Apple AirPort Time Capsule

How will these work with the time capsule ?

As we already mentioned above, the Time Capsule was specifically designed to store backups from your Mac(s) using Time Machine.

It is not possible to predict the results for what you want to do on your network. That is why we said that it may take some experimentation before you know how well......or if.....things will work.

To give things a try the on the MacBook running El Capitan........

Click the Finder (smiley face) icon on the dock

Look on the left panel of the next window to see if the name of your Time Capsule appears under the Shared heading.

If it does, click on the name of the Time Capsule and a folder representing the name of the Time Capsule hard drive will appear in the window to the right.

By default, the name of the Time Capsule drive is "Data". If you have renamed the drive, then the folder will be named with the hard drive name that you have assigned

Double-Click on "Data" to open the drive and you will likely be asked to enter the admin password of the Time Capsule

Click Connect

When you see the "Data" hard drive icon appear on your Mac's desktop, you can double-click "Data" to open the drive and drag/drop or copy paste files into the hard drive.

The process is similar on the Mac running Mojave except that you will not see a Shared heading on the left panel of the Finder window. Instead, the Time Capsule name will appear under the Locations heading. Follow the same instructions as above to open the Time Capsule hard drive.

If the Time Capsule does not appear under the Shared or Locations heading on the left panel of the Finder window, there is a more complicated way to try to access the hard drive, but we won't go into that yet unless it is needed. There are still no guarantees, even with the more complicated methods.

"Can the Apple AirPort Time Capsule be used as an external hard drive?"

It was not designed for that purpose, but it can be used as a "network" drive. But, you would not want to store anything like an active image library, or media library, or any other 'active" files on a network drive. In other words, the Time Capsule drive was designed to store backups or files that you will not be using on a regular basis.

"Maybe another way to ask the question is can the Apple AirPort Time Capsule be seen on a separate drive through the iMac or MacBook?"

Yes, if the operating system on your Mac is behaving. In this regard, Mojave and High Sierra have not exactly been reliable with the Time Capsule, so it may take some experimentation if you are using one of these operating systems.

Your next question might be "how" to access the Time Capsule hard drive from a Mac. If that is the case, we need to know what operating system your Mac is running.