Seamless integration of mba with time capsule?

[applecultvictim]

Hey guys, as per another thread I am pretty close to getting the hd mba. I am thus going to heavily rely for media sharing and file sharing on a time capsule what with the size limitations of this thing.

Any experiences with that?

I am sure a lot here have opted for this set up, do they go along well, is it seamless to use the tc for media streaming to your air and syncing your iphone thus?

THANKS!!!!!!

 

[gr8tfly]

Don't have a Time Capsule, but [near]current Airport Extreme Base Station with 2 2.5" USB drives on the network. One is a WD Passport 160, which is used for Time Machine backups from our 80GB MBA. The other is a generic case 40GB for file sharing. All work smoothly - even though, Apple still doesn't officially support Time Machine over Airport Extreme Base Station. As long as the drive is correctly initialized, directly on a Leopard machine, it seems fine.

Anyway, I think that answers the question. It should work fine. I know a family member using a Time Capsule to backup and share drives for several machines. Two wirelessly and one on enet. Several drives being used on the TC USB ports, in addition to the one internal.

Also, don't forget the MBA still does have a USB port.

 

[applecultvictim]

Hey gr8tfly, that was a gr8t reply for sure!

thanks for the heads up too about the express/external option. I was going for the tc instead for reasons of it being quitter and more aesthetically pleasing. I am aware of course of the usb on the air, and you are making a good point, but I do want to have an always on network for my media and I don't want to stick things in and out.

Now about the express and the external hdd, hmm....

Thanks again!

 

[gr8tfly]

Not sure the Express supports a drive - I've only tried with printer, and as I understand, that's it.

The AEBS is almost the same as the Time Capsule, except for the build-in drives. I believe both current models support simultaneous dual-band "n" (just a side note, but would be good if you have a mixed "g"/"n" environment)

But, the Express is much less configurable than the others, and AFAIK only does printer sharing off the USB port.

 

[applecultvictim]

sorry meant to say extreme.

yeah that dual band is an excellent addition, was worried before that, that legacy equipment would bog down my network if added, no more.

 

[n0de]

MBA+ TC is Great, if you.......

The MBA + Timecapsule combination works very well with a few conditions:
1. Do not upgrade the Timecapsule firmware to 7.4.1, if it comes with it downgrade. There is something about the MBA+7.4.1 that if you put the MBA to sleep while connected to the TC it will kill your internet connection until you reboot the TC.
2. Do your initial backup over a wired LAN connection, not wifi or all subsequent backups will fail.
3. Either have TimeMachine backup really often or set up for manual backup using only the wired LAN. It works great when the backup increments are very small, but has issues whenever the backups are >250MB.

The above conditions may not be required for everyone, but consist of best practices that make the combination bulletproof. Don't flame me if you don't have to do the above because you are the exception.

 

[Kroghen]

Just be aware of the fact that you can't partition the drive in the Time Capsule. Or at least I haven't figured out how to do it.

This means that you can't have one partition for Time Machine and one for media files.

Time machine will automatically use all of the free disk space until there's no space left. This means at some point you have to delete some of your old backups manually to get room for media files if you want to add some later

(I think there is a solution where you make an image on the disk and use this for your media)

 

[applecultvictim]

@n0de, your post should be made sticky, much thanks.

@krogen, I was actually reading somewhere that you can but can't find it at the mo. I hear what you say though.

 

[dubhe]

Time machine will automatically use all of the free disk space until there's no space left. This means at some point you have to delete some of your old backups manually to get room for media files if you want to add some later

I don't think you want to start deleting files from your time capsule, they are cumulative, so the stuff at the beginning of the story will only be written to the disc once, if you delete old files you will loose them forever... Unless you TC copies them back again next time, but that defeats the object.

 

[Kroghen]

I'm not saying that it would actually be a good idea to delete the old files.
But it is the only way to free up space on the TC drive if Time Maachine fills the entire drive.

It was simply to point out that this indeed is a problem when wanting to use TC for both Time MAchine and media files...

 

[McGilli]

I have a Time Capsule 500gb which i upgraded to the newest 7.4.1 firmware recently.

I have never had any issues. I have the MBA and an iMac both setup to use it as their Time Machine backup drive. both work great over wireless. I only have wireless N devices in my house - so - all backups are fast and no problems.

now of course - your initial backup over wireless will take a while - for me at wireless N it was overnight - but - i can live with that. every backup after that is less than 2 minutes. I have never attached anything to the Time Capsule with a Lan cable.

I have never experienced any issues with my internet dropping on the MBA or iMac - after every backup it's fine - never had to restart my Time Capsule in the ... about 8 months I have had it.

I use a WD 500gb MyBook attached to the Time Capsule for file sharing. both computers see it fine and have no issues.

So as mentioned - use the Time Capsule drive ONLY for backups - OR ONLY for file sharing - and get an external drive if needed.

You'll be fine.


Some people do have disconnect issues though with the new firmware - but it's not everyone :

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1933643&tstart=0

 

[applecultvictim]

Hey mcgilli, great post,don't you think I can have a tc partinioned and use part of it for backups and part of it for file sharing?