NAS capabilities of the Time Capsule as media server after Snow Leopard

Question

Why does Apple have to prevent the Time Capsule being used as a media server? I accept that it was never sold as such but pre-Snow Leopard it worked fine and was the ONLY reason I bought it in the first place.
I don't like Time machine. I have my own back-up procedures in place to take care of that. What I DO like is being able to have all my media in one place in my house instead of scattered across four machines. I also like that I could back up all the TC content onto another external connected to the USB socket on the TC.
It all worked well, gave me the security of knowing my media was being backed up daily and also freed up a lot of space on my other Macs.
With the advent of Snow Leopard Apple has rendered my music server as good as useless, prevented my ability to make scheduled back-ups and is forcing me to reconfigure my system with a proper NAS so I don't risk losing over 40,000 music files and 1000s of original photographs should the hard drive in the Time Capsule fail.
This will cost me well in excess of £500 and a lot of my time. Then I will have a redundant 1TB Time Capsule and another redundant 1TB external hard drive.
Why does Apple see the need to disable this functionality? If it doesn't support it how does it know it needs to prevent it? What is the issue here? All Apple seems to do is upset a lot of people who have made an investment in Apple equipment only to have the primary reason they bought it killed off.
Am I wrong here? Have I made some kind of configuration error that means my TC just disappears from my desktop and my iTunes stops playing?
Cheers
Rich
Message was edited by: rustyintegrale

Answer 1

Okay, I've actually posted about this issue before but was simply told that 'Apple do not support the Time capsule as a media server', but this is my experience...
I have a modem/router supplied by my ISP that distributes wireless at 'g' standard - fine for our iPhones, but all our Macs are modern Intel models capable of using the 'n' standard.
So I bought the Time Capsule for two reasons - one to give us that faster wireless service and two to act as a media server by consolidating all the music, video and photo files we had in duplicate and triplicate across the four machines in our household.
The TC was connected to the router via gigabit ethernet and then via ethernet to my 3.06 iMac from where everything is managed. Wireless 'n' standard access at 5GHz was provided to our laptops and as expected every machine could 'see' the TC on the network.
I then moved all our media files onto the TC with no problem and added a 1TB external drive to the TC via the USB port. I then discovered that Chronosync installed on my iMac could see the TC and the TC Back-UP drive so I used that to copy everything over and set up a schedule to ensure that regular copies of new files were made.
I then added both the TC and the TC Back-Up to my login items so they would automatically mount on the desktop upon start-up. Restarting the machine proved this worked fine so I proceeded to point all the Macs' iTunes libraries to the new location on the TC and set them NOT to copy the files over when adding to library.
This all worked fine and all the Macs could access and play iTunes, surf the internet etc. except in the distant corners of the house. To help coverage I bought four new Airport Expresses with 'n' capability and set each one to extend the wireless network created by the TC.
Then I added an Apple TV and linked that to the TC network too. This again was managed via iTunes on the iMac and set to automatically synch new recordings made via my EyeTV.
This whole set-up has worked flawlessly for over a year and until I installed Snow Leopard.
When I first restarted after installation on my iMac I really noticed nothing. The TC mounted as usual and when I started iTunes my Apple TV began to automatically synch. Everything seemed to be operating normally. However when I double clicked the TC icon to access my files I got a warning message saying 'The alias “TIME CAPSULE” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found.' I was given the choice to delete or fix the alias or just go Okay. When I chose 'fix' a new Finder window opened where the TC was clearly visible in the left column and it said I was connected. But in the next column both the TC and the TC Back-Up were greyed out.
I then dragged the TC to the Trash on my iMac and I could hear it spin up and then it finally moved.
I then opened a new Finder window, selected the TC and it came up with a preview calling it a 'Sharepoint' and no longer like a normal hard disk.
Meanwhile I realised that because iTunes was no longer 'seeing' the TC it had defaulted to the Music folder in my Home folder and was now busy deleting all my Apple TV stuff because it couldn't find the originals.
This has been going on for several weeks now and I am increasingly frustrated by trying to find a workaround. Meanwhile Chronosync no longer makes scheduled back-ups because the drives don't mount on start-up - well they do as aliases but that's no good if they're not linked to the originals!
What bothers me is that all this stuff worked like a dream under Leopard - indeed many others have similarly used Time Capsule as a media server and must no doubt be seeing similar issues to my own.
If I can't continue using the TC this way then Apple have essentially removed the very functionality I bought it for and thus rendered it useless.
Of course if there is a glaring configuration error or even an adjustment post-Snow Leopard that needs to be made then please tell me. However the original reply to my older post of 'Apple do not support the Time capsule as a media server' does not leave me with much confidence in getting this resolved any time soon.
I have everything crossed however...
Cheers
rich
Message was edited by: rustyintegrale