Archive Time Capsule to multiple USB drives

I've read the thread
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9119146&#9119146
and I'm wondering, since we backup 4 computers (MBP, 2 MB's, Imac--no more than a 100 GB on any one of them) to a single TC, is it possible to archive a 1 TB TC to 4 individual 320 GB My Drives that we already own? Would it be better just to clone the individual computers to the 4 drives and can that be done with them plugged into a usb hub into the TC?

Unfortunately, in order to backup a TM backup you have to clone the drive using the Restore option of Disk Utility. DU will not clone a large drive to multiple smaller drives.
Although you could connect four drives in daisy-chain to the TC it would make more sense to connect each drive directly to the computers. This would be much faster than trying to backup wirelessly to USB, and even faster if you use FireWire.

Similar Messages

Time Capsule and multiple USB drives ... no show

Hi,
probably one of the Apple wizards can enlighten me here, as also the information in this forum seems inconclusive.
I have a Time Capsule, and everything is fine with that.
I can connect one drive via USB, and this drive shows.
However, I seem to be unable to connect two drives, regardless of HUB I use (I tried two powered and two passive ones fron three different vendors), and which sequence I turn these things on and off.
The first drive that is connected shows.
If I connect the hub with already spinning drives, it is nondeterministic which one will show up.
But only one will show.
Is this expected behaviour?
I find references on the Apple site and throughout this forum that multiple drives are possible.
Greetings,
- Thomas

This is not an answer, but it seemed like a good place to post my latest experience.
I got the Time Capsule and connected three drives to it via USB hub. It worked fine for awhile but then I realized that the backups were not running.
It was a struggle. I finally reinitialized the TC and then got another software program other than Time Machine to run the backups.
So that worked, but now when I plug the other drives in by USB the TC drops off. I can't connect to it.
The TC shows up on the network, but when I plug other drives in to it, it drops off the network.
I finally worked around the problem (with fingers crossed!). I plugged in a couple of the drives to one of my older macs and networked to that drive and the backups seem to be running.
The I plugged one of the drives in to my older Airport Extreme via USB and that backup is running via wireless.
Then if I leave the TC alone with nothing connected to it, I can run a backup to it.
But it is frustrating. First, I could run the backups with TM to the attached drives, no problem. Now, I cannot use the drives connected to the TC via USB. I have to connect them to something else completely.
And that is after the backups stopped working under TM.
It seems like the Holy Grail - a backup program that works.
For today, I think I have worked around my problem, but it is disappointing. I was hoping the TC would allow me to connect drives to it by USB and run the backup through TM. Now TC is basically a networked drive. (Forgot to mention that i am not using it for wireless connection.) I turned that function off and it just a networked drive.

Time Capsule Hangs with USB Drive Connected after installing 10.5.6 update

The 10.5.6 update basically made my External USB Disk connected to the Time Capsule unusable. I've repaired the permissions as suggested in other posts - this did not fix the problem.
I was unable to perform any incremental backups initially after the 10.5.6 update, so I archived my sparsebundle and created a new one by doing a full fresh backup - which completed successfully. However, after the backup, I was unable to connect to the Time Capsule or the USB drive connected to the Time Capsule via Finder - when trying to connect, my computer hangs and I'm forced to do a hard restart of BOTH my computer AND the Time Capsule, if I just restart one or the other the problem persists. If I let the connection attempt run long enough I get an "Error Code: -8072" message and still have to do a hard restart. After the hard restart of my computer and Time Capsule I'm able to connect to the Time Capsule and the USB drive connected to Time Capsule just fine. However, once the Time Machine backup runs again - the same problem returns, I can no longer access the Time Capsule or the USB drive connected to Time Capsule via Finder and have to do a hard restart of BOTH my computer AND Time Capsule. This 10.5.6 update has been havoc, anyone have the same troubles or ideas for resolving this? Before updating to 10.5.6 my system was working flawlessly with Time Capsule and the connected USB drive.
UPDATE: I've just verified that this problem only occurs with my external LaCie Hard Drive connected to Time Capsule via USB. If I disconnect my LaCie Hard Drive from the Time Capsule and restart the Time Capsule everything works fine (backups, access to Time Capsule Disk from Finder). If I connect the LaCie Hard Drive via USB to the Time Capsule, I am able to access the LaCie Hard Drive in Finder UNTIL the next Time Machine backup. After the first Time Machine backup with the USB drive connected, I can no longer access the USB drive from Finder - Finder hangs and eventually produces "Error Code: -8072". If I disconnect the USB drive, then plug it back in - Finder no longer hangs and I can access the drive connected to Time Capsule until the next backup occurs.
Anybody have ANY ideas? This worked fine before the 10.5.6 update!

