Sharing media with time capsule

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Sharing media with time capsule

I have a Time Capsule (summer 2011) which I have been using for backing up our two Macbook Airs. The 128 GB SSD drive is not providing enough space for our pictures/media anymore and I am looking for a long-term solution for the problem. I have been thinking of using my Time Capsule hard drive as a network storage for my iPhoto library (or Photos which I am still learning to use) so that both I and my wife could access the pictures independently anytime. Now I have a couple of questions concerning this:

1. When I import my pictures to iPhoto and edit them, I need to have an internal picture library in my Macbook. Is there an easy way to sync the pictures to the iPhoto library in the Time Capsule (i.e. one-way/one-directional syncing/copying the pictures) after I am done with editing?

2. I would also need to back-up the Time Capsule hard drive (especially the pictures there). I can easily attach an external hard drive to TC, but is there some easy way to back-up the pictures from TC to the external hard drive? If nothing else works, I am fine doing this manually every time I add pictures to TC if the back-uping can be done incrementally.

Any advice is highly appreciated.

Posted on Jul 15, 2015 9:12 AM

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Answer 1

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léonie

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Jul 15, 2015 9:28 AM in response to brutuz

iPhoto Libraries must not be shared on a network drive. Apple recommends against it, see this document, it also holds for iPhoto.

Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library

and

iPhoto: Issues with FAT32-formatted drives - Apple Support

Additionally, storing the iPhoto library on a network rather than locally on your computer can also lead to poor performance or data loss.

iphoto is a single user application. It does not support concurrent access from more than one user. What you can do to share your libraries on an external drive is to use a sneaker drive, that you plug in alternately into both your Macs, see:

iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users

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Answer 2

brutuz Author

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Jul 15, 2015 9:35 AM in response to léonie

Ok so if I want to do this over network, there is no really good option to do it like this - at least not with iPhoto/Photos? I would prefer avoiding plugging in any external hard drives, but I would like everything to work easily over the network. Although I would probably not need simultaneous use of the library with several computers.

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Answer 3

léonie

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Jul 15, 2015 9:44 AM in response to brutuz

For iPhoto it is clear, that Apple does not support network access to the library. For Photos we do not know. You cannot put the Photos library on a synced volume, like a Dropbox or iCloud Drive, that will wreck the library for sure, at least, none of my test libraries survived this treatment.

But it might work to connect an external drive to the Time Capsule, if the drive is formatted and prepared as described here: iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users

You could test it with a test library. Apple simply did not release any information, if such a configuration is supported for Photos libraries, so no guarantees given.

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Answer 4

brutuz Author

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Jul 15, 2015 9:50 AM in response to léonie

Well, I would like to use Time Capsule as the external drive and then another external drive as a back-up hdd for time capsule. Apparently, this is not possible according to the instructions in your link. I guess I could also use the other external drive as the destination for the library, but then I would need to find a way to back it up since TC does not back-up the drive attached to it by usb.

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Answer 5

léonie

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Jul 15, 2015 10:48 AM in response to brutuz

. I guess I could also use the other external drive as the destination for the library, but then I would need to find a way to back it up since TC does not back-up the drive attached to it by usb.

Photos will not open any library on a drive that is consider to be a Time Machine volume, so the Time Capsule itself will be off-limits.

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Answer 6

brutuz Author

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Jul 15, 2015 11:21 AM in response to léonie

In that case the only option seems to be to put the library on an external hard drive connected to the TC via the USB and then manually back-up the hard drive to TC each time I need to update it. Is there some way or app to do this incrementally?

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Answer 7

rkaufmann87

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Jul 15, 2015 11:45 AM in response to brutuz

brutuz wrote:

In that case the only option seems to be to put the library on an external hard drive connected to the TC via the USB and then manually back-up the hard drive to TC each time I need to update it. Is there some way or app to do this incrementally?

Time Machine has the option to include external HDs to backup. Therefore you do not need to do anything manually.Simply put the Photos library on a EHD, then open Time Machine's preferences and tell it to backup the EHD and you're done.

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Answer 8

brutuz Author

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Jul 15, 2015 12:30 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Yes, but then I would need the external hard drive to be connected to my macbook. I would rather like it to be connected to TC via the USB.

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Answer 9

léonie

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Jul 16, 2015 2:40 AM in response to brutuz

Cloning software can do incremental backups of drives, Duper Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. But you cannot clone to the Time Capsule , if you also want to use it with Time Machine, unless you put a writable disk image there and most it each time you want to backup your external drive.

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