Time Capsule and media files
Hi all. I apologize if this is a redundant question, but I haven't quite found the answer that I need.
I want to purchase a Time Capsule to use as a wireless n router and Time Machine backups for my desktop, notebook, and daughters iMac. I also want to attach an external drive via USB to the Time Capsule to serve as a media server (basically my iTunes and iPhoto libraries), to serve the above-mentioned computers as well as my AppleTV.
1. Is this possible? If so, can anyone point me to a list of instructions describing the setup and settings?
2. Will this be fast enough to serve the media to my clients (USB and wireless n)?
3. Will Time Capsule back up my media on the external drive using Time Machine automatically?
4. Is there a better solution?
Thanks in advance.
John
JG, I have a similar question, but I'm not following your response to John Dougherty. Here's what I have:
- Mac Mini 2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM
- Time Capsule (500GB)
- two MacBooks
- two external hard drives (320GB and 500GB), both firewire 400
- one SimpleShare NAS drive, but I've read these will not work with OSX 10.4 and above (the drive is from a few years ago; I have 10.5.x on all my machines now)
And here's what I want to do:
1. I want to have all my media (specifically, photo and music) files in one location so that I can access them wirelessly from my Macbooks. My wife and I both have large music libraries -- each too large to fit on any one computer. So I would like to have our music on one wirelessly-accessed drive, so that, say, I can play tunes or update my iPhone on my laptop without being tethered to an external drive (which is how it is now). I don't care about wirelessly streaming video.
2. I want to be able to use Time Machine for automatic backups, obviously. I don't care where these reside.
3. I had originally planned to use the Mini as a media server -- i.e., I wanted hook it to my television (via HDMI adapter) to play streamed videos as well as video saved to my hard drive(s). The mini's internal hard drive is 120GB, probably enough for all these media files, but I imagine I'll max that out soon. (Most movies are 1GB or more, and I'm collecting a lot of movies.)
My plan is this:
- store all media files on external hard drive(s)
- connect the mini to the TV via HDMI adapter
- connect external hard drive to Mini via firewire
- connect Mini to Time Capsule via ethernet
Time Capsule stores backups from both Macbooks and Mini (if it can fit all that).
External drives store all media.
Mini is the brains of the operation.
Is this the same setup you're recommending to John Dougherty? Or am I trying to do something different? Or am I trying to do something stupid?
Is there any value in using a NAS drive in place of those external firewire drives?
Thanks in advance to Jolly Giant, or to anyone who can help me with this setup.
Similar Messages
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I have a 2T time capsule. I have 3 Macs that use it for time machine backups. There is plenty of room on it so I have a few files on it that I can access from any Mac.
A Mac sees a file easily just by accessing the drive.
How can I access a file from the iPad? I just want to read a special PDF.I don't want to keep the file on the iPad.
also I don't want to access the iPad from a computer.
I just want to access a PDF on the time capsule.
And the time capsule is not a computer.
I can access a PDF on my other computers by putting it in the sites folder of the computer. Then i view it as a web page since I know the addresses of the other computers. But even if I know the address of the time capsule, there is no sites folder to do that.
Would these other Programs access the time capsule and see files on it? -
I recently purchased a Time Capsule and put my iTunes library on there so that I wasn't using up my hard drive space. Only 120gb on my mac book air. However when I download songs from iTunes I can not be connected wirelessly to the internet at the same time. Can I hard wire my TC in to my mac so that I can treat the TC as just an external hard drive? Thanks
Initially, you asked if you can hardwire your MBA to the TC. The answer is yes, by using the optional USB Ethernet adapter that Apple provides. However, in order for your MBA to access the TC's internal or USB-attached HDD, it would need to establish a network connection to it. This would be true of any NAS device on an Ethernet network. Therein, lies the problem. Your MBA cannot connect to two networks simultaneously.
One option then, would be to have two separate iTunes Media folders; one on the MBA & the other on the TC. This way, you can download the music to your MBA when connected to the Internet at the AirPort lounge, and then use iTunes Consolidate Library feature to transfer the audio files to the TC's iTunes Media Folder location. A great program to help maintain multiple iTunes Librarys and/or Media Folders, that you may want to consider, is PowerTunes. -
Time Capsule as Media/iTune and NAS?
HI,
Got few Apple Products in home and Planning to get Good Media server/NAS HDD.