I am having a similar problem. Never tried it before installing 10.5.6, but have a Time Capsule (500GB) with a 1TB WD MyBook Essential Edition connected via USB. Hardware is password protected by authorized users of network and needs separate login to access. When I initially set it up, it worked fine (though too difficult to set up). The WD storage drive showed up in Finder window as a subset of the Time Capsule after clicking on the Time Capsule icon. I had an "-8072" error message yesterday that I ignored, but then the file contents of the WD storage drive took forever to be viewed in Finder (though video files could be accessed wirelessly). Today started having a problem... coincidentally?... after a Time Machine backup, and got the message: "The operation could not be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -8072)." Now I am unable to get into the WD drive when I click on "Connect As" on the Time Capsule icon in the Finder menu... I just get the -8072 error. I no longer even see the Time Capsule disk as a subset of the Time Capsule icon in the Finder Toolbar.
What is going on???

Can I use a time capsule as a usb drive on a windows 7 machine?

Can I use a time capsule as a usb drive on a windows 7 machine?

No, but you can use it as an Ethernet or wireless drive.
(60698)

Moving Time Machine backups from Time Capsule to External USB Drive

Hi all,
hoping someone out there can help I'm trying to move my time machine backups from my old Time Capsule to my external USB drive. I've already used the Airport Utility to "archive" my Time Capsule to a USB connected WD MyBook Elite.
Right now my WD MyBook Elite has both the archive, and recent (roughly 5 backups) of both my MacBook & MacMini. I've tried to follow the seemingly simple steps located in the FAQ's here [URL="http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html#id22"]Copy NETWORK backups to be used LOCALLY[/URL] , but I cannot past step 1.
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
Any advice?
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
Thank you in advance.

Dark Heart wrote:
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
That's not referring to the sparse bundle you're copying FROM, but the new volume you just formatted on the USB drive you're copying TO.
If you didn't just format the partition, that box may not be shown -- it not, there's no problem and you don't need to do anything in that step.
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
I'm not sure what you mean by that: you cannot combine the backups of two different Macs. You can put them both on the same hard drive, either in two different partitions, or, if any are going to be backed-up over a network, in a sparse bundle.
If I've misunderstood, please clarify exactly what you're trying to do.

Can't archive Time Capsule to external USB disk

I have a Time Capsule 1TB to which a bunch of Macs back up. I have also set up a 1TB USB drive with one partition as a backup drive (the other partition is for a bootable clone of my desktop).
Soon after setting up the TC/external disk, I had archived the TC backup to the external disk using the Archive function under Disks in Airport Utility. When I reconnected my disk a few days later, it mounted all right, as it showed up as an Airport disk in Airport Utility. But when I go to Archive, the Destination pulldown is grey, and shows "No Airport disks available".
I've unmounted the disk and run Repair Disk under Disk Utility, and the volumes checked out fine. I even tried downgrading the Airport firmware to 7.4.1, but no change.
Given the reported failures of TC, I am very nervous about not having a backup for the Time Capsule.
Please help.

Solved. The disk is not available to archive till there is enough free space for a complete archive. So I had to connect the drive to my iMac, delete the earlier archive, and reconnect it to the Time Capsule. Then it showed up. Now that's risky, since during archiving (12+ hours for my setup) if the TC goes down, all backups are gone.
Feature request: Could a future version of Airport Utility allow selective replacement of archived backups?

