Hi Ronnie, I have read your note and now see what you're saying. I can't fathom why I would have an external drive attached to the TC if all I was able to use it for was for backing up of backup files on the TC. I have the external drive formatted as FAT32 (albeit with the 4GB file size limitation) deliberately for the purpose of having Windows compatibility of my other (shhh) Windows laptop attached to the network. I share files between the two computers in this way. That sharing part works very reliably.
I have got a printer configuration just like yours not coincidentally (an Epson wireless ready printer) set up wirelessly between TC and printer (no cables between the two) and this too works really well. File sharing for the external drive is set to "Enabled" and the Summary tab under Airport Utility quotes version 7.5 as was installed from the disc supplied with the TC new in December 2009. I am set to 802.11n 5GHz only as well. I just did a trial experiment too by initially forcing the external drive awake from the Finder and opening a random file on the external drive to prove it had a pulse PRIOR to attempting to do an Attach to a new email within Mail. When it was 'wide awake', the Attach command worked fine for Mail. I would sooner have the issue of making sure it was awake prior to attaching than to loose the Windows compatibility and file sharing ability so I suppose I will have to leave it this way. Another thought, if I had a powered Hub attached to the USB of the TC with two external drives in the hub, and one of the drives was FAT32 and the other was MacOS Extended with some synching process between the two externals, would that facilitate my obscure requirements? I look forward to any further to any other tips you may have to my situation. Regards Peter... Kind Regards, Peter Crisp, Project Controls Hub Lead, Perth Associate, BE Mech HATCH *Phone + 61 8 9428 5437 *Fax + 61 8 9428 5555 *Mob 0402 001 019 ?E-mail pcr...@hatch.com.au Website <http://www.hatch.com.au/> ________________________________ From: wamug-ow...@wamug.org.au [mailto:wamug-ow...@wamug.org.au] On Behalf Of Ronda Brown Sent: Thursday, 11 March 2010 4:32 PM To: WAMUG Mailing List Subject: Re: Mail attachments from external drive Hi Peter, Where do I start ? Perhaps first I should explain that the Primary Purpose of the USB port on the Time Capsule is to allow users to connect an External Backup drive to the Time Capsule in order to Archive its contents, using the Airport Utility App. This will activate a process in the Time Capsule controller that will transfer data from its internal drive to the external drive over the USB connection, at its maximum speed. In other words, a backup of the backups on the Time Capsule. Or for connecting a USB shared Printer. Also USB drives attached to the TC tend to spin down after about 1 minute of inactivity, hence you noticing the USB drive was not spinning. How is the USB Drive formatted? It should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Do you have "File Sharing" enabled on the USB Drive? Airport Utility - Disks - File Sharing - "Enable File Sharing" Also are you using Airport Utility v5.5 (which is only available on the Disc that came with TC). I think I remember you have a Dual-Band 802.11n only (5GHz)-802.11b/g/n) Network. When you go to attach the files into an email, I would imagine you are copying the files from the Networked USB Drive, wirelessly through Time Capsule back to your MacBook. If this is what happens ... it is going to be twice as long as if you copied the files directly to the MacBook (Desktop), or if you directly connected the USB drive to your MacBook. I'll give it some more thought, if I come up with a better solution, I'll let you know. Cheers, Ronni On 11/03/2010, at 12:49 PM, Crisp, Peter wrote: I wanted to know if anyone has had the issue I experienced last night. I had prepared an email in Mail and then wanted to attach a few documents that were residing on my USB external drive attached to my Time Capsule. I selected "Attach" the one with the paper clip, and then I got the "colourful beach ball". The Finder look-alike browse panel had presented itself and was set to my external drive initially I think because that was the last location that I had browsed to. I walked to the Time Capsule (with External drive attached) and noted that the external drive was not spinning up ready for business due to the enquiry to find the files to attach. I had to finally crash the Macbook - a very undesirable and uncouth action. Maybe there was an alternative but I didn't know what action. In any case, following a reboot of the Macbook, I was able to use the Finder directly to browse to the files and successfully located them, copied them to the desktop, then drag/dropped them into the email. But I should be able to just Attach these docs directly I feel using the Attach function. Is the "Attach" command (for a file located on a Time Capsule external drive) normally a problem like this for others? What could be going on that prevents the external drive from waking up and responding to the request? The time capsule is wirelessly connected to the Macbook (Snow Leopard), and the external drive attached to the USB port of the TC. I cant recall if I had the same issue as this when I used Entourage initially. Cheers Peter... ________________________________ -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au> ***************************** NOTICE - This message from Hatch is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information which is privileged, confidential or proprietary. Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, arrive late or contain viruses. 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