject to corruption over wireless.. you will now have it doublely prone to corrupt.
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  • Access Time Capsule's Hard Drive from Windows Vista

    Hi, I have a Time Capsule connected to my network.... It works beautifully with with my Mac mini and Macbook Pro on wired and wireless... I can easily connect to TC's hard drive and share files between the two.... I was wondering if I can access the hard drive from my Windows Vista PC that is also connected... I tried to access (The device is classified as unknown by windows) it but it I get an error message (the properties cannot not be found) from the network setup center ... Is there an easy way so I can access TC hard drive from my PC???? Thanks...

    I don;t know about Vista, but I have no trouble with the several flavors of XP that are in the house.
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  • Time capsule +usb hard drive

    I have an issue with connecting a WD 1T external drive to a time capsule. The HD is just for data sharing and wireless access, no backup. The HD is Mac formatted and perfectly works via direct USB connection with the Macbook. After running the Airport Utility, the HD is recognized and visible by the airport utility application in the disk settings tab. Unfortunately, I cannot find the HD in the finder under the Time Capsule. Tried to disconnect and reconnect several times. Tried to uninstall and restart the time capsule. the time capsule firmware is upgraded. Tried to set pswd and access rights to the HD. Otherwise, the time capsule is perfectly working and performing backups. The HD just can't be found by the finder.
    thank you in advance for your input.

    I experienced a similar problem. I just got off the phone with Apple Support and thought I'd share the solution to the problem.
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    - Select the "Partition" tab on the right
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  • Time capsule as hard drive?

    My time capsule is set up to be my wireless router and uses time machine.  Both work great and many back ups have occurred.  But, I also want to use it as an external wireless hard drive and I cannot write to the disk.  2 Tb is a ton of space for just back up and i want to move stuff from my laptop to time capsule (my harddrive is only 125 gb) to free up space on my laptop.  I thought this would be simple and work out of the box!  What do I do to get it to be a hard drive too?

    Do not forget.. the TC itself is a backup device and there is now no backup to any files offloaded from your laptop.. And TC is not known for reliability.. and apple do not recover files.. they simply replace them.. expect no help if things go wrong.. it is a backup device only.
    So to make use of this post, how do I get it so I can access my time capsule harddrive remotely (i.e. if i am at work)  Thanks!
    Read up the iCloud btmm.. you can google it.. that is the easy way.
    If you don't want to use icloud then there are other ways.. most of which require you to have a static public IP or be able to bridge the TC to a vpn router.

  • Does Time Capsule need hard drive?

    I recently reassembled my old 07 Time Capsule to use as a wireless N router as I dont want to spend money on a dedicated router. I dont use the capsule to backup anything and was wondering if the capsule would still function as a router if i took the drive out to use as a backup drive?
    (I cant use it as is because i use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my data and it doesnt seem to like the time capsule disk)

    CCC should be able to backup to a network drive.. try an erase and reset of the TC.. use names that are SMB compatible.. short, no spaces, pure alphanumeric.. I would be surprised if it didn't work.. unless the disk is faulty.
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  • Time Machine, external hard drive and more

    Guys, I am very excited about the release of Leopard and in preparation, want to obtain separate external hards drive for use with Time Machine. I've got a Mac Pro 3Ghz with 3 Terabytes of hard disk space, 4Gig Ram. What would I need in terms of size for an external hard drive (I'm not sure if I will need all the extraneous stuff, maybe just want to back up most of the system files, etc and perhaps some other directories).
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    Hi Adam Jackson, nice site you have and thank you for taking the time/effort to provide the information. It is very informative and valuable!
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  • Using Time Capsule as Hard Drive for Videos

    This is likely a simple issue but I want to ensure that I do this properly. My internal hard drive is near capacity. I store a lot of media on my internal hard drive such as photos, music and video. I would like to move the video files (both edited and unedited) to my Time Capsule to free up space on my internal hard drive and continue to store and access/edit the photos on my internal hard drive. I would like to continue to use iMovie and other software to edit the videos which will be moved to Time Capsule. I tried to drag and drop the movie files from my hard drive to the Time Capsule Data folder but it started simply making a copy of the movie files rather than moving them entirely. I want to make sure that iMovie will "find" these files when I open the application.
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    I am not saying you cannot use it.. I am saying it is far from ideal.
    If your TC dies. as they do .. and take it to apple, they will then change the story to say that it is a backup device.. there are no parts available for the TC, no service, no repairs.. it will be replaced in warranty. Wave goodbye to your content.. as they will do nothing to recover it.. if you remove the disk, or tamper in any way you will have voided the warranty. No NAS on the market (worth the name) seals in the hard disk.
    The hard drive is a WD green.. far from the best hard drive around.. and whilst apple claim server quality.. I think their definition of servers and mine has reached snapping point. They are using MTBF from 15years ago or more.
    For things like media, where you are handling large files.. a single green drive, without raid, in a backup device on the network are slow. Set to spin down 1min after file transfer is complete.. is so far from ideal it is ridiculous.
    The reality is, Apple simply do not have another product.. a suitable one available.. and with the wide spread change to ssd, people are rapidly discovering their 128 and 256GB drives do not cut it.
    I am glad you are at least using some backup regime.. that it isn't built into the TC is IMHO another indication that it isn't what apple are claiming it to be. Indeed even the pathetic attempt at backup they had built into the v5 utility, archive to USB drive.. no increments,, always the whole disk.. extremely slow.. was removed from the v6 utility. You cannot sell a device as a NAS without any way to backup, other than using a third party product.

  • Make time capsule a hard drive

    so frustrated with this time capsule.  I want to make it my hard drive and cannot figure out how to do this......argh

    carrow10 wrote:
    I just bought a time capsule, backed up all my files and cannot figure out how to put my photos on it  PLEASE HELP ready to throw this out!
    Do you mean you want your iphoto library on the TC? That is a very bad idea.. as then there is no backup and your files are on a single hard drive on a backup device which is not warrantied to last more than 1year.. with no access to the hard disk and no repair offered by the manufacturer.
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    Here is how to setup iphoto library in this post I just did.. and why it is a bad idea.
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3415120?tstart=0

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