External drive conntected to Time Capsule keeps losing connection

I've been having this problem since I bought my TC over one year ago. Other than this everything works fine (aside from the occasional need for a restart).
I have an external 500GB drive attached to my 500GB TC via usb. I use the TC strictly for backups and the other drive to host my media files. When I want to use those files I switch on the drive. Only about half of the time does that work. When it does work everything is fine. I see the drive in the finder as expected.
When it doesn't work, I can see the drive name in the finder. But if I click to go into the folder, I get an error saying that the connection cannot be found.
It shows up in the Airport Utility as normal.
Powering the drive off and on does not help.
Relaunching the finder doesn't help either.
The only way I can connect to the drive again is to either logoff and log back into my mac, or restart the TC.
It seems that my computer is remembering some kind of network disk mounting settings that don't get refreshed when I turn on the drive, but then do get refreshed when I logoff and back in. Does anyone know how I could force that refresh to happen? Has anyone had this problem before?
Any suggestions would be much appreciated
PS all my software and firmware are the latest.
Thanks.

OS X fan
This helped meRe: Time Capsule keeps losing connection in Finder
Dec 17, 2013 4:08 AM (in response to whootang12)
Left click on the Finder icon from the Dock and click "Connect to server...", go to recent server and click on your Airport Time Capsule.
THANK YOU!!!!
This solved it for me!

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I want to add more capacity on hard drive of time capsule. Can i add a normal usb driver? I will see it as an external drive in the time capsule network? It will work as fast than time capsule? Thanks

I want to add more capacity on hard drive of time capsule. Can i add a normal usb driver? I will see it as an external drive in the time capsule network? It will work as fast than time capsule? Thanks

Can i add a normal usb driver?
Yes, but be sure that the drive is formatted correctly for Mac in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
I will see it as an external drive in the time capsule network?
The drive will appear as a shared network drive, like the Time Capsule.
It will work as fast than time capsule?
No, the drive will operate at about half or 50% of the speed of the Time Capsule.

Is there way to store my movies on my Time Capsule instead of laptop drive? I will then run an external drive to backup Time Capsule.

Is there way to store and run my iMovies on my Time Capsule instead of laptop drive? I will then run an external drive to backup Time Capsule as my backup. I want to dothis because my hard drive is full and I still have many movies to import form camcorder.

I do not know about iMovie, but the experts in the iPhoto and Aperture support areas strongly advise against trying to install your "working" image library on the Time Capsule.
You might want to ask about this in the iMovie support area.
iMovie for Mac
It would be much easier and much better if you use the external drive to connect to your Mac via USB or FireWire and then store the movies there.
Then, Time Machine will back up both your Mac and the external hard drive automatically once you tell it to do so.

Is it possible to connect an external drive to the time capsule that I could use to store and access my primary iTunes files?

I would like to move my music files to an external drive that my iMac iTunes could access wirelessly and I'm wondering if it is possible to do so through connecting a drive to my Time Capsule.

This can be done....but if you move your iTunes Media folder to the drive that is connected to the Time Capsule, you might first want to think about how you will backup these important files.
Time Machine cannot backup the files back to the Time Capsule, so you will need to use a commercial backup application like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to copy the files back to the Time Capsule drive.
As long as you plan to add a hard drive, you might want to consider an alternate plan:
Connect a hard drive directly to your Mac using USB or FireWire and move the iTunes Media Library there. Then, Time Machine will back up both your Mac and the hard drive, so you have original copies on one drive and backups on another.
Whatever you decide, be sure to follow the correct instructions to move the iTunes Media Folder. You cannot simply drag and drop.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

How to back up external drive attached to time capsule

How can I backup an external 1 TB drive containing my itunes library that I have attached to my time capsule usb port to my time capsule?
Over the weekend I purchased a timecapsule and I love it! I thought the idea of not having to mount and unmount my usb external drive from my laptop would help with my itunes library intergrity (keep loosing large chunks of music). I have now plugged the drive into the timecapsule usb port but the only configuration time machine allows that I can find is to tell it what not to back up on my laptop and now that the external drive is not attached to my mac it doesn't even appear. what now? I want to get this completed prior to upgrading to snow leopard.

go system preferences > time machine > options and make sure the external is not excluded from backups.
that's it. time machine should automatically backup any drive connected directly to your computer (unless it is told not to and given there's sufficient space on the TC).
JGG

Can I use Time Machine to backup to partition on external drive and a Time Capsule?

