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.

Similar Messages

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.

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 increase the capacity of Time Machine with an external hard drive connected to Time Capsule?

Can I increase the capacity of Time Machine with an external hard drive connected to Time Capsule via the USB port? My current Time Machine has a total capacity of 1TB. I'd like to double or triple its memory. I don't want to use the external hard drive in lieu of the Time Capsule hard drive. I'd like to use it in addition to. Just don't know if/how it's possible.
This is another one of those questions that I've searched the web for answers, and have gotten tricky answers back. So now I'm trying to introduce a clean slate to the mix.
Thank you for your time!

Well, what you mentioning is possible. However, I don't know whether it's supported (as in, "easy to set up."). Time Machine officially supports backing up to a locally attached drive, to a machine running a Time Machine server (i.e. running OS X Server software), and to a Time Capsule. I don't know that it officially supports a drive attached to an AirPort or to a Time Capsule. Though I know some people have gotten it to work.
Best I can say is to try it. Plug the drive into the Time Capsule, ensure it's shared on the network, and then try and set it as a backup target from a machine in the Time Machine backup panel (you'll need to ensure it's mounted first). If it works, you're all set.

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.

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.

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.

External hard drive connected to Time Capsule for iTunes.

I have copied my iTunes library to an external hard drive and connected the hard drive to my time capsule. I have an iMac and a MacBook and want to see the same iTunes content on each. I want to use the iMac as the main place to add iTunes content and see the results on the MacBook. I have told both iTunes (the iMac and the MacBook) the location of the hard drive, but I see different content on each. For example, if I add new music to the iMac I can't see it on the MacBook.
I sync iPads, iPhones and iPods via the iMac, but don't think this has any bearing on the problem.
Any suggestions on how to resolve this gratefully appreciated, and thanks in advance.

Welcome to the discussions, squire78!
If your external drive is connected directly to your computer, you can have Time Machine backup both your computer and the external drive.
If the external drive is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule, Time Machine cannot backup this drive.

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

Backing up external hard drive (connected to time capsule) using time machi

hi. don't know if this is possible or not - am now using an external hard drive to store all my movies as my macbook pro's hard drive is filling up and i'm running out of space (it's 250gb). have created a separate itunes on the external hard drive and stream these movies to my apple tv. the external hard drive is connected to my time capsule and access it on the macbook pro that way wirelessy. is there a way to now back up my movies on the external hard drive to the time capsule using time machine (that it's already connected to)?

Welcome to the discussions, squire78!
If your external drive is connected directly to your computer, you can have Time Machine backup both your computer and the external drive.
If the external drive is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule, Time Machine cannot backup this drive.

Backing up a share point (external hard drive connected to Time Capsule) using time machine.

I am currently using Mac OS X Lion, and just set up my time capsule with an external hard drive to store itunes, iPhoto libraries, etc. Is it possible to use time machine to backup the external hard drive to the 2 TB internal hard drive in the time capsule?

You cannot backup network drives with Time Machine. It will work only on HFS+ formatted local drives.
Is it possible to use time machine to backup the external hard drive to the 2 TB internal hard drive in the time capsule?
No, Time Machine is specific to backup of a local machine, locally connected disks.
If you unplug the disk and plug it into a Mac.. and if it is HFS+ formatted then you can back it up.
Otherwise you need a software like Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) but as a warning, it will be very slow. Especially if you do this over wireless.

External HD connected to Time Capsule via USB, how can I back up this drive to Time Capsule?

I have my itunes media all on an external drive connected directly to Time Capsule via USB.
I plan to share this external drive over the network to share my media, but how can I back up this drive to the Time Capsule?

how can I back up this drive to the Time Capsule?
You will have to do this manually using the Finder, or try a commercial application like Chronosync or Carbon Copy Cloner which might be able to backup a network drive to another network drive. Check with their support folks first before you buy.
If you could connect the external drive directly to a Mac, Time Machine would backup both the Mac and the external hard drive (assuming that the external is formatted correcly to work with Time Machine).

