time capsule for my mac, external for windows?

[stefmesman]

i have a time capsule which i use for backing up my mac.

the thing is, other people in my house use windows laptops, can they backup to an external connected to time capsule? if so, how?

thanks

 

[Brian33]

I know that Windows XP machines can connect to a USB drive plugged into a Time Capsule. They can read/write files to it, so it seems you could use it for Windows backup if you have an appropriate backup program.

 

[stefmesman]

I know that Windows XP machines can connect to a USB drive plugged into a Time Capsule. They can read/write files to it, so it seems you could use it for Windows backup if you have an appropriate backup program.

the windows laptops are already on the time capsule network, how would i make them recognize the hard discs connected to the time capsule and where would i be able to see connected hard drives in the windows OS? under ''my computer''? (not very familiar anymore with windows) do the hard drives need to be in an certain FAT32 or HFS? or does NTFS+ also work towards windows?

 

[Brian33]

the windows laptops are already on the time capsule network, how would i make them recognize the hard discs connected to the time capsule and where would i be able to see connected hard drives in the windows OS? under ''my computer''?

No doubt the answer depends upon what version of Windows you're running. On my wife's XP, I used the "Add Network Place Wizard" which I found in "My Network Places", which was an icon I already had on my desktop. I don't know where you can find it, but it's there (in XP) somewhere! Once you find the Wizard, you put in an address like:

\\tcserver\Common

...where "tcserver" is the network name of my Time Capsule device, and "Common" was the name I gave the external drive during formatting.

do the hard drives need to be in an certain FAT32 or HFS? or does NTFS+ also work towards windows?

My understanding is that Windows never sees the actual format of the drives. Instead, the TC takes Windows' SMB file requests and takes care of reading and writing to the actual drive. In fact, I'm pretty sure the drive must be formatted "Mac OS extended (Journaled)", also known as HFS+.

 

[stefmesman]

the laptops are on windows7 anyone knows how to?