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+.

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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.

Best practices with external drives connected to Time Capsule?

I'm enjoying my new MBP but the storage limitations are a challenge with twenty+ years of data. I know it's not technically sanctioned by Apple but in another forum I found a discussion about successfully connecting an external drive to the Time Capsule. I tried this for a few months and had some problems, so I wonder if anyone here might have some insight into which of my drives would be best to use in this way and what, if anything, I must do to bless it for the task.
The drive most highly recommended in the forums at the time is the WD My Book. After buying it I learned that is Windows users install a package and update the driver for use with Time Machine, which Mac users are not able to do. The driver is available on the web but it's said to cause problems with Mountain Lion, which I can confirm. It's USB 3.0 and powered, though, which my two alternatives are not. It's also 2 TB and presently in two partitions. I also have a Seagate Free Agent GoFlex 500 which gets extremely hot with any use and an Iomega eGo Helium 500 I've been using for backups. Both are USB 2.0.
My goal is to put my iTunes Library and Time Capsule on the net (running 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz, averages 50Mbs). When I did this for a few months with the WD both its shares frequently dropped off my Desktop, as if powered down or something. Also there were the issues with Time Machine many others are having. Right now our video collection sits on the Time Capsule. Would it make sense to move our video to the WD and run iTunes and Time Machine on it? If so, do you have any tips for formatting, petitioning, or drivers (or anything else) to help this run smoothly? The WD works fine when hard-wired and the TC, too is fine without the WD at the party.
With apologies for the tome.

kevlee64 wrote:
Thanks, but the drive is connected directly to the back of the Time Capsule by an ethernet cable.
Ah, that's a different colored horse.
You have a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive, not a USB external drive connected to the USB port.
Many of those need software/firmware updates to work with Lion. Check with Iomega.

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.

New External Drive connected to Time Capsule moving files problem

I have a late 2009 13" unibody MacBook Pro, that I primarily use for video editing/converting. I use my Time Capsule as a network through which I can connect to my external hard drives via USB for videos and such. I've used at least two other external hard drives along with my Time Capsule for a year and a half with very few problems, aside from the inevitable crash of one. Before yesterday, I had a 1TB Western Digital MyBook (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=210) and a 2TB Verbatim Desktop HD (http://www.verbatim.com/prod/hard-drives/desktop/usb-2.0/) connected through my 1TB Time Capsule and aside from the Verbatim drive being rather sluggish most of the time, everything was working fine.
Yesterday, I got a new external drive, an iOmega MiniMax 2TB (http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/external-hard-drive-desktop/ultramax-minimax /minimax800/?partner=4760). I spent yesterday and most of today moving files around and whatnot through a wired connection (iOmega via firewire 800, Verbatim via USB, MyBook via USB, and Time Capsule via Ethernet), and everything moved quickly and without any problems.
I hooked my Time Capsule up to my modem, plugged in the iOmega and Verbatim drives via USB to the TC, and started my laptop. When I opened the drives, everything was working fine... And then I tried to move a file to the iOmega drive... I was moving an episode of The Killing. I dragged it into the folder and went to Safari to look something up and suddenly realized ten minutes later that I still hadn't heard the noise telling me that the file had finished. I looked at the move dialogue box and it said "156.8 MB of 323.8 MB - About 10 Seconds". I watched it for another ten minutes and it didn't move. So I clicked cancel move and the rainbow wheel of death came up and I had to force reboot my computer.
When I restarted, I opened up finder to access the drives through my Time Capsule, and it "failed to connect" to my Time Capsule. So I went back into my office to flip the switch on the surge protector in order to restart the process. I turned on my computer and I had no problem accessing my hard drives... Until I tried to move an episode of United States of Tara into the iOmega hard drive. This time, it said, "192.5 MB of 202.6 MB - About 5 Seconds" and completely stopped moving again. And the same thing happened when I clicked the little grey "x" to cancel the move.
I repeated the process several more times with no luck. Then I thought it might help to see if it does the same thing with documents. So I dragged just a random document to the iOmega and it took about 30 seconds, but it did it successfully. So I tried to move the episode of The Killing again and I let it go for, like, 25-30 minutes. After this time, I got a notification from finder saying, "Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "[the file]" can't be read or written. (Error Code -36)". Then when I went back into the "Shared" part of the sidebar to go back into my Time Capsule folder, it said "Connection Failed"
So what exactly does this mean? Are the Time Capsule and iOmega not compatible? Can I only move the files through a wired connection [which would be unfortunate]? Do I need to rejigger the USB configuration? Is the error code just for these two episodes and it's just a random coincidence that it happened the day after I got a new drive?
Thanks for any help anyone can give me!
- Alex

I have attached the macbook to the tc via ethernet cable. Should I turn off my wireless connection or will itunes recognize to go with the faster connection on it's own?
You MBP will try to connect based on the order of the list of network devices on the System Preferences > Network window. If Ethernet is not at the top of the list, then go ahead and temporarily disable AirPort.
After all this is done will the wireless connection be fast enough for normal itunes operation?
For audio streaming it should be, but just be aware that your iTunes host will have to get the audio source wirelessly from the TC, which in turn will have to get the data from the USB hard drive. Finally, the iTunes host will have to wirelessly stream the iTunes audio via AirTunes to the AirPort Express.