Currently using 500GB External HDD connected to WiFi router.(has few limitations streaming drops, file size etc PRO: no external power supply and cheap in price)
I am trying to put all the stuff in one place Photos, Music, Movies, TV shows etc. and wanted to access on all Apple Products. (ipad, Iphone, MAcs, ATV etc). I beleive there is limitation on iTune Library one at time???
Wanted to stream Movies from NAS without distructions and droping??
TIme Capsule can be iTune Server, hows streaming performance? any lags on network?
Whats permormance with NAS and Streaming content via WiFi network?
Wanted to Stream Photos, or any media format, any Limitations on file size or format for copying. (as existing router supports on FAT format (router limitations) and cant copy larger files???)
is it worth to put Time Capsule on network?
Whats power consumptions on TC?
Whats failure rate for HDD?
Is TC best solution for me?
is it possible to download podcast automatically on TC?
is there any alternative for TC in market? looking for 2TB at least.
Suggestions, comments much appreciated.
Thanks in advance and Happy new year Champions.make sure you do the following if you are planning to load all your library on TC:
Step 1: make sure that you tell iTunes where your media folder is located, under preferences, advanced, chose the location of your media folder (assuming you are using iTunes 10+.
Step 2: Once you are done telling iTunes where your media folder is located (music, etc) make sure you go to users & groups under system preferences (assuming you are running Lion or Mountain Lion OSX) and choose login items, then click the + sign and locate your time capsule from the shared drive section in finder, just chose it (no specific folder) just any folder.
the reason why you should do this, is that if it happen that you restart your mac! iTunes will try to look for the drive that has your media/music that you set earlier in step 2: , and since TC is not an actual NAS drive, it is more like a shared drive, it will take few seconds for the hard drive on it to load, where iTunes will not be able to locate it before it is ready, and thus it will revert to the default location of the media folder which is under music/itunes/itunes media/, and eventually none of your songs will actually work since they are on the TC and not your mac.
doing what i told to do in step 2: will make sure that your TC hard drive is ready before your iTunes try to locate the media folder, where you will be able to play your library without any issues.
failing to do so, most probably you will face the problem where you try to play songs in iTunes and finding that they have exclamation mark next to them, which means that they are missing from the library.
my music library is all located on my Time Capsule, and iTunes runs on my Mac mini (with home sharing enabled), and my iTunes is set to lunch on start up under system preferences/users & groups/login items/.
My mac mini act as a server (don't worry about your mac going to sleep, it will wake up once you try to access your media from other devices) assuming that you have the option wake on LAN enabled under network in system preferences.
This is my setup.
- Mac mini mid 2011, running Mountain Lion and latest iTunes set to launch on startup in case of computer power on or restart so i don't have to worry about launching it manually.
- Time capsule 2 TB, used as network shared hard drive
- MacBook Pro early 2011 running Mountain Lion and latest iTunes
- 2 iPads
- iPhones 4s
- Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2
all my devices having home sharing enabled under the same account.
i can access my music library from any of my devices easily and problem free.
hope this will help you and other users.
Many thanks -
Can I use the new Time Capsule to backup my mid 2010 Macbook Pro? Also can I want to free up my hard disk, can I save my photos and files on the time capsule and later access through wifi?
Can I use the new Time Capsule to backup my mid 2010 Macbook Pro?
Yes, if you are asking about using Time Machine to backup the Mac.
Also can I want to free up my hard disk, can I save my photos and files on the time capsule and later access through wifi?
You are not thinking of deleting the photos and files on your Mac, are you? If you do this, you will have no backups for those files.
Another concern is that Time Machine backs up the changes on your Mac. At some point, Time Machine will automatically delete the photos and files from the Time Capsule.....you just don't know when this might occur.
In other words, only delete files from your Mac that you can afford to lose. -
Can i keep files into my time capsule and delete them from my mac?
i have to many files in my mac and i'm running out of space so i want to put the photos and music only on my time capsule and delete them from my mac, is that possible?
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Of course you can do that, but it won't work if you are using the Time Capsule to make backups. In this case, I recommend to leave your Time Capsule as your backup drive and buy an external drive to put your photos and music on it.
If you aren't using your Time Capsule for that, you can do it -
Have done a lot of reading to get prepared to convert to Aperture 3 and have this question regarding setting up my library type.
I'm not a professional -just a heavy user hobbyist.
