How do you use time capsule with an external hard drive

I would like to use time machine to back up to my external hard drive.
When I tried to set it up it said it would wipe out everthing currently on it to start using it.
I do not want it to wipe our what I have currently have on the hard drive. Any suggestions?
I do have icloud. Can I back up using time machine to that?

Purchase another external drive. Time Machine will only back up to a drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
(63322)

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How do I use Time Capsule as an external hard drive?

How do I use Time Capsule as an external hard drive? I want to remove photos & music from my laptop and store them in Time Capsule only.

lyperez wrote:
How do I use Time Capsule as an external hard drive? I want to remove photos & music from my laptop and store them in Time Capsule only.
Apple has specific instructions on moving libraries.
eg itunes.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
You simply follow those instructions..
TC is a network drive.. nothing more.
To move individual files, just copy and paste to a new directory.. not inside a TM sparsebundle please.
BUT.. TC only worries me.. deeply.
It is relatively easy to corrupt a library when you copy to it.. library as a whole is then corrupted and will need to be restored from backup.. wops.. no backup. You are putting at risk all your files.. don't do it.. make sure you backup..
And here is the rub.. TC cannot back itself up.. TM cannot backup network drives.
And where are you going to backup.. to... an external drive on the computer.. in that case, that is where the library should be and the TC used as normal.. ie backup target for TM.
Please read Pondini on how to do it properly though.
Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Can you use Time Capsule as an external hard drive?

I want to use it as both a back-up drive and an external hardrive for movies etc that I dont want to keep on my Mac so I can have more free space. I was just wondering if this is possible with this device or if I need a separate portable hard drive/external hard drive to do this.

I have an external HDD that I use for backups once in a while, BUT to be honest with you I last backed up my iTunes stuff (around 30K songs) over a year ago. Maybe it is time for another backup.
In all fairness, the whole time I have been using Mac's (since 2001) I have never had a major crash (knock on wood) so it has not been high on my priority list tbh. This said, how Apple have been acting lately I feel they have become a little too big for them selves and I have started to notice errors here and there, something that was unheard of earlier
Anyway, in most cases it is never the HDD that causes problems and extracting data from these are not a major hinder so I'm good...
EDIT: Oh, maybe I misunderstood the question

How do I transfer time capsul data to external hard drive to free up space?

How do I transfer time capsule data to external hard drive to free up space?

The fastest method is straight copy and paste..
Plug a suitable hard disk into your computer.. format it Mac OS extended journaled (if not already).
Select the folders/files you want to move.. copy and paste them to the external drive..
Double check that the files are copied because the next step will delete the files forever.. there is no trash on the TC.
Delete the files on the TC.
You can also do a full archive of the TC disk to a USB plugged into it by USB.. it must be formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled. It must be big enough to hold all data on the TC disk.. best idea is to buy the same size or bigger.. so if you use 2TB TC buy a 2TB or bigger external drive.
In airport utility select archive.
That will copy everything on the TC disk to the USB drive.. you could then Erase the disk of the TC.. this is super fast if you choose quick erase.. just a few minutes. But the archive will take many hours.. say for 2TB about 12-24hours.. and you cannot use the disk in the TC during that time.

How To Use Time Capsule As An External Hard Drive?

I backup my computer onto the time capsule using time machine.
After that I want to have more space on my computer (becasue my hard drive is almost full) (I still want to have my local snapshots and daily backups) so I want to delete some of my files but I still want them on my time capsule and I know after I back my computer the files will be deleted so I go to finder/my time capsule (under shared)/data/my macbook pro/ then I go to my destop and see; 1: time machine backups 2: data... I go to data and create a new file that will contain everything that I wanted deleted off my macbook so the when the next backup comes, I will still have (in data on time capsule) my time machine backups and my deleted things... will this work? why or why not? I heard people saying that you have to choose the time capsule between a external hard drive or with time machine... but will this attempt work with both>???

It will work but shouldn't be done, as the Time Capsule's internal drive may fail at any time. Anything you want to keep shouldn't be on only one drive.
(80321)

Can i use time capsule as a external hard drive

can i use time capsule as a external hard drive

Not plugged in by USB if that is what you were thinking.
You can store files on the TC but you should NOT.
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.
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

Is possible to use Time Capsule as a external hard drive for my MA ?

Hi,
I wondering to know if i can use the time capsule as a external hard drive for my MACBOOK AIR i mean i dont want a backup i just want to be connected when i'm at home and transfer the data to the time capsule or simply uses data from there.
Thanks!