Trying to move backup from Time Capsule to external USB drive

As per the title, I'm getting rid of my Time Capsule and am trying to move the backups to an external USB drive instead.
Initially I used AirPort Utility 5.6.1 to archive to the USB drive. However, when I switched TM back on, it wanted to do a full backup rather than incremental.
I then found Pondini's very useful page at http://pondini.org/TM/18.html and decided to try it this method instead. It also made me realise that I'd incorrectly formatted the new drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when in fact the TM backup was case sensitive. So I thought this could have been the issue, but still persued Pondini's method. I formatted the drive again, this time in the correct format, and followed Pondini's guide, copying the Backups.backupdb folder from the sparse bundle to the new drive, which completed fine. But unfortunately, TM again wanted to backup everything from scratch when I turned it back on.
Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

So it looks like I was wrong on both counts.
I misunderstood AirPort Utility's archive feature. I failed to realise that archiving actually puts the sparse bundle in a separate folder called "Data Archive" on the new drive, so of course TM won't continue using that existing backup.
It would also seem that I was incorrect in thinking that Pondini's method didn't work. When I tried it again, I realised that TM was in fact continuing the backup. Initially it looks like it's going to do a big backup, but actually only backed up a few hundred megabytes, then everything was back to normal.
Incidentally, I've also found that if you do use AirPort Utility to archive the backup, you can effectively using Pondini's "How can I copy my TM backups to a different location?" by mounting the spare bundle in the "Data Archive" folder, then dragging Backups.backupdb to the root of the drive.
I just wanted to post this for completeness and in case it helps anyone in the future.

Time capsule or Airport & usb drive

HI I hope someone can give me some clear advice please.
I currently own a WD mybookworld drive and it does not support lion for backups on time machine and they are struggling to produce a firmware update and i need to back up my data ASAP.
Ihave been reading up on time machine and it seems they are prone to failure,so im considering buying an external usb drive and Airport extreme and go down that route.
My current router is supplied by O2 who in the past say i must use their router (not really sure why). Is it possible to connect the airport extreme to the existing router or does it need to be just the one router.The current one is hardwired to a pc and i use my macbook pro etc wirelessly off it.
Any advice will be gratefully recieved
Regards Adrian

PING11 wrote:
Are time machines as unreliable as i have been reading ?
the early models were a bit flakey, but the problems have since been ironed out.
some people say it's not if they will fail but a matter of when which doesn't fill me with confidence.
this forum (and others similar to it) are like hospitals. folks with problems come here, but that doesn't mean the whole world is sick.
that said, ALL devices will fail eventually. therefore it is imperative to have more than one backup.
a lot of folks use time machine backups (to external HD's or time capsule) and use e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner to backup their Macs (or imporatnt files) to yet another external HD.

Problem with Time Capsule recognizing three USB hub hard drives at one time

I attached three external drives to my Time Capsule using a USB hub, but it only wants to recognize one drive at a time. I know that all three work individually with Time Capsule and the USB hub, because when I turn off the two other drives the third appears. I can turn these on and off sequentially, and all are individually recognized, but only one at a time. Does anyone know what I would need to do to get Time Capsule to recognize all three drives running simultaneously on the network? I turned Time Capsule on and off, to see if it would then recognize the three drives, but it didn't help. Could the hub be the problem, that it is underpowered? I do have an AC adapter on it. Any help would be appreciated.

I have the same issue and would love to know if you resolved it with a powered USB hub. Otherwise, i may just return to one external hard drive--though I will miss the double-backup idea. Anyone try the hub change?

HT201250 How to backup the Time Capsule to an external drive using Time Machine?

Most of my data is on my Time Capsule since the hard drive on my iMac is too small for my music/movies/pictures and also so multiple devices can wirelessly access the data. I want to back up the files from my iMac and the Time Capsule on an external hard drive using the Time Machine. However, it seems that the Time Machine ignores the Time Capsule as a data source. How can I get this to work?