It appears that the major factors in using reference style is to backup the images with Time Capsule and always do moves or deletes from within the Aperture application.
If my architecture matters here's what I have that may be involved in photo management and editing:
iMac (latest 27" high power version with lots of memory)
Internal 2TB HD where the library is stored
External (FireWire) 2TB HD where the images are stored
External (FireWire) 6TB HD backup drive
In the future an iPad for remote work on images (when/if available) and a Mac laptop (for same remote use)
I see major downside issues to letting the library manage my files - such as inaccessibility (or awkward accessibility) to the images for other programs, and performance issues when the library gets large (thousands of images or 100+ gb in size)
The chief complaints I've seen regarding using a reference mode is the broken link issues created if file management is done outside of Aperture (adds, deletes, moves of files) and the inability to use the Vault function for backup.
One feature that I imagine I'd like to have is maximum integration with Final Cut Pro X and that's one area I haven't seen much on and would be interested to hear about if that integration is affected with the choice of managed vs referenced library types. (I like to produce film clips that are combinations of pics and video and want to be set up so that is done in the easiest fashion when working in FCP X)
I'm sure I've not seen all sides of this issue and would like to see some discussion around this question.
Thanks to everyone contributing!
CraigGoody, Goody, you hit a few of my favorite subjects! Herewith some comments, with the usual caveats - true to the best of my knowledge and experience, others may have different results, YMMV, and I could be wrong.
I run Aperture on two machines:
-- 2007 Mac Pro with 2x2.66 GHz Xeon, 21 GB of RAM, a 5770 GPU, and multiple HD. I have about 11,000 images, taking up 150 GB. (Many are 100 MB TIFF, scanned slides)
-- 2006 Mac Book Pro with 1 2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB of RAM and a 240 GB SSD.
Two very different machines.
-- Aperture Libraries are all the same - Managed or Referenced. If Managed, then the Master image files are inside the Package, if Referenced, they are outside, and you can have any combination you want. Managed is easier, but Referenced is not hard if you are the least bit careful.
-- While the sheer size of an Aperture Library is not a big issue, the location on disk of the different components can have a tremendous impact on performance.
-- Solid State Drives (SSD) read and write faster than regular Hard Disks (HD) and, what is more important, empty HD read and write much faster than full HD.
-- Aperture speed requires a combination of RAM, CPU, graphics processing unit (GPU) speed, and disk speed. The more RAM you have, the less paging you will see. With enough RAM, the next bottle neck is CPU (speed and cores) and GPU speed. But even then you will still have to fetch an image (longer if you pull the full resolution Master, read and rewrite the Version file, and update the Preview and Thumbs.
So what works?
-- RAM, RAM, and more RAM. 4 GB will work, but you will page a bit. 8 GB is much faster. On my old MacPro the sweet spot was about 16 GB of RAM.
-- Keep your Library on your fastest (usually internal) drive. Keep that disk as unloaded as possible. How do you keep it unloaded? Either buy BIG, 1 TB+ or move your Masters off onto another disk. The good news here is that as Master files are written only once and never rewritten, speed of this disk, as opposed to the disk that holds the Library, is not important. There is a one second pause as the Master is read into memory and, if you have enough RAM, that is it - the Master will never be paged out. If, on the other hand, you do not have enough RAM, and you do a lot of adjusting at full resolution, then the speed of the disk that holds your Masters will become very important due to paging.
-- I found that I picked up a tiny bit of speed by keeping the Masters on a dedicated disk. Thus, in your configuration, if you can dedicate that 2 TB FW HD to your Masters, you should see very nice performance.
Final notes on backups and archives:
-- One conventional wisdom is that you should make an archive copy of every image file before or as you load them into your system. (Aperture in this case.) This archive is then never touched or deleted.
-- An alternative approach is that you do not keep such an archive, but only the images that you have in your Aperture Library. And when you delete from the Library, you no longer keep a copy anywhere.
I do the following:
-- Card to Aperture. Card is then kept at least 24 hours until all of my backups have run. (I use three - Time Machine, Clone, and off site.)
-- I do not keep archive copies. If I decide to delete a file, my only recourse is to recover it from Time Machine during the six month cycle of my Time Machine backups. Thereafter, it is lost.
There are merits to both approaches.
Hope this is clear, correct, and responsive to your needs.
