I recently purchased a Macbook Air and AirPort Time Capsule. I have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of photos on external hard drives. I would like to transfer them to the Time Capsule to have easy access to them on the MacBook Air. Good idea?

I recently purchased a Macbook Air and AirPort Time Capsule. I have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of photos on external hard drives. I would like to transfer them to the Time Capsule to have easy access to them on the MacBook Air. Good idea?

Posted on Nov 25, 2013 11:20 AM

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7 replies

Nov 25, 2013 11:25 AM in response to skal1966

A Time Capsule is a computer backup device, not an external storage device. So, no, it's not a good idea. Set up your Time Capsule and Time Machine to backup your computer. Leave your pictures on the external drives. Most likely you couldn't fit them on a Time Capsule, anyway.


If you want your pictures always online, and you could fit all of them on a drive the size of the one in your Time Capsule, then buy an external drive of that same capacity, transfer all you pictures to that one drive and leave it connected to your computer.

Nov 25, 2013 11:39 AM in response to Kappy

Very fast reply. Thank you. The idea was to have a fast wireless access to view the photos on the MacBook without clogging the MacBook Air's smaller storage. The Airport Time Capsule has 2TB of storage. I thought I could split the use of the AirPort Time Capsule between a backup device and wireless access to photos. (I would continue to make two external hard drive back ups for the photos)


It is cumbersome to always have the external device attached to the MacBook.


Any idea what I could use if the Time Capsule won't work?

Nov 25, 2013 11:42 AM in response to skal1966

I would like to transfer them to the Time Capsule to have easy access to them on the MacBook Air

If you decide to do this, then the only copy of your images will be on the Time Capsule. Have you thought about how you will keep a backup of all of your photos on another drive?


Kappy has a much better idea for you. Put the images on a hard drive that is connected to your MacBook Air. Then, Time Machine will back up both your MacBook Air and the hard drive to the Time Capsule.

Nov 25, 2013 11:48 AM in response to skal1966

First, you cannot partition a Time Capsule drive. Second, it's a backup device not a storage device. Backups should be maintained separately otherwise it only takes on drive failure to compromise both the backups and the storage space.


What you could use would be some kind of network attached storage, but I would suggest you simply get a large external drive that you connect to your MacBook, share the drive in order to allow access via your network.


It may be cumbersome, but you want reliability and speed. Network drives are slow, and wireless drives even slower.


i don't know how many other external drives you have with pictures on them, but are you even sure a 2 TB drive is large enough to store them all?

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I recently purchased a Macbook Air and AirPort Time Capsule. I have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of photos on external hard drives. I would like to transfer them to the Time Capsule to have easy access to them on the MacBook Air. Good idea?

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