Using External HD connected to Time Capsule

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.