DiploStrat -
Time Capsule: We have a model no A1049 our network (installed by someone no longer working with us, so I don't know how it was set up or how to access any settings other than via Airport Utility)
We use it for our central file storage, and as a disk for timemachine backups from the several macs we use here.
The time capsule is running but we have slow access to files, it takes ages to bring up the list of files available, can I fix this?
I have just updated the firmware.
I would also like to know how I can back up these files to another disk.
I have searched the manuals and also the support community but I can't find the answers or any instructions other than the manuals and would appreciate help.
Thank youThe Time Capsule was designed to handle Time Machine backups from one or more Mac computers, and it will work reasonably well for that purpose.
But.....and this is a big BUT......it will not work very well at all if you try to make it act as a file server, since the disk spin up time is quite slow among other things like slow read times from the disk.
Suggest that you get with an IT specialist who can recommend the right file server solution for your network based on your needs.
As far as backing up the data on the Time Capsule, the simplest way to do this is connect a USB drive to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use the built in Archive function in AirPort Utility to make a complete copy of all of the data on the Time Capsule.
Unfortunately, the simplest way is also the slowest and the Time Capsule will not be available for Time Machine backups or file serving during the Archive procedure, which will likely take 4-6 hours or so depending on how much data might be on the Time Capsule. A good time to do this might be late at night, so the Archive copying will run overnight.
Another better option would be to use a commercially available application, like Carbon Copy Cloner to automatically back up the Time Capsule disk each day at a time that you choose. The advantage to doing it this way is that CCC will only back up the changes that have occurred since the last back up, so once the first "master" backup is done, the subsequent "incremental" backups will only take a few minutes each day.
Your IT specialist / consultant will likely have other suggestions for you as well. The advice that we have offered here is meant to be general in nature and not specific to your particular needs. -
Can i get the time capsule to automatically back up my file from my Mac Book Air but have certain files which are only stored on the time capsule and not the computer? Then can i access these files only on the time capsule without connecting it?
igonneau wrote:
Can i get the time capsule to automatically back up my file from my Mac Book Air but have certain files which are only stored on the time capsule and not the computer?
You can, but how are you going to back up those other files? When (not if) your Time Capsule fails, you risk losing them. See #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for details.
Then can i access these files only on the time capsule without connecting it?
Not sure what you mean. You have to connect a computer, either via Ethernet cable or wirelessly, to read or write to the disk. -
Time Capsule And Snow Leopard - Problems Accessing Files / Folders
Hi all,
I am having a problem accessing the time capsule drive and my networked Macs drop boxes etc from the finder. They were working fine, possibly before 10.6.1 and are very intermittent at the moment. If I goto 'go' then 'network', it shows all connected devices fine however accessing them seems to be sketchy. For example, from my Mac Pro upstairs, I can see the time capsule and macbook fine, I can connect to them fine, even screen share with no problems, however when I try to access the drop box, or anything at folder level, I get a spinning type icon in the lower right of the finder by the new zoom bar that just keeps spinning and nothing happens. I have this problem accessing the 'data' folder on my time capsule from both the Mac Pro and the MacBook unless I access it from the drive it mounts on the desktop, I get straight in that way! It's quite infuriating really. Anyone else having this problem? Just to update, I have both Macs connected to the time capsule for time machine and backups are working fine. It would seem that you do eventually get into the folder you try to access, but takes forever for some reason.
Cheers.
Message was edited by: JuddaI couldn't access files on a drive attached to my TC recently, and I fixed the problem by repairing permissions on my main hard drive (the one in my computer.) This option is in Disk Utility. Not sure if that will work for you but it's worth a shot, it doesn't hurt anything! A lot of people recommend repairing permissions every time you update your operating system.
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How can I confirm that the back up to my time capsule has backed everything up as when I enter time capsule and interrogate the backs ups I can't identify individual photo or music files?
You cannot browse a Time Machine backup with the Finder. To restore individual music files or any other files normally available in the Finder, open your Music folder then "Enter Time Machine" using the Time Machine icon.
Restoring individual photographs is slightly more cumbersome. Apple recommends restoring the entire iPhoto Library, but if you want to locate an individual photograph you could use Time Machine to restore the old Libary. Restore it to an alternate location to avoid overwriting your existing one. Open iPhoto while holding an Option key, open the restored Library, find the photo you need and export it, close iPhoto, re-open it with your usual Library, and import the photo.
