Which is better hard drive lacie or time capsule for longer life

hard disk for macbook early 2008

nvnv0 wrote:
Is there a error that a questioner himself can click correct answer
This was discussed in the Using Apple Support Communities forum. If a questioner finds the answer to his/her own question then he/she can post it for the education of other readers. However, in so doing, the questioner doesn't get any points.
Bob

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External hard drive connected to Time Capsule for iTunes.

I have copied my iTunes library to an external hard drive and connected the hard drive to my time capsule. I have an iMac and a MacBook and want to see the same iTunes content on each. I want to use the iMac as the main place to add iTunes content and see the results on the MacBook. I have told both iTunes (the iMac and the MacBook) the location of the hard drive, but I see different content on each. For example, if I add new music to the iMac I can't see it on the MacBook.
I sync iPads, iPhones and iPods via the iMac, but don't think this has any bearing on the problem.
Any suggestions on how to resolve this gratefully appreciated, and thanks in advance.

Welcome to the discussions, squire78!
If your external drive is connected directly to your computer, you can have Time Machine backup both your computer and the external drive.
If the external drive is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule, Time Machine cannot backup this drive.

Hard drive networked through Time Capsule for Windows and Mac

My previous setup was using an old Dell laptop with Windows XP to network share both my Samsung laser printer and my Seagate GoFlex 2 tb drive formated to NTFS, and all Windows 7, Windows 8, and OS X 10.6+ machines in the house were successfully able to connect to both. My wife replaced her old Macbook Pro she got in 2008 and decided to get a Time Capsule as well to backup her iMac and new Macbook Air. I decided to take advantage of the "features" of the Time Capsule, and hubbed the single port, just as I had done with the old Dell. After installing Bonjour on the Windows 7 machines I was able to share the printer just fine, however I'm still unable to share the drive for some reason.
The Airport utility on both the Macs and Win 7 machines see the hard drive in utilities, the box in Airport for file sharing is checked, guest access turned off, secure disk sharing with device password, and workgroup matches my workgroup. However the hard drive still doesn't appear. I tried formatting it to FAT32 based on some older forums posted in 2008-2009 range, but then realized the hard drive is too large for that, and I'm not looking to have a bunch of smaller partitions. I tried exFAT, but that failed too. Now I'm back to NTFS, but still with the issue that none of the machines recognize hard drive via the Explorer/Finder.
The Time Capsule is functioning as a backup with Time Machine for her Mac's, but I'm looking to use the external drive connected more as a media center storage and storing selected individual files (think networked thumb drive/USB stick) from my machines.

Put the seagate drive onto the Mac and format it Mac OS extended journaled. (HFS+ for short) and you will also need to change the partition over to GUID from MBR.
TC has very limited formats it can recognise.. FAT32 and HFS+ (well FAT16 but that doesn't count). exfat no, ntfs no, Really with FAT32 being hopeless.. you have one choice .. HFS+.
The Windows machines can handle files to the drive just fine.. because it is a network drive.. it is offered to the network as SMB protocol.. in windows it will look like NT server. The precise format of the drive is irrelevant and is handled by the firmware of the TC.
But do reset the partition scheme to GUID.. not MBR.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ph5845
You can even put 2 or more partitions on it.. but only one is fine.

How can my daughter use the hard drive in the Time Capsule ...

So, I am in Oklahoma and my daughter is in Tennessee...
She has a Time Capsule where the Wi-fi base station quit working, but the hard drive may be OK.
She bought an Airport Express to use as a wi-fi router.
The question, then, is:
How can my daughter use the hard drive in the Time Capsule to do Time Machine backups?
Thank you very much for your insights.
Roberto

It can be done but is very messy. That is assuming the TC is still functional which I kind of doubt.. the wifi is seldom the only thing that will die .. so whatever problems it has the wifi would be the least of it.
Anyway.. do a factory reset to get started.
The Factory Reset Gen1-4.
Unplug your TC. Hold in reset. and power the TC back on.. without releasing reset for about 10sec. When the status light flashes rapidly; release it.
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
If the LED is not lit then the TC is dead, not just the wireless.
The setup for using the TC is explained in the bottom of this thread.
TC in a second local network.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4817218?tstart=30
The idea is to set the TC to provide router function.. and the computer plugged in by ethernet to as a second network.. but there are rules on how this is done which I have explained in that thread.
I notice that Mountain Lion deals better with order of network priority than Snow Leopard used to .. so it might not need to have manually set gateway and dns.. although I would still recommend it. It simply stops the second network causing issues.
It is much easier to simply purchase an external drive and plug that in.
It is cheaper, faster and more reliable than using the TC for TM anyway.
Plus a lot of the later machines no longer have ethernet ports.. and using dongles is far from neat.. although thunderbolt to ethernet is IMHO necessary accessory for anyone without ethernet.

How to proceed on transferring the content of an external hard drive into the time capsule.

