Wireless WRT610N Storage Question - Formats

I just bought the WRT610N router. I have no connection issues what so ever. Everythings been beautiful since startup. The real question is the USB storage option. I have a MyBook 500GB USB drive. It is formatted for the Mac OSX operating system. Is there some reason why the router does not understand this Format? Must i format it to FAT in order to utilize the networking storage option? Any solutions would be greatly appreciated.

It has a problem recognizing formats other than FAT. Which also means you will have a hard (impossible) time storing a file that exceeds 4GB on the attached drive. It will also be incompatible with many backup programs. Hope you didn't really want to use the attached drive for much...
On the WRT600N it will only use FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. However, the FAT32 and NTFS partitions wouldn't function very well. I have heard that the kernel is Linux-based, and if you are familiar with Linux you can bypass some of these issues by using a Linux format.
A+ Certified, over 15 years of hands on computer and home networking experience...and I still get lost!

Similar Messages

WRT610N storage question

Is there any benefit to reformating an external hard drive using the WRT610N's Format Disk feature? I have a Seagate 160GB hard drive that I want to use as a media server, but am having a tough time getting it properly configured. Right now, the HDD has many files and folders on it that'd be lost during a reformat. However, if the HDD will be better off in the future having been reformatted, it may be worth losing the existing files & folders.
Assuming I reformat it, what settings should I make on the router so that media files on the HDD will be viewable on a Vista comptuer and on a PlayStation 3?
Thank you.

Follow-up:
I had attached, but later disconnected, the external hard drive from the router. I've disabled UPnP under the router's Storage (media server) tab. However, the Storage\Administration tab shows the Server LAN IP address that is the same as that of the router.
Is there a way to change the Server LAN IP address from the router to that of my Vista computer? It does not seem to be editable, but I am not sure.
Thanks again.

Can iTunes from 2 different computer use the same library? (from wireless data storage device)

I purchased a wireless data storage device. My iTunes content will be moved there and I'm planning on moving my wife's iTunes data to the wireless device. Can both our iTunes share the same library?

One Apple ID can be shared for store purchases. On the iPhone go to Settings>Store and put in the ID. Then all the songs purchased with that ID can be downloaded from the iTunes store on the phone.
I hope that is what you were asking?

WRT350N dropping wireless connections, storage chokes

Hello all-
I'm running a WRT350N, 1.03.7 firmware with a 350GB external drive for storage. Other items:
1. This is the silver cased system, not blue. Assume v1.0 build and there appears to be a manufactured date of 11/2007
2. UPnP disabled
3. Storage formatted as NTFS
It's been running well for 2 months and now, all of a sudden, I have to hard reset it every 2 days so my wireless systems (XP Home, XP Prof) can access anything.
I have 2 Windows 2003 Servers attached to the Gb ports along with 2 wired clients (Vista, XP) and the hard-wired systems have no problems at all.
I've been reading numerous threads about this and was wondering if there are any new developments regarding these systemic problems? I paid good $$ for this router and I can't even back up my data to the external drive. It chokes at about 10Gb.
I have zero faith that Linksys will respond to my "Ask Linksys" question but will try anyway.
Any nuggets of wisdom out there to enlighten me on anything I haven't tried?
I wish I could return this thing..

I have had the EXACT same issue and experience with the WRT350N (v1.03.2), it locks up when I copy or read large files from the USB attached storage drive. I have used three different drive which all work fine when plugged directly into a USB 2.0 port.
Is there a firmware fix? This is pretty pathetic as it renders the USB storage useless for me. I guess I will return the WRT350N (v1.03.2) router.
.Chirs

External Storage Question ....

