Time Capsule and AppleTv

[zuma022]

I currently have an old airport extreme, iMac and an AppleTv. The HD on my iMac is filling up and at the same time ATV3 has problems to hold its connection to wifi.
Now I'm wondering if this is possible, if I were to buy a Time Capsule, I could connect the ATV3 via ethernet as they are very close to each other. (the old airport extrem has only one plug). That would solve my wifi dropping issue. Now would I also be able to store the iTunes file on the time capsule and send it to ATV3 directly via Ethernet? That way I could get the rather huge library off the iMac and free up some space too.

Is this possible? And if so would time machine still be able to back up the iTunes folder on the time capsule? I assume I would need to partition it for that, just wondering if it possible and/or advisable.

Thank you!

 

[Brian33]

Here's my understanding: You can put your iTunes library on a TC, but the ATV will not be able to get the media directly from the TC. (Unless you jailbreak the ATV and run some other software.) For the ATV to get your iTunes media, you must be running the iTunes.app on a running computer. (That computer could be accessing your iTunes library on the TC, but see below.)

Note that I don't have an ATV so the above is just what I've gathered reading posts.

Now, I do have a TC, and I'm quite sure that if you put your iTunes library onto the Time Capsule's drive, Time Machine will not be able to back it up. You would still want an up to date copy somewhere else as a backup and you can't use TM to do it. You'd have to implement your own backup protocol or use other software. The easier alternative is to put the iTunes library onto an external hard drive, directly connected to your Mac, via a USB or Firewire cable. Then TM will be able to back it up.

Also, while you can put whatever files you want onto the TC internal hard drive, you can't partition it without removing it and installing it temporarily in a computer with a spare SATA connection. Even then TM might not work right, from what I remember in others' posts. One side effect of this is that eventually TM will use "all" available space on the disk, and then you may not be able to add more files without decreasing the backup size first.

(In practice, TM seems to maintain some free space. So, this may not be a problem if you were going to add just small files like iTunes tracks.)

Consider buying an inexpensive 4- or 8-port switch. Plug it into your old Airport Extreme (does it really have just one ethernet port?), and then plug the ATV3 (and any other ethernet devices) into the switch. Cheap and easy, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

 

[zuma022]

Thank you Brian for your very informative post. I didn't even think of a Ethernet switch, but I'll look into that. And yes the old airport express has only one outlet. I have and Xbox as well so a switch would make my life easier. A quick google search puts them in the price range of $50-80 so I'll have to think what the best solution is. Thank you so much!