Trying to plan in advance...
I was wondering if I can (with a laptop) use Time Machine for both:
1. Creating Time Machine backups on a partiion of an external drive. My plan was going to create 2 partitions: one to be used for Time Machine backups of another external hard drive (that holds all of my media) and then the other partition was going to be a bootable clone of my internal drive (totally separate from Time Machine)
and
2. Also use Time Machine for my Time Capsule, to create Time Machine backups of my internal drive.
Is this possible? I had heard that you can't use TM to make backups to a partition on an external drive, AND use it for another drive (like Time Capsule) at the same time. But I would think that this should be possible-
Thanks everyone-

Yes you can, and if you are using Mountain Lion it's easy.
If you are using Snow Leopard (as in your profile - this is the Mountain Lion forum), you have to manually select the backup volume each time. Tedious, but possible.
Read Apple Support Communities contributor Pondini's FAQ on that subject: "Rotating" Time Machine backup disks

External Drive attached to Time Capsule failing to work consistently

This problem has been occurring since we started using an external drive attached to our Time Capsule as a backup destination for Time Machine over a year ago:
Everything will be fine for a few days or weeks, but at some point backups stop working. This sometimes gives errors (Time Machine could not complete backup, I think) or sometimes it just looks like the backup has gotten stuck (reporting 235.32 MB of 22.86 GB for days). With the latter problem it seems to cause other issues with the OS like System Preferences not responding anymore and certain Save As... dialog boxes not appearing.
Every time this happens, what I do is disconnect all users through AirPort Utility and then plug the drive into one of the computers and run Disk Utility on it.
Each time, without fail, there is the error "Incorrect number of Access Control Lists" stating it should be 0 and it really is something in the thousands usually.
The volume is always repaired successfully, but then the cycle continues.
We've tried a couple of different drives and it always ends up happening.
I've seen other posts with similar problems, but nothing laid out exactly like my problem, and no real fix for it.

Yes, indeed. Let me give some background.
I have an old Gigabit AEBS (7.4.2) as my main router with a Gigabit connection to my Time Capsule (500GB, 7.4.2) running in bridge mode. Both run as wireless access points for my network "Hogwarts." I backup several machines to the TC's internal drive with absolutely no problems whatsoever. Practically bulletproof. I backup two media heavy machines to the external drive attached to the TC. The drive is a Western Digital My Book 1.5TB that before the TC came into our lives, ran flawlessly when attached to my iMac as a backup destination. The media machines are Dumbledore, my mini running as a HTPC, and Tonks, my wife's laptop busting with pics and video of our son. Once I started backups to this drive connected to the TCs, I started to have problems with backup. That's the situation. Here's what I've tried to correct it.
I had a year's worth of backups. Went to the Genius Bar who recommended starting over after they checked out my setup over Back to My Mac. They couldn't find anything wrong and supposed my backups were hopelessly corrupted. So I followed their advice with Dumbledore and archived those for Tonks. Trying to start over with Dumbledore fails within the first 75 of 500 GB to backup every time. I've redirected syslog reporting at Debug level from the TC to my iMac and formatted the external drive several times. I have done disk repairs on the drive, Dumbledore's sparse bundle, and the TM volume contained in the sparse bundle. I've only gotten the "too many ACL's" error. The WD drive comes with SmartWare software I've used to check the S.M.A.R.T. status (100% OK), test the drive (100% OK) and deactivate the Virtual CD partition used to, among other things, encrypt the drive. My drive is unencrypted and have made it as plain vanilla as I can: GUID with one 1.5 TB Mac OS Extended Journaled partition.
What I've noticed when I check the status of the TC when the bakcups fail is that the drive becomes unmounted with no logged error. The client computer either hangs Finder or reports the backup failed. My wife has become so frustrated with hard restarts that she has turned off Time Machine until I fix this. Airport Utility simply no longer sees the drive. The client computer can reconnect over AFP but the drive will not be accessible unless I restart the TC. Then if I do some Disk Utility repairs on the external drive and on the virtual volumes it contains, I can start backups again...until the next spontaneous unmounting of the drive. Which leaves me talking to you as a completely frustrated and disappointed Apple user. This is so not Apple quality experience.
The only shot in the dark I've seen is that the TC repeatedly updates its DHCP lease every 5 minutes or so despite having a 4 hour TTL. Weird.