I would like to get an external HDD for storing movies, photos, and music. I have a mix or purchased and my own content.
I am looking at these two drives:
G-Tech G-DRIVE 500GB FW400/800 Hard Drive
Western Digital My Book 500GB Pro Edition...
Can anyone help me sort through the ocean of options?
When I started looking, I thought I wanted an ethernet attached device so I could just attach it to my home router. But, it appears I can attach the drive to my airport extreme, which is acting as just a print server, and then connect the printer to the new hard drive. This solves the 'i only have one USB port on the old airport extreme' base station.
However, will my transfer rates suffer if I have wireless hop?
I don't need to hit the drive too often. I will do one big back-up, then incrementals each week.
There are no PC's on my network. Just two macbooks, and maybe a MacBook Pro or large mac destop (coming soon).
any help is appecriated.
-john

Most of the cheap NAS ethernet devices only support FAT32 formatted internal drives, which you access via a built-in SAMBA server. The maximum size of an individual file under this format is 4Gb. This is probably too small if you are using Apple's Backup, as this can easily create a file ten times this size. They are also slow, although you can usually connect them directly via USB as well. So you can do 'big' copies with them directly attached, and then less intensive use with them attached via NAS.
The Airport USB does not suffer from this 4Gb file limit problem, because it expects attached discs to be HFS+ format, the same as you mac. If you want to connect a printer at the same time you will need a USB hub, you can't 'daisy chain' USB the way you can with firewire. The hub must be USB 2.0 and preferably externally powered. With this setup you could connect the drive directly to your mac to do the first backup, and then attach it to the airport for subsequent 'incremental' backups, which would normally be much smaller. In fact if I were you I would first make a bootable copy of my mac hard disk to the (directly connected) external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, then run a full Apple Backup to the drive, then connect the drive to the airport for future use.
In practice I don't find much of a speed difference accessing network attached storage over wired 100Mb ethernet or airport extreme.
The above would be the easiest approach and would make best use of the stuff you already have available.
Another alternative would be to buy something like the Linksys NSLU2 as a slightly more capable file server - you can read more about it at my website http://www.zonko.ath.cx ! (Shameless plug!)

WRT610N storage problem

hi support,
i have an external drive that is connected via usb to my WRT610N router. whenever i access the storage page in my IE 9 browser, i got a blank page and i can no longer connect to my router. i need to power it down to be able to reconnect.
if i access the page without my drive connected, i can access it but there is no option to create a share. i remember some time in the past, i have deleted the default share and now i'm not able to create a new one. i decided to delete the share because it was not a the root of the external drive.
i'm using windows 7 64 bits, with latest firmware installed.
how can i fix this issue and share my external drive?
thank you!

The USB port on the router can be used to connect an external USB hard drive or flash disk. Computers that are connected to the network will be able to access the Shared Drive if they have login credentials such as admin or guest.
NOTE: Before connecting your external USB hard disk to the router’s USB port, make sure your hard disk is already formatted in either NTFS or FAT32 file system using your computer to avoid any difficulties.
Here is the link setting up the Storage feature:http://www6.nohold.net/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&docid=e10c7ddf8a62437ca973138d861c545b_17419.xml&pid=80&...

Use PE Organizer or Lightroom to Catalog Videos + Storage Questions

Hello everyone. I'm re-entering the video arena after several years and have purchased a new entry level HD camcorder and plan on using Premier Elements for editing home videos. Nothing professional, just home movies, youth sports, stuff like that.
I have been an avid stills photographer however and have defined a workflow that I'm comfortable with. With stills - usually RAW files, I import them to an external hard drive first, import them into Lightroom, then proceed to catalog and keyword them appropriately.
Question 1: I know my way around Lightroom and it does allow for the cataloging and keywording of video files. I see that PE 12 has an organizer built into the program. Is there any advantage of me using PE's Organizer over Lightroom? They are all Adobe products, I'm just wondering if there is some sort of integration between PE's Organizer and Editor that will buy me an easier workflow or not. Otherwise I'll just use Lightroom.
Question 2: So a few years back I was taking videos with a DV camcorder, importing the video, editing it, burning a DVD, then deleting the source files AND the finished product that was burned to the DVD. I was certainly a novice and as I became more involved with photography and the technology itself, I came to realize that blowing away the finished product and relying on DVDs as storage was a bad idea. This means for those yesteryear videos I took I must hope a) that the discs never go "bad", which I know now they won't last forever, and b) that I must keep at least some machine around in the next decades that can play these discs. Yes, Blu-Ray players are backward compatible, but who knows in 20 years, right? At some point I'll try and look into capturing those DVDs back to a digital file, but that's besides the point. So I know I do not want to rely on DVDs as a "preservation" or archiving method for finished produced videos. The raw source files I'm not too worried about. I'll keep them around on an external drive and burn them to DVD-R, and worse case I'll have to roll them off the external drive if I run out of space and cannot afford a new drive right away. So my question is: a) what is the best format to store the finished video so that I am not reliant on DVDs as my primary preservation method and b) a format that I can use to re-burn a DVD or Blu-Ray disc later should I need to make additional copies and the original DVD/Blu-Ray disc is no longer available for a straight copy? The "b" portion of this question is of key importance to me right now because while I have a decent Blu-Ray player, I do not have the capabilities to burn a Blu-Ray (or even a DVD for that matter). I plan on getting a Blu-Ray burner within the next 6 months, but until then I will need to create finished videos that will eventually be turned into DVDs/Blu-Rays. What format could I store the finished product in so that I can go back and easily burn video to a DVD or Blu-Ray disc later? I would think the format would be very specific for Blu-Ray burning later especially.
Sorry for the long post. I tried to keep it as short as possible.
Have a great weekend!
Jim

