Photo and Music storage on External HDD attached to Time Capsule

My MacBook is out of space, and like most people, it is full of music and photos. I have a Time Capsule for backups but I also have a 1TB HDD attached to the USB of the Time Capsule. I would love to make that HDD the source for all photos and music so any of my macs can use this source location.
In essence, I want to use the HDD attached to the Time Capsule to serve as the lone storage source for all my photos and music, and have any of my macs seek these files when iTunes or iPhoto is opened on any machine.
Can I do this? If not, any ideas? I am trying to avoid requiring a HDD plugged into my laptop all the time. It kind of defeats the purpose of "laptop" in my mind. I also switch computers frequently and want to use all the same source files.
Thanks!!

In essence, I want to use the HDD attached to the Time Capsule to serve as the lone storage source for all my photos and music, and have any of my macs seek these files when iTunes or iPhoto is opened on any machine.
Can I do this
Yes, but I guess I'm wondering how you will backup the important data on that drive attached to the Time Capsule. Time Machine cannot do this, so you would have to add yet another drive and manually backup the files or use another commercial application that can backup from a network drive to another network drive.
The better plan might be to add an external USB or FireWire drive attached to a Mac and move all the media there. Then, Time Machine will backup both the Mac and the attached hard drive.
The experts in the iPhoto forum strongly advise against moving your iPhoto library to the Time Capsule or another network drive attached to the USB port on the TIme Capsule.....especially if you are using wireless. Any disruption when iPhoto is writing to the library can create corruption issues that will likely damage the entire library.
Suggest that you post over in the iPhoto support area to ask the same question. But, be prepared for a lecture if iPhoto guru Terence Devlin answers your post.
iPhoto
Instructions for moving the iTunes library are available in the link below. I've tried this and found that access to the files on the network drive is s-l-o-w. Not the ideal solution by any means, unless you like waiting. And, you'll still have to figure out how to backup these files.
iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder

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I have an I 7 ready to turn on, I will be transferring from a mac mini. I have 100 gigs of msic and about 80 gigs of photos that my mini access for I tunes and i photo. Will the migration assistant copy the photos and music from the external hard drive? My guess is it will but I wanted to hear it from someone else.
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I just move my iphoto's from a iMac to a Mini. I just used the import in the iphoto application, and it worked fine. I found migration to much work to use. Still have not moved itunes yet, but it doesn't have the import like iphoto, has export, so have not looked into the move yet.

Connecting and backing up external HDD to a Time Capsule

Hi All,
Running a Macbook pro Retina. I would like to do the following things with a Time Capsule:
Physically connect an external HDD to the time capsule, put media on this external HDD and access it wirelessly on my macbook
Use the time capsule to back up (via Time Machine) the data on both my macbook's HDD and the external HDD
I would be grateful for help with the following queries:
Will Time Machine allow me to back up both the internal HDD and external HDD that is connected to the time capsule?
Does the external HDD I attach to the time capsule need its own power source, or will it take its power from the time capsule via USB?
Does the time capsule need to be turned on 24/7? Or can it just be turned on when I need to perform a back up / access the information on the external HDD?
Thanks for your help in advance. I know some of these questions may seem obvious, but having seen contradictory information online I'd like to make sure of my ground.

Physically connect an external HDD to the time capsule, put media on this external HDD and access it wirelessly on my macbook
Technically, you could do this. The question is whether you should do this. The USB 2.0 port on the Time Capsule brings new meaning to word s-l-o-w, so copies and access are going to sluggish at best. The port operates at about half the speed of a USB port on a computer.
As far as locating media on the USB drive, you would not want to locate a "working" library there, as the experts in the iPhoto and Aperture forums strongly recommend against this, as well as Apple in their support documents. An iTunes Library is going to be really slow as well if you are thinking of that, and the library will tend to get lost, so you will wind up pointing iTunes to the library on a regular basis.
I've learned the hard way that it is much better to locate media on a drive that is directly attached to the Mac. Access is much faster and more reliable, and Time Machine can back up both the Mac and the attached hard drive.
Use the time capsule to back up (via Time Machine) the data on both my macbook's HDD and the external HDD
That is not possible, since Time Machine can only back up data on a Mac, or a drive that is connected directly to a Mac.
Will Time Machine allow me to back up both the internal HDD and external HDD that is connected to the time capsule?
No, see answer above.
Does the external HDD I attach to the time capsule need its own power source, or will it take its power from the time capsule via USB?
Use a powered USB hub with the hard drive unless the drive has its own power supply. Sometimes though, you still have to use a powered USB hub with a drive, even when the drive has its own power supply. You won't know if he drive will work until you try it out.
Does the time capsule need to be turned on 24/7? Or can it just be turned on when I need to perform a back up / access the information on the external HDD?
Apple designed the Time Capsule to be "always on" since there is not even an "Off" switch on the device. Network connections will remain a lot more stable if you leave the TC on. With Yosemite, the TC has a hard enough time not losing network connections. Forcing the TC to establish new connections every time that you power it off and back on is bound to create issues.

