Backing up a external hard disk attached to Time Capsule

I have a hard drive attached to the USB port on my Time Capsule where i keep iTunes music and iPhoto Library, however my problem is that this drive does not get backed up through Time Machine. For some reason Time Machine cannot 'see' it? Any advice?

Time Machine does not support backup of a NAS device (e.g. HDD inside or connected to TC). If your USB HDD is formatted HFS+, you can connect it directly to your Mac and TM will back it up.

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Searching external hard drive attached to Time Capsule

I have a 1 TB Time Capsule which I use for backing up my 2011 MacBook Pro and for providing my WiFi. I also have a 1 TB external hard drive plugged into my Time Capsule which I can access via WiFi. I can go to Finder on my laptop and browse the folders/files on my external hard drive. It appears under Shared in the sidebar of the Finder window. I can open files from it and I can save files to the drive, so it appears to be working fine. I have hundreds of gigs of files on the drive. But when I was recently hunting for a specific file, I noticed that my Spotlight wasn't doing a very good job at finding files on my external hard drive. I tried many different searches - by name, by type, by date - and had no luck. But as I was searching, I realized that I had more files of certain file types than Spotlight was showing me. So I tried searching for files I first confirmed were actually on the external drive. And again Spotlight failed to find them. If I used a partial filename search, it would find some files that matched but not the ones I was looking for.
So, this led me to think the index is corrupt. I'm not sure if this problem is related to my recently upgrading to Lion or not, since I haven't had to search the drive in awhile. I tried to force Spotlight to recreate the index on the drive by using the Privacy panel trick (of the Spotlight Preferences) but that didn't work. I then tried to get Spotlight to recreate its entire index and I think all that did was recreate the index for my internal harddrive.
So, are there things I need to know about attaching an external hard drive to a Time Capsule that I perhaps forgot to do? Should I be able to search the drive with Spotlight? Do I have to somehow force Spotlight to look in external drive when doing a search or is it supposed to search everything it can?
I should mention I have been having a little trouble with my Time Capsule as well. I recently had to erase the drive and set up a whole new backup since the backup was failing - not sure what happened to it, but it seems to be working again now. But I did notice yesterday that my Time Machine hadn't backed up all day but it was not giving me a warning message. It was just sitting there not backing up. I had tried resetting my PRAM and after doing so, my Time Machine was back to backing up. I'm not sure if the PRAM reset helped with that or if it was just the restart of the laptiop.
One more thing - I feel like since upgrading to Lion I have had to restart my laptop more than ever. Things just start acting funny, especially when I am using Safari and I find myself resetting Safari and then restarting my laptop all the time. Odd.

It should be HFS+.. it may work with fat32 but that is a lousy format.
The actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. the TC offers SMB connection.. so it is a true file sharing device.. the format used to store the files cannot be directly read by windows but is "interpreted, translated" via the firmware of the TC.
BTW this is true of all network storage.. A NAS can store files in whatever format its OS requires.. freebsd like freenas might use XFS.. or linux use EXT2 or REISFS.. it makes no difference as long as it offers that store to the windows (and apple) network as SMB.. then windows can handle it.

HT1331 How to connect external hard disk to airport time capsule and use it throughmy ipad ?

I Have connected an external usb hard disk to airport time capsule. pleasea help me to configure it from my ipad and use it from my ipad.

You need the disk formatted HFS+ on a Mac.. you cannot format disks from the airport utility and there is no hard disk utility of course on ipad.
Once you set it to share.. then you need to load a file app to the ipad as it has no ability to natively handle files.. check out filebrowser as a standard one.. but there are several available.

IPhoto on External Hard Drive Attached to Time Capsule

Hi,
I can't seem to find the answer to this question on any of the forums.
I currently have a Mac Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. I have two iPhoto libraries, one on my MacBook Pro and one on my Mac Mini. I use the Pro as my primary library for editing the photo's and then using a USB stick transfer the photo's to my Mac Mini which is attached to my television as I use it as a media centre.
What I want to do is have just the one library which can be displayed on my Mac Mini and editied using my two laptops.
I am thinking of using an External Hard Drive attached to my Time Capsule and then use this to store one iPhoto library that I can access on the network on all three of my computers.
Is this possible to do?

