Hi Peter, I said "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." You can use it for other purposes, but be aware of its limitations with it being connected by USB to Time Capsule.
I strongly recommend, if your Data is important to you, and you are serious about backing up and protecting your Data on your computers, that you don't rely solely on Time Machine backups. I wrote an article in September 2009 titled "MY BACKUP STRATEGY". In it I explain that a good Backup Strategy consists of three parts, and what my Backup Strategy is. If you think it would be helpful to you, email me off-list and I will give you my website Username & password, so you can download it. >> 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. The Version 7.5 refers to your Time Capsule, not Airport Utility.app. Open Airport Utility, under Airport Utility in the Menu bar > 'About Airport Utility' will give you the version, it should be v5.5 (550.29). "The Time Machine Schedule Problem: Time Machine saves hourly backups for 24 hours, daily backups for a month, and weekly backups until your disk is full. On the surface, that seems reasonable, but if you look at the details, there’s a catch. Time Machine makes a new backup every hour that your computer is on and awake. With each run, Time Machine also deletes the hourly backup from 25 hours ago, unless it was the first backup of that particular day. Thus you always have hourly backups for the last 24 hours, as well as a single hourly backup (i.e., from just the last hour of the day) for each of the past 30 days. After a month, Time Machine deletes the oldest of the daily backups, but it preserves the first daily backup from each week as long as there’s disk space available. Now picture this: at 8:30 PM on Monday you create an important file. When Time Machine runs next (at, say, 9:00 PM) it backs up that file—so far so good. Now, at 9:30 PM, you delete the file, either intentionally or otherwise. No problem: it’s still in your backup. Of course, none of the hourly backups for the next 24 hours includes your file, because it had already been deleted, so the only copy Time Machine has is in that first hourly backup. At 10:00 PM on Tuesday, Time Machine erases that backup from 25 hours ago—the only one, from 9:00 on Monday, that contained your important file. Because that file wasn’t in the last hourly backup of that day, it won’t be there tomorrow if you suddenly realise you need it, even though Time Machine backed it up yesterday! So there are ways that files can fall through the cracks. Time Machine backs them up, sure, but then, because of the way it deletes old backups, it may remove your essential file from the backup before you need it. (And that’s true, by the way, when deleting old daily and weekly backups too.) Plus, if a file exists for less than an hour, and therefore isn’t around for a single backup, Time Machine won’t help at all. The lesson? First, supplementing your Time Machine backups is a good idea. And second, get in the habit of hanging on to files for at least 24 hours before you delete them!" Cheers, Ronni On 11/03/2010, at 9:23 PM, Crisp, Peter wrote: > 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… > > 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>
