Time Capsule as hard Drive Backup

Can I use Time Capsule simply as a backup device for my iMac without having to connect my DSL modem to the Ethernet WAN port? Whenever I unplug the Ethernet line from the WAN port, I get the blinking amber light which makes me think that Time Capsule will not operate without the DSL modem - WAN Port hookup. Thanks for the help.

TC use;
I don't do TMachine.
I use the hard disk with the GO function of the Finder.
I don't use TC as a main backup drive.
I use it for file sharing between my network and outside of my network when I need files. Example, I live in Michigan but was visiting in Pennsylvania when I needed a .mv4 file(golf instruction I made two years ago). I used the afp function and connected to my TC and downloaded that file.
I have not used my flash drives for months because I use TC to transfer files between the Macs on my network.
I also use TC to point movies to my ATV and any other Mac on my network to stream those TC movies.
So there are many wonderful functions that TC can do for a person. Just pick the appropriate ones.

Similar Messages

Time capsule external hard drive backup

I want to back up & save all of my pics, movies, music to the time capsule hard drive so that iTunes can use them from the Time Capsule hard drive & I don't have to keep all that stored on my MacBook. Can someone help explain how to do that?

Looks like you just need to move your iTunes Media folder to Time Capsule's hard drive and then let iTunes know of the new location.

Airport Time Capsule as Hard Drive and Wireless Router

Hello,
My girlfriend and I want to buy Macbooks. A Macbook Pro 128 GB and a Macbook Air 128 GB. 128GB each is not enough for our needs and are also interested in buying an Airport Time Capsule with 2 TB rather than upgrading to 256GB/512GB, which is more money for less storage space.
My question is, can we use the Airport Time Capsule as a wireless router AND as a wireless hard drive?
Will I be able to keep the Time Capsule at home working as a wireless router for my girlfriend to surf the web and at the same, if I am at the library, as a wireless hard drive via internet so I can download the files i need?
If the network is down I would like to be able to use it via cable as a wired hard drive. Is that possible?
I searched for days for an answer but I could not find a definitive answer to my question.
Thank you!
Best regards,
Liviu

My question is, can we use the Airport Time Capsule as a wireless router AND as a wireless hard drive?
Yes. The Time Capsule has a built-in hard drive and you can add additional USB hard drives (via a USB hub) to its USB port. All of these drives can be shared out and will appear in the Finder as network drives.
Will I be able to keep the Time Capsule at home working as a wireless router for my girlfriend to surf the web and at the same, if I am at the library, as a wireless hard drive via internet so I can download the files i need?
Yes, that is also possible. Please check out the following AirPort User tip for more details on how this can be set up.
If the network is down I would like to be able to use it via cable as a wired hard drive. Is that possible?
If you mean if the wireless network is down can you still access the Time Capsule's hard drive via an Ethernet connection, then the answer is yes.

Can i format my time capsule's hard drive from fat32 to exFAT

can i format my time capsule's hard drive from fat32 to exFAT. and why shd mac make a harddrive fat32 knowing final cut will not recorgnise it

The internal hard drive in a Time Capsule is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and can't be changed to another format without taking it out of the case.
Unlike non-network drives, it'll appear to Windows as being FAT32 out of the box but isn't subject to the 4GB file size restriction.
(68112)

Time capsule, external hard drive, iTunes media library

Hi,
i want to setup my time capsule, at the same time I want to export my iTunes library to an external harddrive. following questions:
- I setup my time capsule currently only as wifi, not yet as a backup medium
- how do I set this whole thing up and in what sequence?
- I want to use movies purchased on iTunes from the library and not from the store, possible? Not via Apple TV I assume but via iTunes?
- I want to access movies located on the external hard drive from anywhere in my home network, possible?
I need to do this as I moved from usa to Europe and have To change my apple store. Before I change the store I need to download all movies to an external harddrive otherwise I cannot use them anymore due to license issues. Apple cannot help me here unfortunately.
the change is also necessary as staying in the US store causes more and more complications.
ideas are welcome!
thanks!

