setting up college house network with Time Capsule

[agblanks]

Hi I'm moving into a house with 4 friends and we need to setup a home network which I am in charge of. 2 people have Macs and 3 have Windows. I want a central hard drive that everyone can throw their music and videos on to share. We also want wireless N. I was wondering if a Time capsule would be a good way and a good value or what the best way to set this up would be. THanks

 

[rgarjr]

Yeah a TC or even an airport extreme can do the job.

 

[geoffreak]

Keep in mind that most all routers (including Apple's) only have 4 Ethernet ports, so a switch will be necessary if you plan on hooking up more devices.
The limit for wireless computers is much higher than you have computers, so don't worry about that.

 

[agblanks]

so a drive will show up on everybodys computer that everyone can access? and it works with pcs and macs together?

 

[geoffreak]

For Macs, yes, it should show up automatically.
For PCs, yes and no. They will need to install Bonjour in order to see the drive.

 

[agblanks]

can you partition the time capsule drive?
if i plugged in an xbox to the TC could it access the files?

thanks for all the help so far!

 

[rkdiddy]

Might I suggest you purchase and external HD with 2 partitions (1 - Fat32 and 1 Mac OS extended). Then you can place your music and other files onto the Fat32 volume and your Time Machine can back-up to the other volume.

You get the best of both worlds.

 

[geoffreak]

can you partition the time capsule drive?
if i plugged in an xbox to the TC could it access the files?

I don't have a TC to verify this, but I believe it uses (as do all Macs) a sharing protocol called AFP. Windows (and therefore Xbox), on the other hand, uses a much slower protocol called SMB. Macs are able to use either protocol to share files, but I don't know if the Time Capsule is able to.
If I had to guess, I would say that your Xbox should be able to see files stored on the TC.

I don't think you can partition the TC. To have a partitioned drive, you will have to instead buy an Airport Extreme and connect a USB drive. You can first connect the drive to a Mac to format it with HFS+ and partition it as you please. Even then, I'm not sure if this would work, but I don't see why not.

Might I suggest you purchase and external HD with 2 partitions (1 - Fat32 and 1 Mac OS extended). Then you can place your music and other files onto the Fat32 volume and your Time Machine can back-up to the other volume.

You get the best of both worlds.

The underlying file system DOES NOT MATTER to the OSes accessing it over the network. This would only be necessary if you were running Windows and Mac OSX on the same machine with a directly attached drive. Since this is not the case, this is not a good idea.

 

[1ne]

TC is expensive. For the same price you get 5x1TB drive. Always look for options. Apple is great but it's not for everything. My 0.02.

I have a Windows Home Server and it streams all my media including my Xbox 360 and Ps3.

 

[TK2K]

TC is expensive. For the same price you get 5x1TB drive. Always look for options. Apple is great but it's not for everything. My 0.02.

really? you can get a 5tb router from another company for that price?

 

[geoffreak]

really? you can get a 5tb router from another company for that price?

I second this.😉

TC is actually decently priced for what it does. It is a router + NAS + hard drive all in one. Airport Extreme is a router + NAS, but most routers can only rout.

 

[1ne]

really? you can get a 5tb router from another company for that price?

If we are just talking storage, apple Canada sell 1TB TC for $549 CDN. 1TB HDD is about 99.00 CDN. Eveyone knows TC storage is way way overprice. Like I said it's my 0.02. If he/she want a TC by all means go get a TC. 😉 With a router and few TB HDD it's still cheaper then TC.

 

[geoffreak]

If we are just talking storage, apple Canada sell 1TB TC for $549 CDN. 1TB HDD is about 99.00 CDN. Eveyone knows TC storage is way way overprice. Like I said it's my 0.02. If he/she want a TC by all means go get a TC. 😉 With a router and few TB HDD it's still cheaper then TC.

You can't connect hard drives to a router without a system in place to accept it. Most all routers save Apple's offerings don't allow this.
Under your argument, the OP should be using a PC because it is cheaper and you can put much faster graphics cards and larger hard drives for the same price or cheaper.

A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want.

 

[1ne]

You can't connect hard drives to a router without a system in place to accept it. Most all routers save Apple's offerings don't allow this.
Under your argument, the OP should be using a PC because it is cheaper and you can put much faster graphics cards and larger hard drives for the same price or cheaper.

This thread can go on forever. Sure you win. Apple is the King! 🙄 No hard feeling ya... 🙂

Haha Shamed on myself for having a TC.