Can a Time Capsule perform USB to USB file transfers?

[pgharavi]

Would plugging an external HDD into the USB port of the Time Capsule allow me to transfer files USB to USB, so to speak (with the internal HDD inside the Time Capsule)?

previously I had the Airport Extreme + an external HDD for Time Machine and various files. Last night I tried to transfer those files to the Time Capsule and it gave me an error for the Time Machine backups and is estimating a week (!) to transfer everything else via my home network. I left it going overnight and it got as far as 26.5GB...so ya.

 

[Brian33]

Would plugging an external HDD into the USB port of the Time Capsule allow me to transfer files USB to USB, so to speak (with the internal HDD inside the Time Capsule)?

previously I had the Airport Extreme + an external HDD for Time Machine and various files. Last night I tried to transfer those files to the Time Capsule and it gave me an error for the Time Machine backups and is estimating a week (!) to transfer everything else via my home network. I left it going overnight and it got as far as 26.5GB...so ya.

I have two Time Capsules (a 1st-gen and the latest generation). Using Airport Utility on the Disks tab (I think), there is an "Archive" button that lets you copy the TC's internal drive onto an external USB drive. To my knowledge, that's the only sort of direct I/O between a TC internal disk and a connected USB drive that is possible.

[EDIT: well, I guess you could connect the external, then go to your Mac, mount both volumes, and drag/drop files between them, if all you want to do is copy over some non-Time Machine files.]

I think your best bet is to connect the external USB to a Mac and connect the Mac to the TC with an Ethernet cable.

It's not clear to me whether you're trying to transfer the old backup database to the new TC, or just generic files that you had manually stored on the drive when it was connected to the old Airport Extreme.

 

[pgharavi]

It's not clear to me whether you're trying to transfer the old backup database to the new TC, or just generic files that you had manually stored on the drive when it was connected to the old Airport Extreme.

Both, actually.

This morning I plugged in the external HDD into the TC and initiated a file transfer b/w the external and the internal HDD on the TC and it's clearly still going over the home network and not via USB (ETA: 17 hours to transfer 400GB). This, of course, does not count the prior Time Machine backups that exist on the external HDD as I had errors even trying to copy those over.

Connecting my MBP via ethernet would speed things up to some extent, yes? Or would it actually be dramatically faster?

 

[LiveM]

You have ti remember that you are always subject to the processing power of the chip in the router and the format of the storage medium. Anything above USB 2.0 is a waste of bandwidth.

 

[pgharavi]

I don't really know what that means, sorry. I just know that if I had two USB HDDs transferring b/w the two would be orders of magnitude faster than WiFi.

 

[LiveM]

Yes, it would be a lot faster because the computer between the two is a lot faster. The CPU on a router is dramatically slower, and I assume the TC drive is much slower that a typical powered USB drive.

You can expect up to about 35GB per hour writing to the Time Capsule so 17 hours for 400 GB sounds good. A lot will depend on the number of files.

 

[priitv8]

A lot will depend on the number of files.

OS X TimeMachine backups easily contain over 1M files.