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

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!

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

ITunes library on External drive connected to Time Capsule

So i have all my data(HD home movies etc 1.5TB)on an external drive that is connected to TC via usb 2.0. I have told iTunes to include this data and it has moved over all the titles (music & movies)but itunes keeps getting hung up as it is trying to organize the files. It has been trying to do this for over 24 hours now and we are not even 5% done and it may not be updating anymore.
All this is being done wirelessly thru TC. How do i speed this up or cancell it? If I use firewire between my macbook and the extrnal hd my library won't be available wirelessly? I also need to stream this data to apple tv but that's for another day.
How do i get iTunes to work properly again?

You'll be more likely to get a quick and accurate answer if you ask in the Using iTunes for Mac forum. This forum is for users of iTunes on Windows systems and so probably not the best place for this question.
Regards.

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.

I want to attach an External drive to imac 10.6.8 usb 2 can I use usb3 what are options?

I am trying to get an external hard drive for an Imac 27 10.6.8 and was told by seagate that there are no longer any usb2 drives, or firewire 800, I would have to buy a cradle sta123 to convert. My imac is a late 2009 (already extinct i guess) does anyone have suggestions. I want 3t in a desktop, I will be using it for storage to free space on my main drive.
thanks

Rickbcnu wrote:
get an external hard drive for an Imac 27 10.6.8 and was told by seagate that there are no longer any usb2 drives, or firewire 800
A: OWC doesnt make anything but enclosures. You can get 3TB drives much cheaper via Ebay or Amazon.com
B: Dont even consider , as you mentioned, buying a refurb HD, horrible idea.
C: You really are better off grabbing a Toshiba 3TB drive (made by Hitachi), not only are they the cheapest, there isnt a better made 3.5" HD except for a WD BLACK which isnt available in a USB3 enclosure.
$109 3TB marked Toshiba, but made by Hitachi
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Desktop-External-HDWC130XK3J1/dp/B008DW976A /ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396041701&sr=8-1&keywords=toshiba+3tb+canvio
Hitachi is the winner in hard drive reliability survey:
Hitachi manufacturers the safest and most reliable hard drives, according to the Storelab study. Of the hundreds of Hitachi hard drives received, not a single one had failed due to manufacturing or design errors. Adding the highest average lifespans and the best relationship between failures and market share, Hitachi can be regarded as the winner.

What format should I use for Maxtor One Touch III external hard drive

I'm not sure if I'm on the right forum section, but hopefully you can help. I just got a Maxtor One Touch III external hard drive with the firewire 400/usb 2.0 port. I installed the cd and followed the manual and it told me to format it. I went to disk utility and went to the "erase" section, but now it wants me to choose the type of format: mac os extended (case-sensitive), mac os journaled, mac os (case-sensitive, journaled) and so on.... Can anyone tell me what those formats mean/do, and what is the best one to use? Thanks!

Case sensitive is really if you are using some old UNIX programs that you have brought the source over to OS X and compiled them. And the UNIX programs have to expect a case-sensitive file system.
I'm betting this isn't the case... or you'd know what a case sensitive file system is.
So go with HFS+ Journaled

I want to backup an external hard drive connected with time capsule

What to do? I want a macbook air but realise that the storage is limited. I want to have en external HDD connected through time capsule or similar to access storage "wirelessly". I want everything backed up automatically through time capsule. I understand time capsule does not back up connected external HDDs unfortunately. If it did my problem would be solved. How should I do? Can a two time capsule solution be possible where one is used för storage and the other for time machine also backing up time capsule nr 1?
I do not want to loose all my photos! They won´t fit a macbook air... I have tried "crash plan" wich is one of many ckoud solutions to try and take care of all my hundreds of GBs but it doesn´t work well. Takes forever to backup and it keeps loosing contact with the external HDD i have connected through the time capsule.
This must be a very common need but I find no good solutions?!
Thanks!

You are right.. there is no decent solution from Apple..
You need a proper NAS.. not a backup target for TM.. which is what the TC is.
Look at Synology and QNAP.. they are not cheap but will work fine with Macs, TM even although it can be messy setting up. But the real NAS will auto backup to a USB drive.. plus the raid system offers protection against a dead drive.
Some people use a Mac Mini as a server.. (you don't need server version OS on it).. but the disk expansion is going to cost you as much as the true NAS.

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.

What format do I use for internal drive?

I want to install a new internal harddrive into my Macbook. What format should I use for it?
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
MS-DOS (FAT)
ExFAT
I know MS-DOS(FAT) is what I should use for external to work on mac and windows. Can't remember which to use for the internal. I have an Intel-based Mac.
Thanks for your help.

I use SuperDuper for cloning my OSX volumes and it does not change the size of the destination partition to the size of the source partition.
So, you can make the destination partitions size to your liking and the cloning will not change it afterwards.
Keep in mind that SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner cannot clone a BootCamp Windows partition to a new harddisk, only OSX partitions.
But Parallels doesn't need to have a Windows partitions but is mostly just two files plus the Parallels app on your OSX partition.
And therefor it would be cloned with the rest of the OSX.
Stefan

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

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