I just bought a new MBP and a 2T time capsule but i don’t know how to proceed on transferring the content of an old external hard drive into the brand new time capsule.
The old external hard drive is a carbon copy of another external HD which was my time machine backup but unfortunately someone stole it from me… so I was thinking about transferring the content from the old external hard drive to the time capsule and then set time capsule as the new time machine backup.
Is there anybody whose can give me a hand and tell what is the best to do?
Thanks
sb

Configure Time Machine preferences. Be sure to remove the external drive from the Exclude list.
Mac Apps - Apple Support
Mac Basics
Welcome to Mac Support

Searching external hard drive attached to Time Capsule

I have a 1 TB Time Capsule which I use for backing up my 2011 MacBook Pro and for providing my WiFi. I also have a 1 TB external hard drive plugged into my Time Capsule which I can access via WiFi. I can go to Finder on my laptop and browse the folders/files on my external hard drive. It appears under Shared in the sidebar of the Finder window. I can open files from it and I can save files to the drive, so it appears to be working fine. I have hundreds of gigs of files on the drive. But when I was recently hunting for a specific file, I noticed that my Spotlight wasn't doing a very good job at finding files on my external hard drive. I tried many different searches - by name, by type, by date - and had no luck. But as I was searching, I realized that I had more files of certain file types than Spotlight was showing me. So I tried searching for files I first confirmed were actually on the external drive. And again Spotlight failed to find them. If I used a partial filename search, it would find some files that matched but not the ones I was looking for.
So, this led me to think the index is corrupt. I'm not sure if this problem is related to my recently upgrading to Lion or not, since I haven't had to search the drive in awhile. I tried to force Spotlight to recreate the index on the drive by using the Privacy panel trick (of the Spotlight Preferences) but that didn't work. I then tried to get Spotlight to recreate its entire index and I think all that did was recreate the index for my internal harddrive.
So, are there things I need to know about attaching an external hard drive to a Time Capsule that I perhaps forgot to do? Should I be able to search the drive with Spotlight? Do I have to somehow force Spotlight to look in external drive when doing a search or is it supposed to search everything it can?
I should mention I have been having a little trouble with my Time Capsule as well. I recently had to erase the drive and set up a whole new backup since the backup was failing - not sure what happened to it, but it seems to be working again now. But I did notice yesterday that my Time Machine hadn't backed up all day but it was not giving me a warning message. It was just sitting there not backing up. I had tried resetting my PRAM and after doing so, my Time Machine was back to backing up. I'm not sure if the PRAM reset helped with that or if it was just the restart of the laptiop.
One more thing - I feel like since upgrading to Lion I have had to restart my laptop more than ever. Things just start acting funny, especially when I am using Safari and I find myself resetting Safari and then restarting my laptop all the time. Odd.

It should be HFS+.. it may work with fat32 but that is a lousy format.
The actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. the TC offers SMB connection.. so it is a true file sharing device.. the format used to store the files cannot be directly read by windows but is "interpreted, translated" via the firmware of the TC.
BTW this is true of all network storage.. A NAS can store files in whatever format its OS requires.. freebsd like freenas might use XFS.. or linux use EXT2 or REISFS.. it makes no difference as long as it offers that store to the windows (and apple) network as SMB.. then windows can handle it.

External hard drives compatible with time capsule generation 3

I am trying to connect a little 160Gb HP hard drive to my time capsule via a hub which also connects successfully a non wireless printer. This particular hard drive uses two usb in's to connect. Once i plug it into time capsule, it powers up, thinks for a while,the wee blue light becomes solid and there it is.
However it does not show up in the finder sidebar under Shared - though i have set preferences to show everything. the hard drive is formatted correctly, and i can access it when i plug it directly into the imac.
am i missing something ? or is it just not compatible with my time capsule ? - perhaps the two usb connections are the cause? i just want to be able to save files and access them on the external hard drive via the network from imac and laptop, instead of having to plug it in to either.....
any help much appreciated...
janemae

yep am using a usb hub,time cap. has only the one usb port- yes two usb outs on the hard drive , sorry, which merge into one into the hd, is bus powered...

I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8

I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8

Unfortunately, Time Machine backups that are stored on a drive that has been connected directly to a Mac are completely different than Time Machine backups that are stored on a Time Capsule.
Frankly, it is not worth the effort and trouble to try to transfer the old backups to the new Time Capsule.....my opinion....having done this in the past.
It is possible though, but I would not recommend it due to the complexity and downsides involved with this. To give you an idea of how to do this, check out this support article.
http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
Even if you transfer the "old" backups over to the Time Capsule successfully, Time Machine will not simply "add on" to the old backups.
Time Machine will make a new complete backup of your Mac and then add incremental backups from that point.
My advice.....start a new backup on the Time Capsule and move forward. Keep the USB hard drive around for a month, maybe 2 or 3 in case you need to go back to an old backup for some reason. At that time, you will not likely need the old backups at all since you will have a current 2-3 month history of new backups. At that point, you can erase the USB drive and use it for another purpose.