No, I don't believe this solves your problem.
TIme Machine can be used with a Time Capsule as a backup solution from connected macs and their drives but not from network drives, NAS or Time Capsules.
Thus, if you store files for LAN access on a TC internal drive, and want to back them to the USB/external drive attached to that TC, you cannot use Time Machine to do so.
Time Machine has not way of backing up ANY Time Capsule or NAS or WInPC or other networked drive, as far as I can tell. You will have to use some other backup software.
This is exactly what I bought the TC for myself (tried to use the internal drive on the TC as a NAS for my LAN, storing my music and photos and documents and bought a LaCie 2TB USB3 extneral drive to connect to the TC and hoped to be able to use Time Machine to backup the internal drive to the LaCie drive....but this does not work, as TM cannot backup from a network drive or TC device.

Time Capsule as external hard drive

Hi -- Hope I'm not duplicating a thread here, but I couldn't find anything precisely addressing this question.
I recently upgraded to Leopard and bought a Time Capsule to serve as wi-fi base station and backup drive. As I understand it, Time Machine's backups are basically snapshots: whatever's on my computer's hard drive at the moment gets saved on top of previous backups, rather than being integrated with them.
So: If I want to maintain master libraries of songs, photos and documents on the Time Capsule, will I be able to do that? In other words, if I back up my data, then delete some songs or photos from the computer's hard drive to open up space for new files, will the next backup contain the new files but not the ones I deleted? My concern is not having to switch among multiple backup copies to get to all of my files.
Ideally I'd like to use the Time Capsule or another external drive as a master iTunes jukebox -- save my entire music collection there and either play music from there over speakers or use it to swap songs out on my iPod. Is it possible to do this using Time Machine/Time Capsule?

Assume deleted files will eventually be deleted. In fact, if you load and delete a file within 7 days, the TM backup may not exist. TM is NOT for archiving.
To best understand what Time Machine is and how it works, click on the following link and read the primer:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html

Time Capsule vs. 2TB drive

I'm looking at upgrading my backup drive and using either the 1TB Time capsule or a third party 2TB external drive. I already have a wireless router-is there any advantage to using Time Capsule over a 2TB drive (which costs less and has double the storage capacity)? We do have 3 Macs, but I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

What about something like the Micronet G-Force MegaDisk?
Here's a description:
Fantom Drives G-Force MegaDisk NAS is the latest addition to the G-Force MegaDisk family of storage products, packing a dual core processor, dual SATA300-NCQ enabled disk mechanisms, dual USB expansion ports, and a gigabit ethernet network connection in the same compact, heat dissipating aluminum enclosure.
The G-Force MegaDisk NAS features CIFS/SMB, NFS, and FTP connectivity, USB external disk and printer sharing, iTunes server, and an unattended bittorrent download manager. The G-Force Megadisk NAS supports robust RAID disk configurations including RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD, and SPAN, all monitored and managed via a universal web interface.
Award-winning NTI Shadow offers real-time, continuous backup in addtion to scheduled backup to virtually any storage device. Its powerful yet easy to use interface offers customers the ability to securely backup and safeguard their valuable data files. NTI Shadow also offers custom file type filtering, version control, drag and drop file restoring, and more. NTI Shadow supports Windows XP/2000, Macintosh OS X v 10.2.8+, and U3 Smart Devices.

Please Help - Time Capsule and External hard drive Issues

Recently, I switched from Comcast to AT&T uverse as my internet provider and I started experiencing problems.
(1) I have a 4th generation Apple Time Capsule which I am using as my router.
(2) Connected to the Apple Time Capsule - USB - is an external hard drive (not for backup with Time Machine.)
(3) I have a 2011 Macbook pro which I use to access my file on my time capsule and external hard drive.
(4) I had been using my AT&T portable Hotspot from my cell phone to get internet access on my MacBook pro from remote locations to gain access to my external hard drive which is attached to the time capsule.
(5) On August 2, 2014, I switched from Comcast to AT&T and had the AT&T turn off the router function. (I have been using the router from my apple time capsule)
(6) Under Network I switched to bridge mode.
(7) And since August 2, 2014 my time capsule has not been backup.
THE PROBLEM - I need to be able to use the hotspot function from my cell phone to gain access on the external hard drive using my MacBook Pro which I was able to do before. Now it is showing time capsule under finder but unable to connect.
Do I need to reset my Time Capsule since I have a new service provider. Everything else works fine - meaning able to get internet signal but unable to access my external hard drive and backup my time capsule. Please HELP.

