Time Capsule question...

I would like to get an Airport Extreme with an external 1TB hard-drive,
so Time Capsule would be a natural choice, but my question is: can I use the
Time Capsule hard-drive as I wish or will Time Machine somehow limit access
to it? In particular, can I deactivate Time Machine completely and still
have access to the hard-drive?

In article <h2or56$abv$>,
"barcaroller" <> wrote:

> I would like to get an Airport Extreme with an external 1TB hard-drive,
> so Time Capsule would be a natural choice, but my question is: can I use the
> Time Capsule hard-drive as I wish or will Time Machine somehow limit access
> to it? In particular, can I deactivate Time Machine completely and still
> have access to the hard-drive?

Yes. Just don't set it up as a Time Machine drive. It is pretty simple.

"Lloyd Parsons" <> wrote ...

> Yes. Just don't set it up as a Time Machine drive. It is pretty simple.

If it were set up as a Time machine Drive, would I still be able to use the
hard-drive for other stuff (e.g. creating and mounting other filesystems)?
If yes, would I have to partition the hard-drive?

In article <h2ovvd$fkf$>,
"barcaroller" <> wrote:

> "Lloyd Parsons" <> wrote ...
>
> > Yes. Just don't set it up as a Time Machine drive. It is pretty
> > simple.
>
> If it were set up as a Time machine Drive, would I still be able to
> use the hard-drive for other stuff (e.g. creating and mounting other
> filesystems)?

Yes.

> If yes, would I have to partition the hard-drive?

No.

--
Member National Rifle Association
Member American Civil Liberties Union
Member Human Rights Campaign

In article <h2or56$abv$>,
"barcaroller" <> wrote:

> I would like to get an Airport Extreme with an external 1TB hard-drive,
> so Time Capsule would be a natural choice, but my question is: can I use the
> Time Capsule hard-drive as I wish or will Time Machine somehow limit access
> to it? In particular, can I deactivate Time Machine completely and still
> have access to the hard-drive?

You can do what you want. I haven't noticed any interference between
the Time Machine function and using the hard drive to save other data.

The limit is how much space is available. Eventually, when the HD is
full, Time Machine will start deleting old backups to meet its needs.
But that doesn't give you any free space for additional data.

The one problem I've had, is that the Time Capsule doesn't seem to
support AppleTalk. I had an AppleTalk (EtherTalk) printer connected to
the AirPort, that stopped working when I switched to the Time Capsule.
I ended up going back to the AirPort Extreme to support the printer, and
have the Time Capsule Wireless Mode set up to "Extend a wireless
network", with the AirPort Extreme specified as the host.

Fred

"Fred McKenzie" <> wrote in message ...

> The limit is how much space is available. Eventually, when the HD is
> full, Time Machine will start deleting old backups to meet its needs.

So Time Machine will make backups until the hard-drive is physically full?
Can Time Machine not be configured to use only a specified amount of disk
space (say 250GB or 25%)?


> But that doesn't give you any free space for additional data.

Why is the newly-freed space not available for my own data?

barcaroller <> wrote:

> "Lloyd Parsons" <> wrote ...
>
> > Yes. Just don't set it up as a Time Machine drive. It is pretty simple.
>
> If it were set up as a Time machine Drive, would I still be able to use the
> hard-drive for other stuff (e.g. creating and mounting other filesystems)?

Not easily. There is no mechanism to partition the internal drive in a
Time Capsule. This means you are limited to working with files on a
single file system.

If you use a Time Capsule as a Time Machine backup destination, the Time
Machine backups will eventually grow to fill all free space on the
drive.

This means that you will eventually have no space to store other files
unless you manually delete old Time Machine backups to make room.

To prevent Time Machine using all of the drive, the easiest solution is
to create one or more fixed size disk images, and use them to store any
incidental files you want to keep on the Time Capsule (which won't be
backed up by Time Machine).

Another option would be to connect an external drive to the Time
Capsule. Use the internal drive for your Time Machine backups and the
external drive for incidental file storage (which won't be backed up by
Time Machine).

--
David Empson

barcaroller <> wrote:

> "Fred McKenzie" <> wrote in message ...
>
> > The limit is how much space is available. Eventually, when the HD is
> > full, Time Machine will start deleting old backups to meet its needs.
>
> So Time Machine will make backups until the hard-drive is physically full?
> Can Time Machine not be configured to use only a specified amount of disk
> space (say 250GB or 25%)?

No. The usual way to force that is to partition a hard drive but the
Time Capsule can't be partitioned.

> > But that doesn't give you any free space for additional data.
>
> Why is the newly-freed space not available for my own data?

Because when Time Machine deletes old backups because the volume is
nearly full, it will immediately fill most of that space with new
backups, and will keep filling it until the drive is nearly full again.

You can't easily control when the deletion of old backups will occur, so
you wouldn't have a predictable opportunity to use any of the space that
Time Machine freed by deleting an old backup.

In addition, on a Time Capsule, Time Machine uses Sparse Disk Images to
hold its backups. Typically these will NOT shrink in size when an old
backup is deleted - there will be additional free space within the disk
image but not on the Time Capsule's own file system.
--
David Empson

"David Empson" <> wrote ...

> Not easily. There is no mechanism to partition the internal drive in a
> Time Capsule. This means you are limited to working with files on a
> single file system.

Ah, that's important to know. So, just to clarify, I can't just format and
set up filesystem partitions on a Time Capsule hard-drive, regardless of
whether I'm using Time Machine or not. Is that correct?


> To prevent Time Machine using all of the drive, the easiest solution is
> to create one or more fixed size disk images, and use them to store any
> incidental files you want to keep on the Time Capsule (which won't be
> backed up by Time Machine).

I don't know what you mean by fixed disk size images. Will you please
elaborate?


> Another option would be to connect an external drive to the Time
> Capsule. Use the internal drive for your Time Machine backups and the
> external drive for incidental file storage (which won't be backed up by
> Time Machine).

Another option is to just get an Airport Extreme with an external hard-drive
and have Time Machine backup to the internal drive. I assume Time Machine
is smart enough not to fill up the internal system disk (I can't imagine
Apple developers allowing that).

In article <h2p35c$7qc$>,
"barcaroller" <> wrote:

> > The limit is how much space is available. Eventually, when the HD
> > is full, Time Machine will start deleting old backups to meet its
> > needs.
>
> So Time Machine will make backups until the hard-drive is physically
> full? Can Time Machine not be configured to use only a specified
> amount of disk space (say 250GB or 25%)?

Only by partitioning.

> > But that doesn't give you any free space for additional data.
>
> Why is the newly-freed space not available for my own data?

Because only enough is freed for the current backup.

--
Member National Rifle Association
Member American Civil Liberties Union
Member Human Rights Campaign