You can relocate your iTunes to an external hard disk .. plugged into the computer that is fine.. using it on a hard drive plugged into the TC is not so OK.. it can work but it will be slow.
- I want to use movies purchased on iTunes from the library and not from the store, possible? Not via Apple TV I assume but via iTunes?
Yes, you can use the iTunes library to store and play the movie. it has to run from iTunes on the computer. I am not sure I understand the last bit about apple TV.. it is simply a streamer.. (unless you have Gen1 which can store movies on the hard disk). The Apple TV connects to your iTunes running on a computer. The TC has nothing to do with this, other than being part of the network.
Note the TC has no media extensions nor is it media aware.. it is a dumb wireless router.. that is all.
- I want to access movies located on the external hard drive from anywhere in my home network, possible?
Access movies is fine.. read Apple prescribed method.
iTunes: How to share music and video
There is a lot of links to home sharing.
Again the TC is irrelevant to this, other than it ties the network.. but a switch or any other router could be doing that.. so the TC is of no particular use here.
For backups just setup TM in the computer to backup to the TC.. that is standard part of the setup.. and there is nothing particular in the TC required for that.. other than it plugs into the main router.. so exists as part of the network.

Can I use the time capsule internal hard drive for file storage?

Can I configure the Time Capsule internal HD to function as a network file server as well as handling time machine backups?
Can the internal HD be partitioned?

This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
It cannot be partitioned. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no controls.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
5. iTunes will constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is too slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Time Capsule and Hard Drive Password on a PC

I have been using my Time Capsule with a PC for some time now and it works perfectly but I have one gripe. Every time I switch on my computer and the backup program runs I have to enter the password for the hard drive (not the network password) in the time capsule. Does anyone know if you can switch off the password?
I only have to enter the password once, if I leave the computer on you don't have to enter it again to access the hard drive on the time capsule.

I believe you can just open the airport utility, enter manual setup, and click on the disc tab, then click on sharing, on the secure disk dialog box select with accounts.

Time Capsule & External Hard Drive

Hello! I recently purchased the newest Time Capsule. The product its amazing, the wifi is faster; however, when I connected my external hard drive to my time capsule, the external hard drive icon does not appear on my finder. I only have access to the time capsule, but nothing seems to work. Any help that can be given to me will be helpful! I am desperate

Lets' find out if the Time Capsule is recognizing the drive.
Open Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > AirPort Utility
Click the Time Capsule icon, then click Edit
Click the Disks tab
Here, you should see the name of your Time Capsule drive....named "Data" unless you have changed the name....and your other hard drive.
Is that the case?
In the example below, my Time Capsule drive is named Backups and another drive, WD Drive, is attached at the USB port.

Using Time Capsule as Hard Drive for Videos

This is likely a simple issue but I want to ensure that I do this properly. My internal hard drive is near capacity. I store a lot of media on my internal hard drive such as photos, music and video. I would like to move the video files (both edited and unedited) to my Time Capsule to free up space on my internal hard drive and continue to store and access/edit the photos on my internal hard drive. I would like to continue to use iMovie and other software to edit the videos which will be moved to Time Capsule. I tried to drag and drop the movie files from my hard drive to the Time Capsule Data folder but it started simply making a copy of the movie files rather than moving them entirely. I want to make sure that iMovie will "find" these files when I open the application.
I did something similar with my music library. While I have issues such as iTunes not finding the music (even though I changed the location of the music directory within iTunes preferences, iTunes still shows a circle with an ! in it for a good portion of my music which is frustrating bt that s a topic for another day), I want to make sure that I do this propoerly as these videos are special family videos that I have spent a good deal of time ediing.
Oh and one other thing, I am about to transfer a lot of new unedited video taken over the holidays and I want to make sure when I download them to my Mac, that the new video is saved directly to the new Time Capsule video folders.
Thanks for the help in advance!

I am not saying you cannot use it.. I am saying it is far from ideal.
If your TC dies. as they do .. and take it to apple, they will then change the story to say that it is a backup device.. there are no parts available for the TC, no service, no repairs.. it will be replaced in warranty. Wave goodbye to your content.. as they will do nothing to recover it.. if you remove the disk, or tamper in any way you will have voided the warranty. No NAS on the market (worth the name) seals in the hard disk.
The hard drive is a WD green.. far from the best hard drive around.. and whilst apple claim server quality.. I think their definition of servers and mine has reached snapping point. They are using MTBF from 15years ago or more.
For things like media, where you are handling large files.. a single green drive, without raid, in a backup device on the network are slow. Set to spin down 1min after file transfer is complete.. is so far from ideal it is ridiculous.
The reality is, Apple simply do not have another product.. a suitable one available.. and with the wide spread change to ssd, people are rapidly discovering their 128 and 256GB drives do not cut it.
I am glad you are at least using some backup regime.. that it isn't built into the TC is IMHO another indication that it isn't what apple are claiming it to be. Indeed even the pathetic attempt at backup they had built into the v5 utility, archive to USB drive.. no increments,, always the whole disk.. extremely slow.. was removed from the v6 utility. You cannot sell a device as a NAS without any way to backup, other than using a third party product.