Ralph McMurphy
Thanks for the follow ups. Sorry for the delayed response. Was thinking about your questions but got detoured several times.
Let us start with archiving....I do not know that there is a perfect solution with changing times et al.
1. Project Archiving would appear at face value to be a good choice
a. preserves your source media that the project file needs to trace back to
b. preserves the project file with all its edits so that your re-entry into the project will allow you further edits and/or alternative
export choices.
c. there is a concern about disc menus in archived projects but you say that the disc menu aspect of the matter is not important to you
ATR Premiere Elements Troubleshooting: PE12: Archiving Projects With Disc Menus
My main problem with Project Archiver is that you are dependent on being able to open the archived project file in the same version in which it was
created or a later version...the later the version, the more the concern.
2. When it comes to burn tos DVD, AVCHD, or Blu-ray....VIDEO_TS, BDMV, BDMV & Blu-ray disc image....
a. The best of all worlds might be accomplished by saving the VIDEO_TS Folder from a burn to folder for DVD and saving the BDMV from a burn to folder for AVCHD. There is no Premiere Elements burn to folder for Blu-ray. Depending on the version of Premiere Elements and the computer operating system, you could try for a burn to Blu-ray disc image with Phantom Burner in conjunction with Premiere Elements.
ATR Premiere Elements Troubleshooting: PE12: Disc Image/Phantom Burner & PE
I would probably have more confidence on finding a program now or in the future - ImgBurn, Nero...to be available to take the VIDEO_TS, BDMV, or Blu-ray disc image to disc. You might even consider a burn to Blu-ray, followed by copying the BDMV Folder from it for archiving purposes. The video files from VIDEO_TS and BDMV are easily extracted.
3. If preserving the edited Timeline is the target, then SD project I would probably go with DV AVI standard or widescreen, if HD, probably an AVCHD.mp4 or AVCHD.m2t.
If Premiere Elements versions got stronger on disc image, I suspect I would go that route to preserve a project. Right now, I am doing a mix of all of the above.
As for Lightroom, Elements Organizer, and Premiere Elements. I am not a great fan of Lightroom. Neither am I have heavy user of Elements Organizer. However, I have looked a some Lightroom tryouts along the way to see what it is all about.
1. With regard to your use of Photoshop Elements 9 plus Lightroom, that seems consistent with the workflows suggested by others and the gains to be gotten in using the best attributes of each.
Integrate Lightroom with Elements – Photoshop Elements User
You would probably get greater advantage using the same version of Elements Organizer as Photoshop Elements for the sake of integration.
Just in case note....Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements are standalone programs, each coming with its own Elements Organizer. When Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements same versions are on the same computer they share the same Elements Organizer catalog..
2. For me, Lightroom and Premiere Elements, unlike Photoshop Elements, and video never seemed to integrate well.
The following is a link to some work I did with LIghtroom when I was at a forum that I no longer visit
Lightroom 4.1 Slideshow Module Visited - Elements Village
From my perspective, Premiere Elements integration with Elements Organizer and Photoshop Elements gives me a workflow that meets my needs.
My camera does not record raw image format. But, if I have Camera Raw installed on my computer with Premiere Elements, I can import raw image format and dng as source media into a Premiere Elements project. For edit of the raw image format, I need the Camera Raw dialog which requires the presence of Photoshop Elements which I have.
Please review and consider the above and then let me know if I have targeted your question.
Thank you.
ATR

