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Time Capsule novice here: must it be plugged into router?

K

karana

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 27, 2014
4
0
Hi all, a novice here. I purchased a Time Capsule to use as a backup for my macbook Air as well as for my husband's macbook too. I just created a wireless network base station using DHCP; router mode is "off (bridge mode)." I don't know what those last two phrases mean, just reporting what the AirPort Utility says. The network base station I created has a different name and password than our usual home wireless network.

All is working fine, only the Time Capsule is currently plugged into my wireless router using an ethernet cable. I thought I wouldn't need to have the TC plugged into a router--I thought it would work wirelessly. Can you please help me figure out how to reconfigure the settings so that we can use the Time Capsule wirelessly, without keeping it plugged into the router? Many thanks.

Also, we will be traveling soon for a while for research, and will bring the TC with us. Will we be able to continue to back up wirelessly through Time Machine while we travel, when the Time Capsule is not plugged into a router? Thanks.
 
The time capsule is one of the best routers out there right now.

My suggestion, disconnect your current router and use the Time Capsule to its full potential.
 
I'm not sure what you mean; use the Time Capsule as a router itself? Forgive my ignorance, I didn't realize that this was one of its functions--I was thinking of it primarily as large-volume storage and consolidation for my many many external hard drives. That would mean that it would remain plugged in, right?

When I travel with it, will I be able to back up wirelessly to it?
 
The Time Capsule is literally a an Airport Extreme router with a hard drive built in.

For home its an excellent router that backs up your computer hourly with time machine.

I would not travel with it as setting up a router on other networks causes many issues with their network, if it works at all. An external hard drive powered by usb 3.0 is a much better portable Time Machine solution.
 
Ah, I see, I think I am understanding better. Not designed to be mobile, then, in the way that I had originally imagined. Thanks for clarifying.

----------

One more question, if I might: if I copy the content of my external hard drives to the Time Capsule (data too extensive to keep on my macbook air), then I can access it selectively when on my home TC network, right? Open a file from the TC that I had copied from an older external drive?
 
karana said:
Ah, I see, I think I am understanding better. Not designed to be mobile, then, in the way that I had originally imagined. Thanks for clarifying.

----------

One more question, if I might: if I copy the content of my external hard drives to the Time Capsule (data too extensive to keep on my macbook air), then I can access it selectively when on my home TC network, right? Open a file from the TC that I had copied from an older external drive?
Click to expand...

I think it would be better to plug your current external into the back of the Time Capsule and just access it remotely.
 
The time capsule behaves like a network disk, so yes, you can use it wirelessly with your MacBook Air to access files. But even with the 802.11ac wifi, it's a pretty slow disk. Speed is roughly comparable to a USB 2.0 external disk (~30 MB/s).

You can plug external disks into the time capsule too, but that will be even slower (~20MB/s). See: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1747622/

These speeds may be fine for many things, and not so fine for others... :)
 
NT1440 said:
The Time Capsule is literally a an Airport Extreme router with a hard drive built in...
Click to expand...

Yes in fact what I use is an Airport Extreme router with a hard drive plugged into its USB slot. There is not any difference between the two. I like the idea of the external USB drive because I can upgrade it if I want to even plug in a USB hub and then multiple disk drives.

The best option you have is to disconnect the old refuter and use the Apple Time Capsule. If all you wanted was a network stooge drive you overpaid by quite a lot for the TC.
 
ChrisA said:
There is not any difference between the two.
Click to expand...

There's a pretty significant speed difference between an external drive on the Airport Extreme and the internal drive on the Time Capsule - the TC is almost twice as fast on wifi. If you are using wired gigabit ethernet, the Time Capsule is about 3 times faster. See the thread I linked to above.

Granted, it depends on what you need and expect. As network disks go, both of these are really slow. ;)
 
Hmmm. I'm realizing I did not understand what I was buying. You've convinced me that this might be a very pretty column that I should return--it's not what I was looking for for the price. I work mostly with word documents, occasionally some photos, and have several cloud backups in addition to hard drives. I wanted a centralized, portable storage solution but this doesn't seem like the right one. Thanks everyone for your advice!
 
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