Is Time Capsule a NAS hard drive?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Wanted: A wireless library for all my files... (Time Capsule???)



I need a big external hardrive for storing large files, such as iMovie-projects, movies, photos, music, documents and more... In short all my files, so I can save space on my iMac and my MBP in the field.



Does the backup feature take to much space = Can I partition the TC?, or is it not necessary?



If the Time Capsule works well as a SAFE storage place, I truly would be happy, as its a convenient wireless solution.



If so... I might buy my self a 1 TB-version.



If not... Can I plug a NAS hard drive in to my existing AirPort Extreme? How safe is this?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    I'm interested in finding out a bit about this also. However, I guess it would not be such a good idea to use the Time Capsule as a Time Machine server and an NAS... Simply because, if anything happened to that device, you'd lose everything - your server storage files, plus any backups you'd have for them.



    My ultimate solution idea (albeit quite an expensive one) is to have a Time Capsule for backups and a Bubba Server as an NAS. Because the Bubba Server has on-board Linux, it could then handle its own backups by scheduling an rsync command to the Time Machine every few hours.



    This way, all the Macs in the house are backed up to the Time Capsule, plus the main server with all essential files is backed up using its own method also. Mind you, even a 1TB Time Capsule wouldn't be enough to handle that, and would probably need to be limited to certain files and folders. Is it possible to connect an extra external drive to Time Capsule? Ideally I'd like Time Capsule to have RAID configurations...
  • Reply 2 of 7
    TC is considered a NAS, but not very reliable, due to only being a single drive.



    Check out the D-Link DNS 323. It will do RAID 1 with 2 drives, only about $175, also Linux driven & has iTunes server as well. It will do AFP, so it will work very nicely with iTimeMachine, hehe
  • Reply 3 of 7
    Oooh not seen that D-Link before. Nice solution!
  • Reply 4 of 7
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    Oooh not seen that D-Link before. Nice solution!



    Trying to sell a couple of externals I have to replace them with this, I think it would work great with the base station.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    When you say they will work with AFP, where would you actually connect them to in order to do the Time Machine backups? Since they have Linux on them would you be able to set up an rsync script?
  • Reply 6 of 7
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    When you say they will work with AFP, where would you actually connect them to in order to do the Time Machine backups? Since they have Linux on them would you be able to set up an rsync script?



    It would show up in Finder just like any other network drive. OS X would use NFS (network file system). TC is the only compatible network drive for TM right now. There is a handy app called iTimeMachine that enables networked drives as TM-compatible. It worked with a USB drive on the extreme base station. But with the various drops in connection I've had, I still use a local attached drive for TM. As far as the "scripts" TM does more than a mere rsync, it's done with the local TM app on the machine. TM doesn't run from the remote drive, just moves data TO/FROM the drive.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kmac1036 View Post


    TC is considered a NAS, but not very reliable, due to only being a single drive.



    Check out the D-Link DNS 323. It will do RAID 1 with 2 drives, only about $175, also Linux driven & has iTunes server as well. It will do AFP, so it will work very nicely with iTimeMachine, hehe



    sounds quite promising...

    still::: i just downloaded the manual of the thing, and there's no mentioning whatsoever that it'll do AFP. There's no mentioning of SMB either... so it makes me wonder what protocol actually is used.
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