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Time Capsule w USB disk as a NAS

M

MacFreak69

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 12, 2011
4
0
Hi,

I'm having trouble using my USB disk as a NAS connected via USB to my Time Capsule 2 TB (4th gen).
The disk is formatted HFS Plus Journaled. I have 1 Windows 7 PC connected to the Capsule via UTP and use a Windows 7 laptop via dot11n and my MacBook Pro via dot11n and sometimes wired via UTP. Which method I use...the Capsule takes a very long time to mount the disk in any of the OS's. Sometimes it doesn't mount any of the disks (internal or external) and then I have to power off the USB disc and sometimes even the Capsule itself.

This is regardless if the USB disk is directly connected or via USB-hub (yes, I like to print also :D ).

:apple: Apples support desk tells me not to use a hub at all and asked me to format the drive again in HFS+journaled and so I did. Problem stays the same. Sometimes I do get an error message which sometimes is -6758 or -6722.

Apples Time Capsule manual says I should be able to connect a HDD as a NAS; even via USB-hub.

I've been waiting for Apple to update the firmware, but there hasn't been one at all.

Is there someone the has or had the same issues I am having? I can't imagine that I'm the one and only one that uses this setup :confused:

Thanks a lot!

Best regards, Tom
 
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I use a USB hdd as a nas for my iTunes server connected to my time capsule via a USB hub. One thing that may be an issue here is that the gum MUST have it's own power supply.
It's brutally slow when adding files to iTunes but works nonetheless.
A network drive formatted as HSF won't be recognisable to windows (you can download software to help you read these drives but ive never done it as a nas)
 
pancakedrawer said:
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I use a USB hdd as a nas for my iTunes server connected to my time capsule via a USB hub. One thing that may be an issue here is that the gum MUST have it's own power supply.
It's brutally slow when adding files to iTunes but works nonetheless.
A network drive formatted as HSF won't be recognisable to windows (you can download software to help you read these drives but ive never done it as a nas)
Click to expand...

Same deal here. Tried plugging in my USB bus power only disk drive in and it powered but no disk would show up on any computer. Plugged in another drive that was wall powered and then a flash drive and they worked but very very slowly...if you ask me its not even worth it if you want to stream anything. I don't have the time capsule but my router is true wireless N with 1Gigabit ethernet and even with my MBP plugged in via ethernet (MBP supports 1GB ethernet) streaming was worse than youtube with video files that were not that big. Sort of disappointing...oh well!
 
[small correction/clarification]

Hi,

I'm sorry if maybe I wasn't clear enough...my LaCie 1Tb BigDisk is a standard USB 2.0 disk; it has no UTP port of itself...the Time Capsule makes it a NAS...sort of...

Although maybe it's not a bad idea to buy a real network attached storage with a gigabit UTP interface, maybe it will perform faster :D and it will free up the single USB interface for the printer.

And that's why I currently use a USB hub; I don't want to have to switch between the printer and the USB disk.

Thanks & regards! Tom
 
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A proper nas would be faster but much more expensive. That's why I attach all my harddrives to the USB hub. If your USB hub has it's own dedicated power supply im not sure why it's not working.

Do lots of research into a proper NAS though. I have had friends just buy one from officeworks and they were very disappointed when it barely worked with their Mac let alone both macs and windoze.

Good luck!
 
I doubt the hub is the problem, as you said the problem occurs whether you use the hub or not. What you're trying to do should work!

Maybe it's the external drive's electronics. Can you try plugging a different USB drive into the TC, to see if that would work? Also, try a USB "flash drive" -- I've done that (through a hub) and it works fine.

Format must be Mac OS Extended (with Journalling recommended) (also called HFS-plus), FAT16, or FAT32. ExFAT and NTFS formats aren't supported, as you probably already know. But if you know someone with a FAT formatted drive, you could try it...

(Note: Windows machines will be able to read/write the drive even if it's formatted Mac OS Extended. This is because the Windows OS never sees the drive formatting -- only the TC does.)

Regards,
Brian33

----------

Oh, one more thing... does your external disk (LaCie 1Tb BigDisk) have its own power supply? I'm pretty sure that the TC/AEBS USB ports won't work with USB-powered drives.
 
I also doubt that the hub is the problem. I know when I connect the USB disk to my MBP directly it is many times faster than via the hub.

I have the disk connected directly to my TimeCapsule for a while now and again I'm having problems; my Time Machine backup is delayed and when I click on the information button it says "The backup disk is not available". Via the Finder none of the disks is available either... :confused:

Now I have to reset the entire TimeCapsule before I can use them again; Internet access through the TimeCapsule working is okay though...

My BigDisk does have it's own power supply; the TimeCapsule has to provide power only for itself.

I'm beginning to think that also using the TimeCapsule on Windows computers is (also) causing the problem.

Regards, Tom
 
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The hub may be the problem. I just had to hobble a old usb hub and power supply together. The new belkin one i bought wouldn't work. It was a 2.0 hub....
 
How it is now...

Although I have installed Airport/TimeCapsule firmware version 7.6, I haven't connected any USB hub to it yet...just the USB disk and this works fine...when I have to print, I will have to plug the printer in my MBP directly and that's a pity.

I'll test the complete setup soon with this version of f/w.

The hub did work; just worked slowly and not all of the time... :D
 
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