(5) On August 2, 2014, I switched from Comcast to AT&T and had the AT&T turn off the router function. (I have been using the router from my apple time capsule)
(6) Under Network I switched to bridge mode.
(7) And since August 2, 2014 my time capsule has not been backup.
If you got ATT to turn off router function in their modem..
Then 6. is wrong.. You cannot have the Network switched to bridge mode..
You must have it set to dhcp and nat.
That is also why you cannot backup.. the TC is off the network.
Please change back to router mode in the TC.
Ensure the internet tab shows dhcp and you create a wireless network.
Then power down the TC... power down the ATT modem.. wait about 20min (you can try 5min.. but it might not be long enough).
Power up the ATT modem.. wait 2min for things to flash lights in de right blinkin order.. then start the TC.
Open the airport utility and make sure your TC captured the public IP and is now working as the router.
That should fix that end of it.. the hotspot end??
Tell us what happens.

Using external hard drive on a Time Capsule as a network drive for PCs.

I own a Macbook Air and am using a 2TB Time Capsule router. I am currently using for automatic backups for my Macbook Air.
I also own 2 PC laptops for the rest of the family. Would it be possible to use an external hard drive connected to the USB port of the Time Capsule as a network drive for the PCs? I want to share files between the two PCs.
Thanks

Yes, you can do that.. although it is not necessarily as straight forward as you might think it should be.
1. The TC has to be running SMB compatible names. short, no spaces, pure alphanumeric.
2. The disk must be formatted to file system the TC can read. HFS+ or Fat32.. but the HFS+ is vastly superior.. the actual format is irrelevant from sharing point of view as it is still shared via SMB to the network.
3. It is slow.. half the speed of the same drive plugged into your computer.. although if the connection is over wireless that is probably irrelevant.
4. You might need a powered hub to get the drive to work.. Apple underpower the USB.. and even a powered disk still won't work.
5. There are some issues with the TC getting the USB drive to work.. too many factors to say you will have issues or not.. but be aware this is not as straight forward as it could be. or should be.
6. If you want to share files.. you can always share them directly.. pc to pc or pc to mac.. there is no necessity to do it via a network store.. You can also use the 2TB internal drive.. create a disk image and you can then store you data in that. Internal drive is much more reliable and faster.
See http://pondini.org/TM/TCQ3.html

Trying to restore from time capsule to nes hard drive, keeps looking for disks ! Can you help

ccan't restore from time capsule to new hard drive, after changing to new HD, after calculating required space to restore it keeps looking for disks! Have have put original OS X install disk 1 in it won't Eject , any help

The very best way to do this is with ethernet to the existing router. Put the TC in bridge mode manually.
Then plug it in to existing router.. we recommend LAN router to WAN on the TC but even that is not 100% necessary.
If you want to link by wireless, to a non-apple router that is bad.. recommend strongly against it. Join a wireless network is super slow.
If you have a desktop Mac you can plug it directly into the Mac by ethernet.
But we need to know how the Mac is connected to internet.
I have given some info on one layout here.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4817218?tstart=30
If you end up relying on an old TC. And any of the models from Gen1-3.. and increasingly Gen4 have all reached EOL.. they can die suddenly and either take your files with them or be hard to recover. Also a TC is slow cf a USB external drive even, which is more reliable. Considering a 2TB is <$100 I would be careful using an old TC simply because you got it free.

Archive Time Capsule to multiple USB drives

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