Time Capsule won't recognize my USB hard drive.

Question

I have a 160-gb Western Digital hard drive in an external enclosure that I use to use on my PC. I want to access the drive via Time Capsule through the USB port in the pack. Currently I have a USB hub with a printer and the hard drive plugged into the port in TC. I can print remotely from TC, but the hard drive is not visible as an assessable drive. The only way I can even see it is through a manual setup and review the disk setup of TC. How do I need to setup the TC to recognize the USB external harddrive? Just plugging it in doesn't work.
This is my first Macbook, as well as first Time Capsule. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

If your drive only has NTFS on it, then I don't think Time Capsule is equiped to deal with that partition. Time Capsule will tell you that the drive needs to be checked. If the drive has another partition on it that Time Capsule can see (FAT32), it will set up a connection to that drive. You can tell Time capsule to ignore errors on that drive (eg the fact that it can't deal with NTFS) and the blinking amber light will go away and you'll get the green light.
The thing is Vista no longer has FAT32 even as a format option, you've got either NTFS or their new eFAT which is not backward compatible with FAT32. A third party program needs to be used to format your external drive. For example I use a program from Ridgecrop. Below are its available options for formatting.
C:\Users\voigtstr\Documents>fat32format.exe
Usage Fat32Format X:
Erase all data on disk X:, format it for FAT32
It is also possible to specify a cluster size for the disk, e.g
Fat32Format -c1 X: - use 1 sector per cluster ( max size 137GB for 512 bytes pe
r sect)
Fat32Format -c2 X: - use 2 sectors per cluster ( max size 274GB for 512 bytes p
er sect )
Fat32Format -c4 X: - use 4 sectors per cluster ( max size 549GB ... )
Fat32Format -c8 X: - use 8 sectors per cluster ( max size 1TB ... )
Fat32Format -c16 X: - use 16 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c32 X: - use 32 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c64 X: - use 64 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c128 X: - use 128 sectors per cluster (64K clusters)
Version 1.03, see http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm
This software is covered by the GPL
Use with care - Ridgecrop are not liable for data lost using this tool
Now is Apple equipped to deal with all these cluster sizes. Have Apple defined anywhere what FAT32 is for them?
I can copy a small file to the external drive when its connected to Time Capsule, but if I try to copy a 700Mb movie to Time Capsule, Time Capsule gets confused and drops the network. It not only drops the network but if you try copying a large file from Time Capsule's internal disk to the attached USB drive, even that is enough to hang the machine. So it stops its network, it stops it USB connection, however the wireless carrier is still strong (it just cant transmit any TCPIP)
So is this a firmware issue that they can correct? Or do I have a dud Time Capsule? To compare your situation to mine the discussion must focus around FAT32 I believe. I suspect that Apple's own journaled file system works flawlessly with large files (but as yet do not own a mac to test this). Furthermore the point of having a large external drive is to be able to take it places and share files (which will have to be less that 4gig if I use FAT32) with non mac owning friends. Either Apple needs to support NTFS, or they need to specify or even provide a FAT32 format utility that will work with both Windows and Mac
Cheers
The Voigtstr