Digital photo storage device format

I have a PDX70 USB 2.0 storage device to download pictures to from my Nikon D200 digital SLR camera.The device needs to be formatted in FAT32 for the Cards from the camera to recognize the HD. The instructions that came with the device stated that the HD needed to be reformatted every so often to eliminate fragmentation because the compactflash cards will only recognize continuous space on the HD. My question is, if I format the HD using Disk Utility using the MS-DOS option, will I have any issues with this? Am I better off connecting the device to a PC and running the defragment utility from there and not reformatting? Any help woul dbe appreciated!!
G4 Sawtooth with 1.4 GHz processor Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1.25 GB RAM; firewire HD

Hi, Roger.
I think you mean a PD70X, specifically this device, yes?
It should not be a problem. See "Disk Utility 10.5 Help: Formatting a disk for Windows computers." What Disk Utility notes simply as "MS-DOS" format is FAT32, though it can also format in earlier FAT* formats as well, depending on the device.
However, I also note from the product description in the first link cited above that the device has "In-built HDD format function (no need for computers)." Accordingly, you should be able to format the device's internal drive using it's own built-in capabilities for such, which I expect are discussed somewhere in its manual.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

WRT610N Storage Link

I have connected a 500GB external WD "My Drive" hard disk to my WRT610N wireless router. My intent is to be able to periodically back up three computers, all linked wirelessly to the WRT610N onto this hard disk. The disk is recognized by the router, but the directions on how to set up the shares are Greek to me. Once set up, can these back-ups run automatically in the background at specific times or does one have to initiate the back-up?
Has anyone set up a similar configuration with the storage link and if so, how did you go about doing it?
Thanks,
Doug

To create a share, go to the UI of the wrt610n and click on Storage tab. Click on Create Share. Assign permission to the Group that you want to grant access. I believe you need to manually create back-up.

WRT610N storage server problems

We are attempting to use a Linksys WRT610N (firmware version 1.00.02 B10) as a network attached storage server on a Windows workgroup. There are two (2) Windows XP Professional workstations and one (1) Windows Vista workstation in the workgroup.
It required a chat session with Linksys technical support just to get the storage server feature to connect. The result was that we had to scale back the number of groups and the number of users, we had to flash the firmware (which we had just done prior to the chat with technical support) and reset the router to factory defaults, requiring a complete reconfiguration of everything from system passwords to wireless keys, etc.
After the chat session with technical support, we have only two (2) shares: “Default” and “employees”. We are using only two (2) groups: “admin” and “employees”. There are two (2) users in the admin group: “Bill” and “Debi” and only one (1) user in the employees group: “Mike”.
With this ‘scaled back’ configuration, the shared resource was available to be mapped under Windows. Each of the workstations in our workgroup reconnects to one of the shares at startup and maps it to a local drive letter. While each of the shares is set up to ‘reconnect at logon’ and ‘remember password’, we almost always have to log in to the share manually after starting up the PC.
The resultant mapped drive is incredibly unreliable and regularly completely unavailable. I have never known a networked resource to behave this unpredictably.
Often, one of us will open a folder, which we know contains numerous folders and files, only to find a subset of the actual contents or no contents whatsoever. They are there; apparently they are just not being displayed. This is evidenced by the fact that, sometimes, navigating up a level and back into the same folder, after a period of time, yields the entire folder’s contents.
Regularly, when attempting to access the ‘B:’ drive, we receive "'B:\' is not accessible, network access denied" or "The folder 'B:\' isn't accessible. The folder may be located in an unavailable location, etc."
At other times, we receive a wide variety of errors when attempting to access this share.
When navigating from the ‘B:’ drive, through two levels of folders, selecting a file and double-clicking same, Excel opens and reports "Could not open 'B:\...'"
When attempting a File->Open operation from within Excel, selecting the file, clicking ‘Open’ we receive the same result. Other times, Excel will report "Access denied, contact your administrator"
When attempting to save a file that has been successfully opened previously, sometimes we receive "Document not saved"
After navigating to an existing file spec., attempting to save over same, being prompted that the file already exists and asked if we want to replace the existing file, we respond ‘yes’ and sometimes receive "The system cannot find the file specified"
Often, waiting a few minutes will allow these problems to clear. In some cases, we are required to re-start the router in order to resolve the problems.
All of these errors are intermittent. If we had a reliable recreation scenario, we would open a problem ticket with technical support. However, these problems do seem to be happening more often as time goes on.
These interruptions are understandably frustrating but, more importantly, our staff is experiencing a significant productivity impact due to the periodic unavailability of our shared files. This impact is becoming a considerable cost to our operation. We are not making unreasonable demands upon this device. We simply want two levels of access to a shared drive for three individuals; this was an advertised feature that influenced our decision to purchase the device.
We have observed these same behaviors using our current drive (a two terabyte Western Digital USB external hard drive) and a sixty-four gigabyte Kingston Data Traveler DT150 pocket USB drive. Inspection of the .storage_info file showed that the firmware had been mismanaging the users and groups. There were remnants of previously removed groups and an instance of a duplicate group (this duplicate group could also be observed through the router’s administration menus). It required a flash of the firmware, a reset to defaults on the router and complete reconfiguration from scratch (with the simplest possible set of groups and users) just to be able to access the two shares.
Perusal of the various Internet forums leads me to believe that this feature was not ready for release in the WRT600N and has not been corrected in the WRT610N. We are obviously one of many customers experiencing similar problems with this aspect of the router. We are thus far very disappointed with this feature of the router and am seriously considering falling back to our previous scheme of shared files on one of the workgroup machines, which worked flawlessly. We would have liked to use the FTP server and external access functions but, as unreliable as the basic share features have been, we dare not even attempt to configure these more advanced features.
In the past, I have associated a certain level of quality and reliability with the Cisco name, however, it troubles me that they have placed their name on this product, if only through the acquisition of Linksys.
At this point, unless someone can offer some miraculous suggestion, I believe we are going to be forced to purchase some other device to meet our requirements. This device came highly recommended by CNET.com (and still does); I will also feel compelled to log onto their site and write a less than favorable review of the device.
Please advise.