How to use time capsule as hard drive and connect with existing net gear router

I have a netgear D6300 router, which i use to connect to internet - which is excellent so far for my downloads and games etc for my PS4 and hence am keen to continue using it. I bought the Airport time capsule for wireless storage, and when i set it up, I was advised on setup to connect the TC to my router, and it did what it needed to do.
Now, in order to connect to internet, i need to connect wifi to net gear router, but to access time capsule, i need to change wifi connection to my newly created wifi network with TC.
I want to use TC as a backup storage for my mac (its a 3TB TC), but also, my laptop has only 500gb hard drive which is now half full from downloads, so i want to transfer all my downloads to my TC and use it as an external hard drive, and future downloads to TC - but when i connect to wifi of TC, i can copy my folder on my mac, but not paste it to TC in finder. (the only thing in TC is an image of tmg of my macbook from first backup.).
How do i use TC as an external HD - there wasn't much difference in price of external wifi/wireless HD between non-TC and TC at 3gb, so i just thought i'd go for the airport TC option.
And is it possible to keep connected to wifi internet via net gear router, AND wifi TC - the whole point i bought it (from US shipped to australia on eBay, therefore not able to send back) was to use TC as external large HD via wifi, but keep my net gear router going.
Surely there is a way to not having to flick between wifi connections of TC and net gear internet.
When i'm connected to TC, i can't access internet, only TC.
And I don't really want to connect TC to my router via ethernet cable, as too many cables.
This can't be a difficult situation to manage, but i'm not sure how to do it.
Thanks

And I don't really want to connect TC to my router via ethernet cable, as too many cables.
Sorry but you have very little choice.
The TC can join to a wireless network.. but it is flakey, poor, slow and highly NOT recommended way to do things.
Nevertheless if you want to give it a try .. here is the method.
How do I setup my time capsule with wireless internet?
You SHOULD, plug the TC into the Netgear and run it in bridge mode.. you set the wireless to create a wireless network.. then when you connect to the TC it will be also connected to the internet and fast.
(if you don't do that you may as well have used a USB drive plugged into the Netgear, as it would be just as good).
TC is not actually designed for mixing Time Machine backups and files.. but if you are just storing downloads that is ok.. but I strongly recommend you use a DMG or sparsebundle to prevent the TM and the data from messing each other.
See Pondini instructions here.
Q http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Full Restore from Time Capsule after hard drive failure

Authorized agent replaced hard drive after it failed. Installed 10.5.5 and currently attempting to do a full restore from Time Capsule - progress is slow and in question after 22 hours. The backup size approx. 100 gb.
Screen reads "Transferring Information" at the top, progress bar is moving, and bottom of the screen reads "Looking for applications and documents to transfer" and hasn't changed for 22 hours.
Is this normal? how long should 100 gb take to restore?

think about the speed of wifi here
speed at 802.11n = a theoretical 540Mbps (less in real world scenarios)
Mbps = Mega bits per second
MBps - Mega bytes per second
8 bits = 1 byte
8 mega bits = 1 mega byte
How long would it take you to download a 1 gig file from the internet wired into your modem? About 10-20 min? And that is taking into account that the info is being uploaded hardwire. Now imagine that same file over wireless in your home being upload by the Airport card in your computer. People over look upload speed when considering these things. The wireless upload speed of your Airport card is what is limiting this. Just a limitation of the technology, not a fault of Apple just stating the numbers here.

Time Capsule/External Hard-drive issues

Hello - I'm thinking about investing in a Time Capsule mainly to back-up my data and in particular the massive amount of photos (34,000) that I think are slowing this machine down! I just wanted to ask once I have the photos on the Time Capsule am I able to delete them from my hard-drive?
As an aside, I do have a couple of WD Hard-Drives but I amhaving issues with them in that I cannot get into the hard-drive. This has happened around the same time that I updated to OS X 10.9.2. I did read online that others were having issues with this too. Im not quite sure what to do as having spent the money on these hard-drives it's a little disappointing to have to consider buying a new external hard-drive - although probably a very worthwhile investment. Anyone having this problem too?
Thanks for your advice in advance it is much appreciated.