I want to attach an external drive to my time capsule, what format should i select for it?

I have a WD external drive that I want to add to my Time Capsule. It had previously been used to store TV shows on. I need to reformat it for the Time Capsule. What format do I choose?

Format in Mac OS Extended (Journaled), which is also known as HFS+.

Can I use Time Capsule as external drive with a Time Capsule?

I have a Time Capsule set up with AirPort and it works well for backups. Can I buy a second Time Capsule and plug it into this TC with ethernet and use it as an external drive?

jshafer wrote:
So, you are recommending using a USB drive into the TC or using an NAS plugged into the ethernet port...is that correct?
Yes, correct. USB drive is not fast but it is still mostly going to be faster than wireless.. it is of course slower than ethernet.. so what you are using on your clients dictates what is the rate determining step of the network.
Am I correct in thinking that an NAS using ethernet connection would be faster than USB?
Does a true NAS have its own internal backup system?
Yes, to both.. but remembering the client has to be able to make use of it. ie is also ethernet.
True NAS is faster than TC as they use RAID systems.. more reliable.. you can replace disks in the raid.. TC is sealed.. and all decent NAS will be able to back themselves up to a USB drive.. on incremental basis.. which is major shortcoming when people try and use the TC in this role.

Problems with USB external drive attached to time capsule

Hi,
I bought a WD 1 TB my book as a supplemental backup drive, as I've pretty much maxed out the space in my 500 GB TC with backups form two macbooks. It's attached to the TC via the USB 2.0. For the first few months everything worked fine. Now suddenly neither machine can access the WD drive. It shows up in the Aiport utility but not in the finder. When I plug it directly into one of the macbooks it accesses fine, but I bought it specifically to use as additional network backup drive.
Where have I gone wrong? I updated the firmware for the WD drive, and everything appears fine on the TC and the macbooks. I poked around on the forums and found many a complaint about the WD drives, but I couldn't find a solution to my particular problem.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

The first thing to try is a nice long power cycle of the network if you have not already done this.
Power everything down, order is not important. Wait 5-10 minutes.
Start the modem first and let it run 4-5 minutes by itself. Then start the next device connected to the modem the same way. Keep powering up each device the same way until all devices are powered on.
Any help?
If no luck, the next thing to try is connect the WD drive directly to your computer and "Verify Disk" using Disk Utility.
Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
Then click "Repair disk"
If indicated, "Repair Permissions" on the disk.
Eject the disk and then you'll have to do the power cycle all over again and plug the device back into the USB port on the Time Capsule.

Time capsule keeps losing internet connection

I seem to keep losing the internet connection, and this seems to be when Time Capsule is doing backups. It is fine most of the time, it seems to have an IP address, but I can't connect to the internet. This seems to happen when it is doing backups. Have I got the time capsule set up correctly? I am using it with BT Home Hub which is also a wireless router, and I have set up Time Capsule to join the same wireless network. Most of the time it works fine. It also works fine when connected via ethernet, so I don't think there is anything wrong with the Time Capsule, maybe just the way it's set up. Or does it always behave like that? Can anyone offer any suggestions?

I have Snow Leopard 10.6.3, I don't have 10.6.4 yet though am just about to install it, so it can't just be related to 10.6.4.
This morning when I booted up, I had lost my desktop background picture, the clock was wrong and my keychains seemed to be messed up. Nothing else seemed to be wrong, but I restored a backup anyway, and repaired the keychains. I don't know whether this had anything to do with Time Capsule or not, but I have my suspicions. At the moment I have connected the Mac to the Time Capsule by ethernet, and that seems to be OK, but I'd like to be able to put the Time Capsule in another room, to extend the range of the wireless network. I did wonder if there could be interference between Time Capsule and the Home Hub, as they are quite close to each other.
I do not seem to have any problems when using my Macbook Pro.