I read your question a while ago and since nobody has jumped in .. let me have a go..
Yes, I should say it is possible to have your iphoto library on the TC.
It is older post but still should work.
http://gigaom.com/apple/using-time-capsule-as-a-media-drive/
Second point... don't do it.
Here is why..
1. Extremely slow. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/7
Much worse than the internal drive.
2. More importantly .. there is zero backup. If you do want to backup, you have to drag the files off the USB disk, across the network and back onto a drive connected to your computer.. Net gain.. zero.. you still have to have a disk connected to a computer.
Use the Mac Mini, a drive connected by firewire is hugely faster. Even usb drive direct from the computer over the network is faster.
And you can set it to backup via Time Machine. Remember all files on single hard disk will one day be lost.. get ready for that day.

Format for external hard drive attached to Time Capsule

What format should I used for an external hard drive attached to my Time Capsule that will allow both my Mac and PCs to read and write to it?

It should be HFS+.. it may work with fat32 but that is a lousy format.
The actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. the TC offers SMB connection.. so it is a true file sharing device.. the format used to store the files cannot be directly read by windows but is "interpreted, translated" via the firmware of the TC.
BTW this is true of all network storage.. A NAS can store files in whatever format its OS requires.. freebsd like freenas might use XFS.. or linux use EXT2 or REISFS.. it makes no difference as long as it offers that store to the windows (and apple) network as SMB.. then windows can handle it.

External Hard disk connected to time capsule not visible in windows vista

I have connected my external hard disk to Time capsule. Am Able to find the same in my MBP in finder under shared. But with windows I am not able to see this hard disk. I have installed airport utility and am able to see the time capsule. What to do?

What is the format on the external USB drive?
Have you setup the disk in workgroup correctly to the network workgroup name?
Turn on guest read and write at least to get things started. If you turn on password or changed the default password you will need to remember that.
How are you trying to access the disk? It will more than likely not show up in network shares, without deliberately using the tc ip.. so open explorer and type in \\YOUR_TC_IP_ADDRESS\Share_name
If you have installed the airport utility for windows it should also install the required files to find the disk.

Connect iMovie '11 to External Hard drive attached to Time Capsule

I have an external hard drive hooked up p my time capsule. In order to access it I have to go to finder, then time capsule then external hard drive. I see on all the tutorials that those of you who know what your doing have external hard drives on your Desktop. How do you do that? Thank you
Forgive my elmentary questions I'm very new to Ac but love it, thank you in advance

1. Select Finder > Preferences (from the Finder menu which you get to by clicking on the desktop or click finder from the Dock.)
2. Click the General settings box if not already displayed.
3. 4th item down under Show These Items on the Desktop, click to select the Connected Servers.
4. Done, click the red dot to exit Finder Preferences.

Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

In addition to Kappy's comments, the external drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in order for Time Machine to be able to back it up.

How to back up a external hard disk to time capsule?

I have a external hard disk (WD passport Mac OS extended format) connected to iMAC (OS X 10.9.3) through USB. How can I back up the hard disk to my time capsule (802.11ac 2TB)?

By default, the name of the hard drive will appear on the list of Excluded items when you open System Preferences / Time Machine / Options.
Click on the name of the hard drive to highlight it, and then click on the - (minus) button at the bottom of the Exclusions list to remove the drive from the list of items that are Excluded on backups.
Time Machine will back up both your Mac and the hard drive on the next pass.

Can Time Machine back up an external hard disk?

I store some data files in the internal hard disk together with the boot volume, and some other data in an external hard disk. I intend to buy a second external hard disk solely for Time Machine. How can I set the Time Machine to back up BOTH the internal and the first external hard disk (that contains data)? Many thanks for answering this.

Robert Greenwade wrote:
I have a LaCie 500GB LittleDisk external mobile drive which is grayed-out in the "Do Not Backup" Option and is therefore not removable from the list. DiskUtility indicates that it's partition map scheme is MBR. How can I get Time Machine to backup this disk?
You can't. You must copy the data off, reformat it, and copy it back.