I have question about hooking up an external hdd to a time capsule and still have my printer hooked up as well. Anyone got any tips for me, how to do it and what brand of harddrive that will work best for me 1 or 2 TB

i have question about hooking up an external hdd to a time capsule and still have my printer hooked up as well. Anyone got any tips for me, how to do it and what brand of harddrive that will work best for me 1 or 2 TB

You just need a powered hub.. if you already use one then fine.
Plug in just about any external hard disk will work fine. Format has to be readable by the TC.. ie fat32.. or much better HFS+.. plug it into a Mac to prepare the drive.
Pick whatever size suits.. nowadays 2TB are most economical.
WD, Seagate have goobled up all the minor players.. so pick one.
Whatever suits your budget and asthetics.
NOTE.. The USB on the TC is fine for printers.. IMHO it is the wrong way to go with USB disks.. use the internal disk of the TC.. USB is less than half the native speed plugged into a Mac.. TC to USB is slow.. far slower than internal drive.. or using external drive as external.

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Help! I backed up my old macbook pro to an external drive using time machine. I want to transfer all of the photos and music to my new macbook pro, but it says I don't have permission. I can't get permission from the old mac because it won't turn on! I brought it to the genius bar and they couldn't turn it on either. They suggested I take it to Staples to get the files off.

Julie,
Probably because you used a different account name than you had on the old one. Create a new account with the same name you had when you created the backup and run Migration Assistant. Migration Assistant is in Applications / Utitlities and you create the user by clicking the Apple icon, then System Preferences, Users & Groups.

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I just got a used apple TV 40GB and I have a 500 GB HD attached to my time capsule. Please anybody tell me how to "adapt" this external hard drive ( attached to my TC) to work with apple TV.... I guess there a way to store your itunes library to this hard drive AND sync it to apple TV because the HD is already attached to TC?....

AppleTv relies on iTunes to sync or stream media to it.
You can store media files on the Time Capsule attached HD, add them to your iTunes library (change Preferences so files are only referenced by iTunes), and then iTunes will make them available to AppleTV. Obviously anything synced will be on AppleTV at any time, but files for streaming will require iTunes to be running.
AppleTV cannot access the Time Capsuledrive or attached HD directly itself - iTunes does the donkey work and just gives AppleTv a list of files it can sync or stream.
While it would be more flexible to allow AppleTv to access network storage directly, it has not been designed to work that way, and is tightly integrated with iTunes.
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I recently bought a 3TB Hitachi Touro Desktop external HDD, and was wondering if the TC would be able to recognize it (when properly formatted). My current router (WNR3500L) will not recognize the drive due to the large format, and before I go and buy a TC, I want to make sure it will see the drive.
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Nobody has tried to attached a large format drive?

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).
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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.
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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.
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External HDD to 2T Time Capsule?

My 2T TC has 824G available, not enuf to back up my big ol' MacPro. I want to add to the TC the 1.5T external HDD I was using for TM before I added drives to the MacPro. I would prefer not to lose the existing backups on the external HDD. Possible? Spring 2010 issue TC. Guidance appreciated.

If you were using Time Machine to back up to that HDD when it was mounted locally, the problem is that Time Machine organizes local backups differently from network backups. See item 18 in this post for more information. About 2/3rds down that page is a procedure number 3, which described a related process. You won't follow the exact same procedure, as those backups already exist on that disk.

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.
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Any ideas?
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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.

How can I restore my purchased games and music from a external hdd backup?

Hi!
I have formatted my iPod and reinstalled Windows. Before doing that, I have made a copy of my entire iTunes folder on a external hard drive. Now I cannot restore my games by simply copying (my thought) "iPod Games Library.itl" file and "iPod Games" folder into the new iTunes folder under my Music. With the music I didn't trid because I dont't have much space right now.
In my purchase history I see I cannot re-download stuff.. Only "report a problem"/"done".
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No. The Apple TV will ignore it.
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I have a 2008 MacBook with OX10.9.5 and has 160 GB in Hard Drive. Can I expand this in order to Storage more photos and music..?

I have a 2008 MacBook with OX10.9.5 and has 160 GB in Hard Drive. Can I expand this in order to Storage more photos and music..?

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There are other vendors as well.
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Photo and Music storage on External HDD attached to Time Capsule

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