Thanks for your suggestion but there are no floppy drives in any of these systems so both 'A' and 'B' appear in the list of available drive letters to be mapped, we have tried a variety of drive letters with the same result (the 'B:' references were just for the sake of examples in the write-up) and we have tried it without any mapped drive letter with the same unreliable results.
Further, I purchased an actual NAS from Western Digital yesterday, installed it and mapped it as the 'B:' drive on all three systems and it works flawlessly, as it should
After telling me to e-mail '[email protected]' and having that address respond to contact: '[email protected]', they responded that Linksys technical support is eliminating e-mail technical support. So, they did not even read the MS-Word document I had created with snapshots of the various error dialogs. Since the problem is intermittent, there is no point to phone or live chat support as it will result in: "well, it seems to work now" and most likely another waste of my time re-flashing the firmware, resetting to factory defaults and completely reconfiguring.
This device DOES NOT do what it claims to. I have wasted far too many hours on what is apparently a terrible firmware release that they do not intend to correct. Our technical support experience has been unacceptable, our new solution works great (thank you, Western Digital) and we will not be purchasing from Linksys again in the future.

Contract Generation question: Formatting, Numbering of clauses, variables

Hi!
I am trying to create a Contract Document Template (for Contract Generation) with Variables
I created some Variable Collections, but when I link them to the Contract Template, they add on with a different formatting altogether, which is neither like the placeholder in the template nor like the template attached to the variable.
My variable configuration was of the type Paragraph.
If anyone has any helpful tips on formatting Contract Document Templates, it would be most appreciated.
Also, how do I ensure that numbering of sections and clauses is sequentially made in the final Contract.
Regards,
Reshma

I was able to fix the problem by making some word document format changes.
Please ignore this question.
Regards,
Reshma

Modifying Quiz Question Format/Content

Issue: When we modify a quiz question in PowerPoint and then
go to the Quiz Manager the entire slide deck reverts to the format
before the changes, regardless of being saved previously.
Has anyone had this happen..please help.
I am trying to make edits/changes to a long presentation that
I need to deliver tomorrow and I keep losing the work I am doing.
Is there a better way to make the changes to the slides?
Thank you,
Scott