Recently upgraded Mac 24" to Lion (clean install) and now no external hard disks work with Time Machine

Recently upgraded Mac 24" to Lion (clean install) and now no external hard disks work with Time Machine.
installed new internal disk first with fresh 10.7.3 Lion software. Also upgrade ram to 4GB. Work great, super fast.
BUT.... my WD 1TB firewire400 external disks no longer work with the Lion enabled machine now.
FURTHER... I read somewhere that WD is problematic with Lion but Seagate was not... so I went and bought a new 3TB Seagate GoFlex.
When it didnt work properly either, I patiently searched and found a software/firward upgrade and applied.
I re-partitioned disk to extened/journaled standard, etc.
Then assigned the particition to Time Machine. Drive turned the blue/grey color, so I thought it would work.
But, it has now been in "preparing" mode in Time Machine for HOURS....
What is up Apple? So dissappointed. Ive read these type of problems are notorious with Lion and I wish I never upgraded.
Are you trying to make issues with External disks, to drive people to iCloud? That trick ont work in me. I will not reward bad behaviour Apple.
Please provide a fix... I wasted hours/days screwing around with this, instead of using the Mac for what its intended!

Solved by Pondini, on another thread I opened...
Answer:
Sounds like either:
A directory problem on your internal HD. Verify your internal HD, and Repair any other volumes being backed-up per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Something in OSX may be damaged. You've tried the "combo," so a fresh copy of OSX (that won't disturb anything else) would be worth a try (and you don't need a tech for that). See Installing the ''combo'' update and/or Reinstalling OSX.

If I connect an external hard drive to the Time Capsule, all it automatically back it up?

If I connect an external hard drive to the Time Capsule, will it automatically back it up? Or do I need to somehow configure it in TIme Machine?

A HDD attached to the Time Capsule (TC) will not automatically back it up, nor can you configure Time Machine to do so. However, you can use the AirPort Utility to archive the contents of your TC's internal HDD to this attached drive.

I have an external hard drive from my time capsule that stopped working on me. I am attempting to access the data with a hard drive reader on my MAC. I am able to see the drive in disk utility and under system info USB. But I am unable to access the data.

I have an external hard drive from my time capsule that stopped working on me. I am attempting to access the data with a hard drive reader on my MAC. I am able to see the drive in disk utility and under system info USB. But I am unable to access the data and it does not show on the desktop when connected.

Ok if disk utility was able to verify the drive I doubt there is any problem.. are you trying to open a TM backup??
You need to mount the sparsebundle then check the actual info inside the bundle.
Don't use disk warrior.. if the disk has verified then unless you deliberately deleted files there is nothing that is going to do.
Pondini has a lot of stuff about getting access to the sparsebundle.
http://pondini.org/TM/17.html
But if you have copied info to the TC that is now gone.. and the disk is ok.. I am not sure.. the TC will not have deleted the files itself.

Backing up external hard drive (connected to time capsule) using time machi

hi. don't know if this is possible or not - am now using an external hard drive to store all my movies as my macbook pro's hard drive is filling up and i'm running out of space (it's 250gb). have created a separate itunes on the external hard drive and stream these movies to my apple tv. the external hard drive is connected to my time capsule and access it on the macbook pro that way wirelessy. is there a way to now back up my movies on the external hard drive to the time capsule using time machine (that it's already connected to)?

Welcome to the discussions, squire78!
If your external drive is connected directly to your computer, you can have Time Machine backup both your computer and the external drive.
If the external drive is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule, Time Machine cannot backup this drive.

If i connect an external hard drive to my time capsule will it be backed up on time capsule?

I recently connected an external hard drive to my time capsule using the usb port on the time capsule. Will that external hard drive be included in the time machine back up? If not, how do I include it?

Time Machine cannot back up a hard drive that is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule.
If you want to backup the hard drive, it must be connected to your Mac to be included in Time Machine backups. Additional settings will need to be made if you do this, so post back for details if you need them.
If you cannot connect the drive to your Mac, then you will need to use another backup program like Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper or Chronosync to backup the hard drive to the Time Capsule.

Backing up a external hard disk attached to Time Capsule

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