Why does my new external drive used by time machine keep starting when no backup is being done

Got a new 2 TB Seagate GoFlex for Mac and run it over WireFire 800 because the old Western Digital was having a hard time starting up which held up the boot. I have a 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo desktop with 3 GB of RAM. Running OS X 10.6.8.
Seems like the every 10 minutes or so, I hear the external drive start up even when no backup is scheduled. I spend most of my time in a Win XP Parallels virtual machine.
What's up?

Why would you say that? The drive has passed several Seagate verifys. It does not exhibit any issues. It is doing backups and I copied my 39 GB virtual machine to it with no issues.
Seems to me a drive does not just start up by itself, no?

Time Capsule Keeps Dropping Connection

Hi, I've had trouble keeping connectivity with the Time Capsule. This is relatively recent. Everything was fine for over a year. Now it will drop connection in the middle of an internet search and look for available connections. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Have you reset the TC to factory and redone the setup? This is a major fix for a lot of issues. Simple fact is the TC needs a boot in the pants every now and then.
I have unplug the power cord & plug it back in.
That is not a factory reset..
This is a factory reset.
Factory reset universal
Power off the TC.. ie pull the power cord or power off at the wall.. wait 10sec.. hold in the reset button.. be gentle.. power on again still holding in reset.. and keep holding it in for another 10sec. You may need some help as it is hard to both hold in reset and apply power. It will show success by rapidly blinking the front led. Release the reset.. and wait a couple of min for the TC to reset and come back with factory settings. If the front LED doesn’t blink rapidly you missed it and simply try again. The reset is fairly fragile in these.. press it so you feel it just click and no more.. I have seen people bend the lever or even break it. I use a toothpick as tool.
N.B. None of your files on the hard disk of the TC are deleted.. this simply clears out the router settings of the TC.
How is the TC setup in the network?
not sure what you mean by this, followed the prompts when i set it up.
Open the airport utility when the TC is working.. click on the TC and take a screenshot of the summary info.
Then click edit and go to the network tab.. take a screenshot of that to and post it.
What is the link speed between the computer and the TC??
Please run the wireless diagnostics and then the utility which is part of the diagnostics and tell us or post that as well.
About Wireless Diagnostics - Apple Support

Backup an external hd plugged to time capsule

Hi,
I plugged an external drive to the time capsule so that I can use it as a network drive and access my iTunes and iPhoto libraries (both on the external drive) wirelessly from my MBP. I wonder how I could backup that data. Pls suggest me a solution. Thanks.

Jolly Giant wrote:
the link above (CCC FAQ) says:
*Can I back up directly to an AFP or SMB network file share? How about to a Time Capsule?*
CCC can back up directly to an HFS+ formatted local volume, or to a disk image on any writable network volume. CCC cannot, however, backup directly to a network filesystem (e.g. AFP, SMB, CIFS, NAS, Airport Extreme "Airdisk", or Time Capsule). There are significant technical limitations to backing up an HFS+ filesystem to a non-HFS+ filesystem -- most notably preservation of ownership and permission information -- that would make it impossible to create a faithful, bootable, non-proprietary backup of your data. Therefore I recommend and support backing up only to a disk image on non-HFS+ filesystems.
JGG
Thank u for reporting that. Looks like the only option is going "old style": attach the drive directly to the mac and make a copy and paste of the data on the TC capsule drive. Thanks again.

I have iTunes on an external HD. Can I access it through my Time Capsule via USB connection?

To save space on my MacBook Pro, I've transferred iTunes to an external HD. Can I plug the external HD into the USB connection on my Time Capsule and thereby access my music, etc?

Is it possible to connect an external drive to the time capsule that I could use to store and access my primary iTunes files?

External drive conntected to Time Capsule keeps losing connection

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