Q: can I store files on my time capsule so that I can delete them from my hard drive?

You can, but if you delete files on your computer's hard drive.....the only copy of your data will be on the Time Capsule.....and you will have no backups for those files in the event of a Time Capsule drive problem.

In addition, Time Machine will delete the files on the Time Capsule at some point in the future....you just don't know when this might occur.

So, while the answer is sort of a "yes", I would only do this with data that I could afford to lose.

Suleicka wrote:

 

Exactly what the question's title asks.

You really ought to explain exactly what it is you want to do.

If the question is in the context of backing up your Mac using Time Machine and then having the freedom to subsequently erase the files from your Mac, the answer is most emphatically no for the reasons Bob Timmons explained. Time Machine is not an archiving utility. If you erase a file on the "source" volume, it will be erased on the backup eventually - perhaps in as little as one hour. This is by design.

If the question is in the context of using your Time Capsule to simply copy files (using the Finder, for example) so that they can be accessed by all the devices on your network, you can do that. However, if you are also using Time Machine to back up to that same volume, then the answer becomes less clear: Time Machine expects to use all the available space on the backup volume, and eventually running out of sufficient space to back up is another intentional Time Machine design consideration. Time Machine will delete old, expired backups as necessary, but when the Time Capsule eventually becomes full, you will no longer be able to copy anything to it (using the Finder), so that's not a good idea either.