Time Machine depends upon a number of sound engineering principles for reliable operation, one of which is "faith"
Your files will remain intact until your Time Machine backup device becomes inoperative. -
I have 1TB time capsule and i need to back up more media. Can i also use a 3TB time capsule asswell?
i have 1TB time capsule and i need to back up more media. Can i also use a 3TB time capsule asswell?
You can, but it is not possible to continue backups "seamlessly" from one Time Capsule to the other.
Time Machine will make a new complete backup of each Mac on the first pass when you connect the new 3TB Time Capsule. -
New iMac user here, I recently bought a new iMac and Time capsule and have the whole network up and running now. I have connected another external HD to the time capsule as well and have a total of 3 TB of storage connected wireless to my new iMac. My question is can I use this location as the default location for iTunes? I doubt I am gonna run out of room considering the iMac has 1 TB of storage already, but I'd prefer to keep my movies and music off the Mac to keep it running smoothly. If this is possibly, I'd like to do this with iPhoto as well.
I would advise against placing your iTunes library on a Time Capsule.
The Time Capsule is designed as a backup device and not for wireless streaming of video.
Before you do anything more, can I suggest you put into place a reliable, redundant backup strategy.
Unless you are prepared to risk loss of your iTunes library due to a hard drive failure, I would not put iTunes on the Time Capsule.
Leave your iTunes library on your iMac until such time as your internal drive is full. Backup to Time Capsule using Time Machine and create a clone of your internal iMac HD to your external drive.
That's my 2 cents worth. Others may have a different opinion. -
To save space on my macbook pro I would like to export my iTunes library onto an external usb hard drive. So that I don't have to have the hard drive plugged in to my laptop all the time when I am at home I would like to plug it into a Time Capsule and access it over my wireless network. This is the simple part that I am confident about setting up.
The tricky part is as follows. When I take my laptop out of the house when I am traveling I would like to still be able to access my iTunes library by plugging the external usb hard drive directly into my laptop as I will not be able to access my home network anymore.
I know this will potentially break all of the tracks in my iTunes library as the file paths will change as it will be plugged directly into my laptop rathern than via the Time Capsule. Does anybody know of a way to quickly fix all of the broken tracks in the library or a way I could achieve the above?
I hope someone can help meI have nothing wireless in the house and no experience with Time Capsules. However, as long as the drive appears on the desktop in both scenarios there should be no problem. If there is, hold down the option key while starting iTunes and guide it to the library.itl file on the external drive.
Do not confuse moving your library with moving your media, as many people do. Your library is your whole iTunes folder. You move it by copying the whole folder to the other drive and starting iTunes with the option key as above. If you want to move only media you do so through preferences settings in iTunes,making sure you organize (consolidate) your media so it actually copies it to the other drive. There are advantages and disadvantages to either situation, but generally unless you are going to have media on one several drives, or you plan on sharing media but not library listings with other users, you are best off moving teh whole library. Moving the whole library also has less potential for resulting in broken links since your library is all in one package and not split across drives. -
Hi
Would anyone know if I can I move my iTunes library onto Time Capsule and share it across my devices (similar to a NAS drive)?
This would give me some hard drive space on my iMac and more importantly mean my iTunes library is available all the time. Although I have Home sharing I need my iMac on and if not I use iTunes on iCloud I always seem to be downloading the tracks I need.
Current configuration / devices:
iMac 20-inch, Mid 2007 - nearly full!
Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
OSX Mavericks
Time Capsule (1TB)
iPad
iPod Touch
Apple TV
iTunes 11.1.5 (5)
Many thanksWhat "devices" are these? By devices I normally understand i-devices and not computers. How many computers?
If you put the whole library on the Time Capsule (TC) you can only use it with one computer at a time because the iTunes library file can only be opened by one copy of iTunes at a time. If you put only media on the TC but have a copy of the library files on each computer you can use media by multiple computers but you then have the headache of trying to make sure that any changes done to the collection by one computer are mirrored by the libraries on the other computers which will be more or less independent.
I hope this TC isn't also your backup drive. When the TC drive fails (and it will someday) then your whole collection is gone. Don't rely upon Apple to always have copies for you to download. For one, if a distributor puylls an item then it is gone period. Additionally, Apple only keeps media, not the actual organization that is your set of library files. If you do this, buy another backup drive.
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