Using External HD connected to Time Capsule

I am posting this mainly as a success story, but if anyone sees a potential pitfall with my setup please speak up. I am a brand new Mac user as of two months ago. I purchased a new iMac (intel) with OS(X) Leopard and a 500GB Time Capsule. The learning curve has been significant but I am very happy so far. A couple of days ago I bought a 1TB external Hard Drive with the idea of connecting it via USB to the Time Capsule. With only a couple of surprises along the way it seems to be working fine even though I have it set up opposite the norm. That is I am using the External drive for the Time Machine back ups and the Time Capsule as extra storage. I also decided to partition the external drive into two parts so that Time Machine would not fill up the whole drive. The reason being I wanted to backup a few things manually rather than with Time Machine. One partition named TM Backups and the other Manual Backups.
Now for the surprises. I made my first backup to the External Drive by connecting it directly to the computer since it is a faster connection. I did both a Time Machine and a manual backup that way. The first surprise was that Time Machine did not produce a sparsebundle file like I was used to seeing but rather a Backups.backupdb folder that I could explore using finder. When I unplugged the drive and reconnected it to the Time Capsule, the first thing I got was an error message claiming that the drive was not formated in Mac OS extended (journaled) as required. The best I remember, I clicked past that and opened Time Machine Preferences and reselected that drive to be used with Time Machine and had to enter the password for the Time Capsule. After that is seemed to connect fine. However Time Machine proceeded to back up the whole computer from scratch this time using a sparsebundle file which took about 4 hours. So basically it did not save any time to do the initial Time Machine backup directly connected to the computer, although the files I backed up manually that way did save time. The next surprise was that once connected through the Time Capsule I could no longer explore the Backups.backupdb folder with finder. I could see all the folders but none of the files in them. I briefly reconnected the drive to the computer and they were all still there but I could not see them through the Time Capsule USB connection. So Time Machine uses different methods of storing backups when connected through the Time Capsule versus a direct connection. I'm just going to leave it that way as it does not seem to be causing a problem. The last surprise is that when the Time Machine backup file is mounted (which I still don't fully understand what it means to be mounted) and I select it with finder and select "get info" it tells me the volume is formated in Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitve, Journaled). When the drive is connected directly to the computer it says it is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). What the **** how can that be???
And is that normal? Well . . . it seems to be working perfectly. Does anybody think this will be a problem down the road?

Da Soundman wrote:
Now for the surprises. I made my first backup to the External Drive by connecting it directly to the computer since it is a faster connection. I did both a Time Machine and a manual backup that way. The first surprise was that Time Machine did not produce a sparsebundle file like I was used to seeing but rather a Backups.backupdb folder that I could explore using finder. When I unplugged the drive and reconnected it to the Time Capsule, the first thing I got was an error message claiming that the drive was not formated in Mac OS extended (journaled) as required. The best I remember, I clicked past that and opened Time Machine Preferences and reselected that drive to be used with Time Machine and had to enter the password for the Time Capsule. After that is seemed to connect fine. However Time Machine proceeded to back up the whole computer from scratch this time using a sparsebundle file which took about 4 hours.
Yes, that's correct. Time Machine stores it's backups differently when they're done via a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme vs. directly attached via FireWire or USB. The two cannot be merged or combined.
What you can do, however, is perform that first backup while connected via Ethernet; the backups will still be stored in a sparse bundle, so subsequent backups can be done wirelessly, but be done much faster than wireless.
I'm just going to leave it that way as it does not seem to be causing a problem.
Except for the space the first set takes up.
The last surprise is that when the Time Machine backup file is mounted (which I still don't fully understand what it means to be mounted) and I select it with finder and select "get info" it tells me the volume is formated in Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitve, Journaled). When the drive is connected directly to the computer it says it is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Yes, Time Machine does that, just why is not clear, as it can cause significant problems when restoring items when the capitalization of their names has been changed.
And do be *very careful* when using the Finder on your backups, not to move, change, or delete anything. That can corrupt them. To browse or restore from them, use the Time Machine application (the "Star Wars" display).
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

Time Capsule, Time Machine and external HD connected to time Capsule

Hi. I am a new mac user and have an imac.
I have a 1T Time capsule with an external hub connected to the time capsual. The Time caspsule creates a wireless home network which has the internet connected to it.
To this external hub I have a printer connected along with 2 external WD 500 Hard Drives. I wanted to use one of these WD 500 HD to store my iphoto library and data. I then wanted the time machine to backup the WD 500 HD to the time capsule, which currently is where the time machine backups are stored.
I can see all devices and they all work. I can only see the external HD's via the time capsule in finder.
I can't seem to get the time machine to backup the external HD to the time capsule. In summary - the external HD is connected an external hub to the time capsule. The Imac accesses it via a wireless home network which is created by the Time capsule.
Is this possible?

Hello DazImac. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
I can't seem to get the time machine to backup the external HD to the time capsule. In summary - the external HD is connected an external hub to the time capsule. The Imac accesses it via a wireless home network which is created by the Time capsule.
Is this possible?
Sorry, but no. Time Machine will not back up network drives ... which a USB drive attached to the TC's USB port would be treated as.

Renaming Drives Connected to Time Capsule by USB

I have two external drives connected to my Time Capsule via a USB hub. How can I change the name on these drives? I can change the name of the data drive on the time capsule through Airport Utility but not the drives connected via USB.

Plug them into a computer and change it via disk utility.

New External Drive connected to Time Capsule moving files problem

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