I want to take files from my PC (using a Seagate external hard drive) then plug this Seagate External hard drive into my Mac Book Pro and move the files from the Seagate External Hard drive onto my Time Capsule. I do not want to put these files on my Mac

I want to take files from my PC (using a Seagate external hard drive) then plug this Seagate External hard drive into my Mac Book Pro and move the files from the Seagate External Hard drive onto my Time Capsule. I do not want to put these files on my Mac. How do I do this? Where do I put these files on my Time Capsule? Will it affect the functioning of my Time Capsule?

Mixing files with data is not always great idea.
See info here.
Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Why not just connect the PC directly to the TC by ethernet and copy the files over?
It is hugely faster and much less mucking around.
In windows load the airport utility for windows.. if you have not already as this will help you access the drive.
There is more info here.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331

I have an external hard drive from my time capsule that stopped working on me. I am attempting to access the data with a hard drive reader on my MAC. I am able to see the drive in disk utility and under system info USB. But I am unable to access the data.

I have an external hard drive from my time capsule that stopped working on me. I am attempting to access the data with a hard drive reader on my MAC. I am able to see the drive in disk utility and under system info USB. But I am unable to access the data and it does not show on the desktop when connected.

Ok if disk utility was able to verify the drive I doubt there is any problem.. are you trying to open a TM backup??
You need to mount the sparsebundle then check the actual info inside the bundle.
Don't use disk warrior.. if the disk has verified then unless you deliberately deleted files there is nothing that is going to do.
Pondini has a lot of stuff about getting access to the sparsebundle.
http://pondini.org/TM/17.html
But if you have copied info to the TC that is now gone.. and the disk is ok.. I am not sure.. the TC will not have deleted the files itself.

Can I increase the capacity of Time Machine with an external hard drive connected to Time Capsule?

Can I increase the capacity of Time Machine with an external hard drive connected to Time Capsule via the USB port? My current Time Machine has a total capacity of 1TB. I'd like to double or triple its memory. I don't want to use the external hard drive in lieu of the Time Capsule hard drive. I'd like to use it in addition to. Just don't know if/how it's possible.
This is another one of those questions that I've searched the web for answers, and have gotten tricky answers back. So now I'm trying to introduce a clean slate to the mix.
Thank you for your time!

Well, what you mentioning is possible. However, I don't know whether it's supported (as in, "easy to set up."). Time Machine officially supports backing up to a locally attached drive, to a machine running a Time Machine server (i.e. running OS X Server software), and to a Time Capsule. I don't know that it officially supports a drive attached to an AirPort or to a Time Capsule. Though I know some people have gotten it to work.
Best I can say is to try it. Plug the drive into the Time Capsule, ensure it's shared on the network, and then try and set it as a backup target from a machine in the Time Machine backup panel (you'll need to ensure it's mounted first). If it works, you're all set.

If I connect an external hard drive to the Time Capsule, all it automatically back it up?

If I connect an external hard drive to the Time Capsule, will it automatically back it up? Or do I need to somehow configure it in TIme Machine?

A HDD attached to the Time Capsule (TC) will not automatically back it up, nor can you configure Time Machine to do so. However, you can use the AirPort Utility to archive the contents of your TC's internal HDD to this attached drive.

I need to add a secondary hard drive to my time capsule. Can something that has been set up for a windows machine work without re-formatting?

I need to add a secondary hard drive to my time capsule. Can something that has been set up for a windows machine work without re-formatting?

In addition to Niel's comments, if you plan to use Time Machine to backup a Mac to the secondary drive.....that application needs a drive that has been specifically formattted for Mac. That would be Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
PCs can also read and write to the Mac formatted drive.

I connected a external hard drive to the Time capsule but I can't get it to connect, I connected a external hard drive to the Time capsule but I can't get it to connect

I connected an external hard drive to the Time Capsule but can't get it to work.

And are you using a powered USB hub? The USB port on the Time Capsule is under powered, so you almost always need to use a powered USB hub, even if the hard drive has its own power supply.

Backing up external hard drive (connected to time capsule) using time machi

hi. don't know if this is possible or not - am now using an external hard drive to store all my movies as my macbook pro's hard drive is filling up and i'm running out of space (it's 250gb). have created a separate itunes on the external hard drive and stream these movies to my apple tv. the external hard drive is connected to my time capsule and access it on the macbook pro that way wirelessy. is there a way to now back up my movies on the external hard drive to the time capsule using time machine (that it's already connected to)?

Welcome to the discussions, squire78!
If your external drive is connected directly to your computer, you can have Time Machine backup both your computer and the external drive.
If the external drive is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule, Time Machine cannot backup this drive.

Which is better hard drive lacie or time capsule for longer life

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