Yes, you can.
(60321)

Intermittently using Time Machine with an External Hard Drive

Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up. However, in the online article I read dated 2009, the author suggested that he didn't know how well Time Machine would work making up for the two weeks, or however long, no files had been backed up.
Specific questions: I have 10.6.3 SL (I have not yet been brave enough to download 10.6.4) and a 4 month old iMac. 1) Have any of you had experience with only periodically using Time Machine for back up and 2) with my current system would you think I might run into some trouble if I only intermittently backed-up using Time Machine?
Thanks for reading this and thanks if you feel my questions warrant answering.
Note: I do have another external hard drive where I occasionally manually back-up photos, gifs, music, etc.

JohnHusk wrote:
Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up.
If you go several days between backups, Time Machine may have to do a "deep traversal," comparing every folder on your system to the backups, to determine what's changed and needs to be backed-up. This depends on the volume of changes, so can happen after an OSX update, but in other circumstances might be after several days. This isn't a big problem, but it does take longer, and the more data you have, the longer it takes.
Worse, after an extended period, Time Machine may do a new, full backup of your entire system, rapidly filling-up your TM drive.
If that's the way you want to back up, Time Machine is not the backup app for you. One of it's main features is the way it can do quick hourly backups of what's changed, so you have an excellent chance of recovering a previous version (or versions) when you change or delete something in error, or a file comes up corrupted, or your Mac fails.
Why don't you want to just leave the drive connected and Time Machine running, to protect you best, as it was designed to do?
For alternatives designed to do less frequent backups, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup.

Using Time Capsule as an external hard drive with ethernet cable, disabling airport, using wifi from laptop

Okay, first of all, I admit right off the bat that I should have bought an external hard drive. Now I am stuck with a 3TB Time Capsule that I want to tie to my laptop via ethernet cable, without having the Time Capsule disable my laptop's current wifi. So, I want to be able to back up my laptop (using the ethernet cable and Time Machine) to my Time Capsule drive and still be able to be surfing the internet as if I didn't have Time Capsule at all.
My MacBook Pro is OS 10.7.5.
Any thoughts are much appreciated.

This is not difficult.
You need to work out one issue beforehand..
What IP address range does the computer get from the wifi router.. ?
If you get 10.0.x.x then you will need to adjust the settings on the TC to a different IP range.. eg 192.168.1.1 for the TC.
Tell me what IP you get on wireless. I will assume for now you are getting 192.168.x.x
In the ethernet setup on the laptop, choose configure IPv4 Manually.
Give the computer an IP address say 10.0.1.10 with 255.255.255.0 subnet. Do not fill in router or dns values.
You can now find the ethernet linked TC and get internet via the airport.
On the TC itself, just leave it in router mode.. and ignore all the errors.. turn off the wireless.

Can I use time capsule as and external hard drive ? how ?

I would like to now if I can use my time capsule not juste to back up my mac book pro but also has a external hard drive.
I tried to add a folder in time capsule but it dosen't let me do it ????
Please help

I was just wondering if it was possible to the TC disk seperate in 2. One for backing up my cumputer and one for storing my movie and musique.
If yes, can I watch a movie from my TC ???

How to set up Time Capsule as an external hard drive

Hello,
I tried finding the answers in here but wasn't able to. So I apologize if this redundant.
Here's what I have that's important to my Q. I just bought a Time Capsule to replace my wireless router. I want to use the Time Machine for my MacBook and as an external hard drive for my 2 PCs. The wireless setup went smoothly, no concerns there. Same with the TM backup.
I read in here you need to partition the TC so TM doesn't eat up all the hard drive space (and probably other reasons). I used the Disk Utility on my MacBook to partition the TC into 2 partitions, 250 GB for TM and 1.75 TB for the external drive. TM is a cool feature but not the primary reason why I bought the TC. 250 GB will be plenty of backup for that. I formatted the HD partition as MS-DOS (FAT), not sure that was the correct thing to do though but I didn't see a better option.
From the PCs, I can see the TC on the network but it shows no signs of a partition. Is this normal? Should I be concerned? My goal is to put all my media on the TC. Right now I can erase the TC and start over if needed but I want to make sure I'm doing this right so I can set this up as I described. Do I even need to partition the TC? If not, how do I remove the partition now? The TC also only shows up as a network drive and not just another regular drive, I would imagine this is also normal.
Thanks for your help in advance, JC

jcbautista50 wrote:
I used the Disk Utility on my MacBook to partition the TC into 2 partitions
Are you saying that you used Disk Utility to partition the internal drive of the Time Capsule? That's not supposed to be possible without taking the drive out of the Time Capsule.
250 GB for TM
Per normal Time Machine guidelines, this suggests that you never plan to back up more than 80--125 GB.
1.75 TB for the external drive.
So you also have an external drive attached to the Time Capsule?
I formatted the HD partition as MS-DOS (FAT)
The "HD partition" of what?
From the PCs, I can see the TC on the network but it shows no signs of a partition.
Did you configure the Time Capsule for disk sharing in the Disks panel of AirPort Utility?

