Is it possible to use my Time Capsule as an iTunes Media Server?

Question

Is it possible to use my Time Capsule as an iTunes Media Server?

I've bought a macbook air, which is awesome, but a bit lacking in space, it's already filling up.

At the same time I bought a 2TB time capsule. Although I think the back up features are great, I always had the intention that I'd be able to use the Time Capsule as a wireless, and even remotely accessible, personal cloud, to store some of my bigger files. Namely, my iTunes library and my iPhotos library.

I've been into the Apple Store, and the genius there told me it was a simple as copying the two libraries onto the TC, and then redirecting the apps to look at those libraries. Dead easy.

In theory, this creates a perfect system. I realise there might be a bit of lag retrieving stuff, especially if I'm trying to get a movie off the TC while I'm travelling. But if I've got half a day spare to download it, then it's great to have that option if I've forgotten to copy it to my Mac Book before I leave.

In practice, it doesn't work. Because the TC is being used to keep a back up as well, I can only copy the libraries into the Data folder. And I've read somewhere that this can confuse issues a little bit. Now when I try to navigate to the libraries, connection to the Time Capsule always fails.

I realise I could probably achieve this by plugging an external hardrive into the Time Capsule. But I've got two terabytes of space on the TC, it'll take forever to fill that up with just back ups. I don't feel I should have to buy another hardrive, when I've got a TB and a half of free space waiting to be used.

The only idea I can think of is if I partition the TC harddrive, keeping one half for the back ups, and one half for my media library.

Has anyone actually succedded in doing this? Any ideas or help anyone can offer, this is getting really frustrating, and if it doesn't work, I think I'll have to return the Time Capsule, or scrap the idea of backing up, and just use it as an iTunes server instead.

Thanks.

MacBook Air (13-INCH, MID 2011), iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Jun 16, 2012 3:44 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

LaPastenague

Level 9

67,208 points

Jun 16, 2012 4:31 PM in response to Latitude Journey

The TC is not really suited to using as a NAS.. chiefly due to its speed.. slow.. especially to respond to request. And the total lack of internal backup, other than full disk manually inititated archive which is so so slow. So please take care to backup what you put on the TC somewhere more reliable.

The TC is a sealed unit.. no parts or spares are made available and if it goes bad in warranty .. Apple simply replace it.. fine except say goodbye to your libraries.

You cannot partition a network drive from any tools in the Mac. And the airport utility does not have that ability either.

You can create disk image which could well be worth it.

http://pondini.org/TM/TCQ3.html

Your issues at the moment are more likely fundamental Lion TC issues.. a simple reboot of the TC often gets things working.. networking on Lion and later firmware on the TC.. deserve a Windows Vista Quality award.. and you ask the question all windows support use.. "Did you turn it off and on again??"

Was the Air upgraded to Lion? That is often a mess.. clean install seems to be essential, as lots of the problems are related to wireless. Ethernet works better.. darn.. no ethernet.

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Answer 2

Jun 16, 2012 4:56 PM in response to LaPastenague

Thanks LaPastenague, even thought your answer is a little bit dissapointing.

I bought the time capsule thinking that being able to use it as a wireless external hard drive might be one of it's major benefits. I wasn't sure what a NAS is, but having a quick Google, it seems like that is exactly what I'm after. I need to get some stuff off my Air, but I don't want to have to keep plugging into an external hardrive every time I want to access something on it. I'm surprised that the TC can't do this, all the hardware seems to be there: massive hard drive: check, wi-fi connectivity: check, I'm not sure what else you'd need.

I'm not that fussed about back ups. I'm sure I probably will be one day, if my house ever burns down, but for now I remain blissfully optimistic that I'll never need a back up (searches anxioulsy for some wood to touch). The perceived wireless hard drive functions were what encouraged me to get the TC.

I could go down the disk image route, but I get the feeling that this plan is doomed to fail, as it seems the TC wasn't designed for this at all. I'd made an assumption that it had been, based on the theory that the people at Apple are all quite clever chaps, this idea didn't seem to be too radical.

Oh well, perhaps the answer to my problems would be to return the TC and use the money to simply invest in a large iCloud account, or possibly DropBox. Any thoughts on that idea?

By the way, if it helps, the Air came with Lion pre-installed.

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Answer 3

Jun 16, 2012 7:42 PM in response to Latitude Journey

It is not that the TC cannot do it.. but can you live with the consequences.. it is not easy to get it responding quickly enough.. and I suspect you will have errors continually being tossed up about library being unavailable.. simply it takes the TC too long to spin the disk up. There are ways and means around all the problems.. but you are optimistic in the extreme that Apple design things to multi-task well.. chaps.. what a lovely word.. very English!! Dad's Army comes to mind. You chaps..!!