You can't modify quiz questions in the presentation itself -
you need to make those changes in the quiz manager itself. You can
adjust font size, lay out, etc on the slide itself, but not the
content

Wired/wireless traffic general question

I originally set up my Airport Extreme without much expertise on WiFi or routers, but I want to raise my knowledge base now.
My current question: In general operation with both ethernet and wireless clients, obviously all the traffic with wireless clients is broadcast over RF to anything out there that can receive them, but is any of the traffic between the base station and the ethernet clients also broadcast over the RF signal? To put it another way, can eaves dropping on the RF traffic also allow eaves dropping on the ethernet traffic?
Are there any good educational books like a Missing Manual or such on WiFi or Airport?

A lot of very interesting aspect of "others experience w/airport". I'm also in a suburb w/a lot of WiFi, other variation's of the same, and Airport traffic. One early concern I had was the Rf-AP system starting up, as it does right out of the box. Not knowing this, (at least at first) was for me an embarrassing wake-up call. As for near-by WiFi/and other "dish, etc" systems, A few thing's I noticed, and thanks to associate's who know WiFi/Rf tech very well, a few observations, for what it's worth. Regarding "Ghosting" of certain signals, it is almost inevitable for many reasons. It's a bit like (usually and harmlessly) being at a crowded party, where you "hear" many people jabbering away, but don't really know "what they're saying, other then 'something."
Oddly enough, I have an associate who calls that (a bit like a cheap hearing aid) "Rf, or harmonic din". As for it being problematic from a security point-of-view one needs to isolate "sections" from one "broadcast" which I'm told is rather low tech, as a first step to having one "borrow your specific signal,' for say either sub-Walmart (cheap bas******) access to the net thanks to your WiFi AP. As you mentioned, w/so much depending on the chronic pain that's all based on passwords, well, we know the issue w/that.
Several aspects of trying to maintain some dignity in not getting hacked for whatever intent present repeated problems. I was hacked, and it was (unfortunately not benign). Believe me. Since , I have done everything short of active EW suppression (FTC, and anyone in range would be understandably ******-off.) Your comment about "flat signal strength" I'm told is screaming, "I'm blending in, move on." Varying sig strength is one way to blend in yourself, but only a bit.
But WiFi signal structure has certain quiescent properties reported in the literature (I read it on physorg.com, or technology review I think) that makes that soft engulfing-Rf nature of WiFi useful, Ex: for those who want to know, or really just be aware "someone, a pet", etc; who is moving around a room, compared w/the stuff in a room, building, etc. That attribute provide's a technical/mathematical yardstick that is at least one reproducible and exploitable aspect of the technology. As with that noisy background "party din," it's why noise in general can be cut through as long as you get even a small piece of a conversation.
I've looked at passive material "blankets" that smother Rf. Certain conductive polymer's woven in the density of a gym mat are somewhat useful if its something serious enough. Naturally, (pricey) and by no means perfect. Beyond that one can use old power company techniques developed to know where a line goes down, for example if using a hard line. Since ac can be modulated, it can also be run through what looks like a small old desk-top pc cpu tower. ****, anyone can buy a plugin, looks a small 120vt-12v transformer you plug in the wall ac, and that turns ones household wiring into a local, house/office Rf wireless network.
In the end it can get surreal, silly, paranoid. or just sad. Been there too. Anyway, best of luck. Bob.

Backup amd File Storage Question

I've got a bit of a conundrum on my hands and can't decide how to clean it up.
I live in a Mac world and work in a Win world. I made the tranitiin from a dell notebook to a MacBook Air and have a Mac Mini on the desktop at home. I have tons of photos, etc on a NTFS formatted external drive to the tune of maybe 400gb. My wife uses a Win notebook at home.
Recently, I lost a few days because the format on my MBA went south. I didn't lose any data, but got close as I want to get. Shame on me for not doing time machine backups, lesson learned. The MBA is back on its feet now but I've not done a TM backup on it or my Mac Mini ever.
I'm not sure what to do regarding my external drive files. I'd like to have access to them, and dragging around an external is a hassle and to complicate it even more, there are times I need both Mac and Win access to the data. Mac can't write to my NTFS drive so I purchased the application paragon for that. I'm not crazy about having to patch the Mac to make it write to the NTFS but do need the occasional Win machine to see the files.
Considering a Time Capsule, but because I don't understand completely, im stuck. I think I need a Time Capsule for TM backups and a NAS device for static data, but since I'm much more fluent in Win than I am Mac, I thought I'd ask for some education and recommendation here.
Probably time to cut my rambling post and get some feedback.