1. Can I use Time Capsule as an external hard drive, remove wifi feature?

Hi there -
My Time Capsule contains my iPhoto library, and I had used it in the past as my wifi router, backup AND external hard drive for the iPhoto library. Now I must use AT&T's wireless router, and would still like to use the TC for the backup and iPhoto library storage. Is there a way to do that?
Also, the Apple deviced prefer to connect to Time Capsule (which is no longer connected to the internet) as their first choice for the wifi internet connection. Is there a way to change that preference?
Thanks in advance for all your help!

Only one setting needs to be checked to make sure that the Time Capsule will connect to your ATT router correctly.
To do that, you need to use AirPort Utility, but we do not know what version that you might have. Please open AirPort Utility, click on the AirPort Utility menu, and then click About AirPort Utility and post back with the version number that you see there.
My Time Capsule contains my iPhoto library, and I had used it in the past as my wifi router, backup AND external hard drive for the iPhoto library.
Sorry, maybe I do not understand this. If you have your "main" iPhoto library on the Time Capsule, you cannot also have the backup of the iPhoto library on the same Time Capsule. What would happen when.....not if.....the Time Capsule fails?
For the record, the experts in the iPhoto support area strongly recommend that you do not locate your main iPhoto library on the Time Capsule.....but that is probably another discussion and post in the iPhoto support community.
Also, the Apple deviced prefer to connect to Time Capsule (which is no longer connected to the internet) as their first choice for the wifi internet connection. Is there a way to change that preference?
The Time Capsule will be connected to the Internet when it is configured correctly to connect your ATT router, so your devices can continue to use the Time Capsule wireless if you want.
Or, are you saying that you want to turn off the wireless function on the Time Capsule and use the ATT wireless?
The Time Capsule will run circles around the ATT router as far as wireless performance, but you may have your reasons for wanting to use the ATT wireless.
Please clarify on what it is that want to do.

Is it possible to use Time Machine with an external hard drive for two separate computers?

I'm looking to purchase an external hard drive to use as with time machine as a backup for two separate computers. I'm not sure if I should buy 2 EHDs and dedicate one to each computer, or if Time Machine has the capacity to back up both computers separately. Anyone have any experience with this?
Thanks!

You can make two partitions on a single drive and dedicate one to each computer.
The pic is of a single external usb drive with three partitions( a Time Machine and two image backups) for two computers

Using Time Capsule as an external hard drive?

A bought a 500GB TC back in May. It worked OK until September and then failed without warning. Unfortunately it took Apple a long time to get a replacement unit sent to me, by which time I'd already purchased a Netgear wireless router and external hard drive so I could at least check my emails and back up some important files!
I've finally had the replacement TC unit sent back to me after 4 weeks, but it's now surplus to requirements. Other than trying to sell it on eBay, I was wondering if it's possible to disable the wireless functionality and just hook it up to my iMac via a ethernet CAT6 patch cable to double up as a 500GB external hard drive?
I know I can run it as a wireless 'client' using the Netgear as my main router, but after trying a similar setup once before using a spare AEBS as a print server, I found that switching one of the wireless clients off when not in use would crash the wireless network.
Any ones thoughts?

use ethernet to connect to netgear, set up TC in bridge mode with wireless off. use airport utility to configure the TC hard drive and now you have a hard drive for your network.

Using Time machine with an external hard drive and AEBS???have a

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I have connected to my AEBS by USB. Recently upgraded to Leopard but cannot get time machine to see my hard drive.
The base station is 802.11n.
Is this possible?
Have read a few other threads and can't seem to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks,
T

In addition, when you get Time Machine to be able to see your external drive connected to AEBS, in TM prefs exclude all but one small folder from your hard drive (say, /User/Library) and allow TM to do its initial backup. This will create the sparsebundle (resizable disk image) that TM uses to back up to a network drive.
Then turn off Time Machine, unmount the USB drive and reconnect it directly to your Mac, mount it, set TM prefs to use the sparsebundle that newly-mounted drive, remove previously excluded items from TM's exclusion list, and turn TM back on. TM will then back up everything much more quickly than if connected wirelessly.
After that, you can return the USB drive to the AEBS. Incremental backups take much less time, so the slower connection won't matter as much.

How do you use time capsule with an external hard drive

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