The AIR certainly needs something as a media server.. since its own internal disk is so small.

Cloud is great if you have fibre network connection, with fast uploads.. but for the majority of people.. cloud is too slow.. and too expensive to use in place of local storage.

That is where Apple see the future though.. and I wonder if the TC will be dropped from the line up.

For the moment one solution commonly used is a cheap Mac Mini .. even one a few years old is more than powerful enough.. running it as a Media Computer. It is well suited power consumption wise.. but not so good in terms of expansion as it is also stuck with laptop components. Something between a TC and an actual computer is required. A market space for Apple that perhaps they are unwilling to fill.

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Answer 4

Jun 17, 2012 12:31 AM in response to LaPastenague

Thinking about it some more, doesn't an apple tv act as a large, wireless media storage?

Not that it would help, just a couple of months before our household apple revolution we spent a fortune on a Samsung smart tv, which does basically the same as an apple tv. I'm not quite prepared to scrap that just yet and replace it with an apple tv.

We've got fibre optic broadband though, the fastest you can get in Britain (he says, beaming with pride). I really can't be doing with the hassle of having things not work, that's the last thing I wanted when I joined the apple family. So I shall investigate the cloud option some more.

Thanks for your help, old bean.

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Answer 5

Jun 17, 2012 1:15 AM in response to Latitude Journey

Latitude Journey wrote:

Thinking about it some more, doesn't an apple tv act as a large, wireless media storage?

No, it doesn't have any storage at all in v2 and v3.. well a small amount of RAM or flash cache to hold a movie whilst it is streamed from net.. the original v1 on the other hand is a very interesting box..

I have 3 of them.. currently undergoing transformation into something else.. people hack them.. they are very hackable.. you can load a 1TB disk in it.. as well as changing the wireless card to video accelator and load a linux version to make use of it.. that gives a 1080P and very good video graphics.. but it also has ethernet.. and USB and you can plug 2TB or whatever drive straight in.. I am not sure with the hacked version of TV2 if you can use a disk in the usb. TV3 is still undergoing hack training. (This is like toilet training.. there are lots of spills and the public is probably unwelcome.. ).

Ahhhh fibre .. that is the ulitmate.

But your smart TV being non-apple is probably better with windows world DLNA media streaming server.. which is available in every NAS made..

TC is dumb as a board so has no media smarts .. or any other kind of smarts to be truthful.

Have a cup of tea with that luv!!

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Answer 6

Aug 11, 2012 10:30 AM in response to Latitude Journey

Hi Latitude Journey

Make sure you do the following if you are planning to load all your library on TC:

Step 1: make sure that you tell iTunes where your media folder is located, under preferences, advanced, chose the location of your media folder (assuming you are using iTunes 10+.

Step 2: Once you are done telling iTunes where your media folder is located (music, etc) make sure you go to users & groups under system preferences (assuming you are running Lion or Mountain Lion OSX) and choose login items, then click the + sign and locate your time capsule from the shared drive section in finder, just chose it (no specific folder) just any folder.

the reason why you should do this, is that if it happen that you restart your mac! iTunes will try to look for the drive that has your media/music that you set earlier in step 2: , and since TC is not an actual NAS drive, it is more like a shared drive, it will take few seconds for the hard drive on it to load, where iTunes will not be able to locate it before it is ready, and thus it will revert to the default location of the media folder which is under music/itunes/itunes media/, and eventually none of your songs will actually work since they are on the TC and not your mac.

doing what i told to do in step 2: will make sure that your TC hard drive is ready before your iTunes try to locate the media folder, where you will be able to play your library without any issues.

failing to do so, most probably you will face the problem where you try to play songs in iTunes and finding that they have exclamation mark next to them, which means that they are missing from the library.

my music library is all located on my Time Capsule, and iTunes runs on my Mac mini (with home sharing enabled), and my iTunes is set to lunch on start up under system preferences/users & groups/login items/.

My mac mini act as a server (don't worry about your mac going to sleep, it will wake up once you try to access your media from other devices) assuming that you have the option wake on LAN enabled under network in system preferences.

This is my setup.

- Mac mini mid 2011, running Mountain Lion and latest iTunes set to launch on startup in case of computer power on or restart so i don't have to worry about launching it manually.

- Time capsule 2 TB, used as network shared hard drive

- MacBook Pro early 2011 running Mountain Lion and latest iTunes

- 2 iPads

- iPhones 4s

- Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2

all my devices having home sharing enabled under the same account.

i can access my music library from any of my devices easily and problem free.

hope this will help you and other users.

Many thanks

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