Since you have an iMac my advice would be to buy 2 external drives. Now you can decide to move some of your data off your iMac to one of the drives for archiving and then use the other drive as a Time Machine backup of both the iMac and the archive. You don't want a solution that has key data sitting on a single drive.
But...before you buy two drives, I must ask. How much space are you using currently on your iMac. Just having 34000 pictures won't slow down your machine unless it is running out of space. Are you running out of space? If you aren't, then a single large drive to backup your iMac is sufficient. Just don't delete the photos so you have a redundant copy of each.
Finally, I personally don't like backing up over wifi unless with a notebook. You have an iMac, a dedicated drive for backup should not be a problem behind that big screen. It will be more reliable than a wifi backup and a heck of a lot faster.

Time capsule as hard drive?

My time capsule is set up to be my wireless router and uses time machine. Both work great and many back ups have occurred. But, I also want to use it as an external wireless hard drive and I cannot write to the disk. 2 Tb is a ton of space for just back up and i want to move stuff from my laptop to time capsule (my harddrive is only 125 gb) to free up space on my laptop. I thought this would be simple and work out of the box! What do I do to get it to be a hard drive too?

Do not forget.. the TC itself is a backup device and there is now no backup to any files offloaded from your laptop.. And TC is not known for reliability.. and apple do not recover files.. they simply replace them.. expect no help if things go wrong.. it is a backup device only.
So to make use of this post, how do I get it so I can access my time capsule harddrive remotely (i.e. if i am at work) Thanks!
Read up the iCloud btmm.. you can google it.. that is the easy way.
If you don't want to use icloud then there are other ways.. most of which require you to have a static public IP or be able to bridge the TC to a vpn router.

Time Capsule as Hard Drive for older iMac

After upgrading to Snow Leopard on my MacBook, my family now has four laptops that can take advantage of time machine for wireless backups, so I want to buy time capsule to do that easily. Will I also be able to use it as a hard drive for an older non-intel iMac that can't be upgraded from Tiger to Leopard? In other words, will I be able to simply drag files to time capsule via ethernet or USB (no airport card on the iMac either!)

Will I also be able to use it as a hard drive for an older non-intel iMac that can't be upgraded from Tiger to Leopard?
Yes.
In other words, will I be able to simply drag files to time capsule via ethernet or USB (no airport card on the iMac either!)
Through Ethernet. USB won't work.
(47935)

Can I retrieve files from a Time Capsule data hard-drive if I completed a simple-erase on it?

I have a 2TB Time Capsule. I stored files on the hard drive within the Time Capsule. I did a quick-erase of the hard drive (Time Capsule) via Airport Utility on my MacBook Pro and forgot the files were on it. Is there anyway I can retrieve these files? The Time Capsule's 2TB capacity was hardly used at all, I used it for Time Machine but apart from that I just stored some files on it. Thank you in advance if you could help.

As per Bob's comment.. BUTT.. big fat one.
The disk has to be out of the TC to do it. You need to directly access the disk so you need to remove the disk (voiding warranty) and place it in a usb holder and plug into a computer. If you are very careful pulling up the rubber mat. Using lots of heat from heat gun or hair dryer with half the inlet blocked.. and carefully pull up the mat leaving the label last and not stetching it.. the mat should go back with nobody knowing.. !!
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Replacing-Apple-Time-Capsule-HDD/2750/1
I hope you stopped using the TC immediately. Any new files will overwrite the old ones.
I went through this exercise recently to help a customer with a dead WD hard disk in their Gen 4 TC.. The data partition had lost format. Using just the demo of data rescue 3.. as I could not find a demo of Disk Warrior and I refuse to pay for something that offers no refund.. $100 is not too much if it works.. but it is expensive if you get nothing. But it will very likely work. Certainly the files were still available and correctly named.. but the demo does not allow much of a test.. but still looked hopeful. Customer wanted the hard disk changed wanted to do the recovery herself.. which is fine.
BTW if you have a choice find a tool that allows you to copy the files... you might need to buy another USB disk so you have a suitable target that is big enough. It is possible to repair a drive and so just recover the files.. the fast erase simply wipes the allocation table. Files should not be affected.. but any changes to the disk are permanent and if it goes bad will make it even more difficult to recover.. It can take a long time to copy files off but is safest route.
TC is a backup target.. the whole idea of backup is having at least 2 locations for your files.. by placing files on the TC.. there is no automated backup.. the disk could have died and you will lose everything.. this is kind of a warning.. don't do it.

Time Capsule as hard Drive Backup

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