You can use common format drive.. although unfortunately about the only one available is FAT32 which is not at all a great format.
Using network shares is much better way to go.
You can plug the drive with all the pictures into a computer, a PC in this case of course, and share that drive with the network. The Mac can then access the drive, read and write files to it, over the network. FIle sharing on the network is offered with a few different protocols, but both Mac and PC can talk windows SMB type.
Same btw with a disk formatted on the Mac to native Mac standard HFS+ and plugged into the Mac and shared with the network. A PC and read and write files to it via SMB sharing. Simply because it is shared on the network.
Now a Time Capsule is a wireless router with a hard disk in it. The file sharing side is handled in SMB windows type and AFP which is a Apple Filing Protocol.. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Filing_Protocol
The Mac can talk both AFP and SMB to the TC.
The Windows computer can talk SMB to the TC. So they have a common method to access files.
You can then plug a USB drive into the TC.. but it should be Mac formatted, HFS+ (in the mac disk utility this is called
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
The TC can handle FAT32, but that is still to be avoided.. it cannot read or write files to NTFS.
So the other aspect of this might be remote access.
If you need access to the TC away from home this is possible via the Apple Back to My Mac and iCloud system.
Read up about that.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3486
And the whole icloud thing.
http://www.apple.com/au/icloud/
You must use AFP for remote access into the TC.. this is a bit confusing but SMB is not offered to WAN side. It is too risky for one thing. And most ISP block it anyway. AFP is a much more secure protocol.
That means you cannot access the TC from windows machine.. not that I know of at least remotely.
Now none of this is impossible without a standard NAS from QNAP or Synology. Just google for those brands.. they are the most popular brands for this task on the market. They both can do Time Machine and talk to Apple computers without trouble.. they also of course talk to PC and you can share files.
It is going to cost more than a TC.. but it has the following improvements.
TC is designed primarily as a back up target for Time Machine. It has no way to back itself up. If you store files on the TC it can be difficult to back them up. Especially from the Mac side because TM can NOT read network drives.. only write to them.
Every NAS made has some method of continually backing itself up as well as raid system to handle disk failure. TC has none.
NAS will not offer btmm and icloud but will offer FTP SFTP and HTTP and HTTPS access to the WEB for remote connection. None are offered by the TC.
So there is some rambling. In response to yours.
Main point.
In Mac + Win world.. formats of disks are a problem. Neither can speak natively the one the other uses.
But Networks are the answer. Anything you wish to move or copy or share between Mac and Win is easy over a network, because they are then forced to talk the same language.

Wireless problems ever since format

About 4-5 months ago, I formatted my computer and installed Snow Leopard directly from the new Snow Leopard disc, as opposed to installing the OEM cd first and then upgrading from there, I figured it would result in a cleaner install. What I've noticed though is that the wireless connection hasn't worked properly since. For example, port 1723 (for VPN) isn't open on the mac side, but in boot camped windows, it's open. I've turned off os x firewall, allowed a rule in little snitch, I know my router is open on that port because my computer gets the same ip from it in windows and os x, and it's open in windows. Also, the connection sometimes drops in and out, and the only fix for it is usually to delete /library/preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist and then it gets a little better. None of these are a problem in windows, so I know the issue isn't my router. What can I do to get my wireless networking working right again? TIA
also, nice to meet you all, thanks for having me!
Message was edited by: alextriple7

Hi,
I think they are called homeplugs,
There are a few things you can do, but Im fairly certain they will not affect your wireless.
In any case,
1. Plug them into sockets that are next to eachother,
2. switch them both on (no need to plug ethernet cables in yet,
3. Wait for them to sync up (green lights) the ethernet lights will not be on,
4. Move each of them where you need them and let us know how it goes.
I should say that I also received the black homeplugs, but I already had the previous ones replaced so I didnt see the point in switching them just yet. They are perfectly fine and I will notice any issues since I switch ethernet cables in 1 of them every day.
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