Time Capsule advice

[shandyman]

Hi,

I am looking at getting the new Time Capsule, but have some things I want to check before I buy it.

I'm going to use it for time machine to back up my macbook air, but also want to use it to store videos, music, etc so that the 2 windows PC's in the house can access them too. I believe this is possible in principal, but read mixed things online about the windows machines being able to access the media files. Do they just see it and can access them fine?

Also, does it connect to an existing wifi network and act as a wifi extender, like the airport express does? I'm with Sky in the UK and you have to use their router, so I'm not in a position to just replace that with the Time Capsule.

Cheers for any help.

 

[AppleNewton]

if you are going to store media content on there, either get a secondary drive via USB to store them or get a dedicated device to share media content.
i would not mix backups and misc data, esp not on a time machine disk.

if you could use one of the PCs as a media server that might be easier. you can use iTunes Home Sharing to access other content stored via iTunes on other machines.

 

[shandyman]

if you are going to store media content on there, either get a secondary drive via USB to store them or get a dedicated device to share media content.

i would not mix backups and misc data, esp not on a time machine disk.



if you could use one of the PCs as a media server that might be easier. you can use iTunes Home Sharing to access other content stored via iTunes on other machines.

The other pc's are laptops. Not using them as a media server. Some of the content isn't iTunes content anyway.

I'd read online about people using time capsule for both. Why is it an issue?

The whole point of me getting a time capsule as I want one thing to do both, as the mac only has a 512Gb HDD, i don't want a remaining Gb and a half just sitting there doing nothing.

 

[melburstein]

I can sure understand what you are trying to do. I wanted to use my TC for both Mac and PC backups and files. So I got the expensive 3TB version only to learn that it is not that easy to use the space for anything other than Time Machine backups. Now, I have tons of unused storage. What does work pretty well, however, is to attach a USB external drive to the TC and use it for PC files.

 

[shandyman]

It's weird as I read on some old threads that people used the time capsule for time machine and sharing files, without using an extra external drive. I don't want to get a 2 or 3Tb time capsule if I can't do that, as it will be a waste of useable space and money. It's a shame.

 

[AppleNewton]

permissions issues and allowing the sparse bundles enough space to allocate the backups have been issues in the past and sometimes currently. apple generally creates single type appliances..while some can get away with multi-use cases it may be beneficial not to mix may be best with a NAS type solution.

 

[Weaselboy]

It's weird as I read on some old threads that people used the time capsule for time machine and sharing files, without using an extra external drive. I don't want to get a 2 or 3Tb time capsule if I can't do that, as it will be a waste of useable space and money. It's a shame.

It is not problem at all doing this. Just make a folder on the TC and drop whatever you want to share in that folder.

The Time Machine backups on the TC drive are stored inside one sparse bundle image for each machine you backup. As the Time Machine backup ages the bundle grows larger and larger to accommodate all the file versions contained in the backup. So the only potential issue is if say you have 800GB of videos shared in that folder and your Time Machine backup has grown to 1.2TB, then your 2TB TC disk is going to run out of room. As long as you are cognizant of this issue, there is no problem at all with sharing files from the TC.

 

[shandyman]

It is not problem at all doing this. Just make a folder on the TC and drop whatever you want to share in that folder.



The Time Machine backups on the TC drive are stored inside one sparse bundle image for each machine you backup. As the Time Machine backup ages the bundle grows larger and larger to accommodate all the file versions contained in the backup. So the only potential issue is if say you have 800GB of videos shared in that folder and your Time Machine backup has grown to 1.2TB, then your 2TB TC disk is going to run out of room. As long as you are cognizant of this issue, there is no problem at all with sharing files from the TC.

Well my mac only has a 512Gb HD, so the backup won't be larger than that. That's the only machine that will backup. I had intended to have a folder where I'd have the videos. I'm aware I'd have to keep an eye on space.

So now that that's clarified, I still need confirmation that the windows computers can see and read from the folder I make for videos and will the time capsule join the network like an airport express, like an extender?

 

[Weaselboy]

Well my mac only has a 512Gb HD, so the backup won't be larger than that. That's the only machine that will backup. I had intended to have a folder where I'd have the videos. I'm aware I'd have to keep an eye on space.

The backup can grow a bit bigger than that if you save a lot of file versions. Say you have a 300MB video and that gets backed up to Time Machine. Then you edit that video and save the changes. The new 300MB video will get backed up also so both versions are saved in the Time Machine backup. So you can see how if you work with a lot of large files all these versions can add up to real disk space for the Time Machine backup. That said, if you are just saving some documents and so on, this is not much of any issue.

So now that that's clarified, I still need confirmation that the windows computers can see and read from the folder I make for videos and will the time capsule join the network like an airport express, like an extender?

Yes to both.

 

[shandyman]

The backup can grow a bit bigger than that if you save a lot of file versions. Say you have a 300MB video and that gets backed up to Time Machine. Then you edit that video and save the changes. The new 300MB video will get backed up also so both versions are saved in the Time Machine backup. So you can see how if you work with a lot of large files all these versions can add up to real disk space for the Time Machine backup. That said, if you are just saving some documents and so on, this is not much of any issue.







Yes to both.

Thanks, you've been the most help in this thread.

 

[Timonsta]

Hey, I just got the Time Capsule to backup three macs and to share some data on it as well. I wanted to limit Time Machine backup sizes each computer in order to know the minimum space available for other files (sounds like something you might want to do also)

I think there are multiple methods to do this but I followed these steps:

First followed this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq7mSizqUSI

And then did steps 7-10 from the first part on this page:
http://pondini.org/TM/A8.html

I doubt this is officially supported by Apple.