Can I use Time Capsule to both wirelessly back up 2 Macs and as a file storage device that both Macs can access wirelessly?

Question

In a perfect world I’d like to be able to download movies and music to my computer, both through iTunes and other ways, but rather than transfer everything to a portable hard drive and then plug the hard drive into a media box to get it on the TV, simply be able to wirelessly move it to the TV, or in the case of music the airport express or some such system.
I’d even like to take this one step further and have a central drive that the home computers are networked to, or at least can access files from (wirelessly), have it backed up to the cloud, and have it be the ‘hub’ for files, music and video.
Can Time Capsule serve this purpose?

Answer 1

Can Time Capsule serve this purpose?
No .. it cannot.
Here is why.
The TC can be pressed into service.. it is not designed for it.. and in fact is really poor mainly due to no backup..
You can plug in a USB drive which is slow but does work fine for wireless access.. ie wireless is even slower than the slow disk.
Take the following into account.
Store files on the TC.
This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no control. In fact the TC is so lacking in controls for even the router side.. that you cannot do more than the most basic of setups.
The following are controls on the hard disk side.
Reformat it. You can name the share. You can do a full archive of the whole disk. This will go at a speed of aprox. 30-50GB/Hr so calculate how long an archive of a full 2TB will take.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
          Even apple btw say don’t do it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32           it adds network drives.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198
5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
A much better albeit slower device is the WD MyCloud.
It has no inbuilt wireless but you will just plug it into your wireless router.. hence wireless access.
You should still not use it to store iphoto library.
And the idea of streaming wireless from a central store basically is not going to work. Wireless networking is too slow, and has many limitations.
Buy a Mini and use that as a HTPC or media computer and use it plugged directly into the TV.