I want to physically move iTunes music and my photos to Time Capsule. How?

Your working libraries should be stored on a regular internal or external drive instead of the Time Capsule; it’s meant as a backup drive.

Regardless of which drive you’ll be putting them onto, the process is the same; drag them there in the Finder, launch the associated application with the Option key held down, and choose that library. An iPhoto or Photos library needs to be stored on a volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, and for Photos, you’ll need to choose Other Library first.

(131000)

If you move your iTunes library and image libraries to the Time Capsule......which is not a good idea at all, by the way......have you thought about how you will back up those libraries?

The experts in the iPhoto and Photos forum constantly warn about the dangers of trying to store an image library on a network drive and access to your music is going to be SLOW at best with the media library getting "lost" frequently.

A much better plan would be to move your media libraries to a USB or FireWire drive and connect that directly to your Mac. Then.....Time Machine will be able to back up both the Mac and attached drive. That would be a minimum type of backup plan for your data.

Yes, it is. The second drive doesn’t need to come from Apple; a drive not specifically intended for Macs can be used but will need to be reformatted first.

(131007)

You have a 2weeks return period on apple stuff.. just take it back if it doesn't fit with your aims.

Beyond that sell it on the second hand market.. as barely used you will get back most of your money.

But Apple has designed everything around the Cloud now.. or run a local computer as itunes server?? although there is no such thing. The very small disks in the latest laptops are a big problem... especially when you don't have decent internet to use the cloud based server which Apple offers as alternative.

NeverWorksOnTheFirstTry wrote:

I would have bought an Express and saved hundreds of dollars.

For what purpose exactly? You cannot connect an external hard disk drive to an Express. You can, however, connect as many as you want (more than one requires a powered hub) to an AirPort Extreme and use it / them for Time Machine or any other generic storage. The cost difference between an AirPort Extreme and a Time Capsule is not much greater than the addition of a hard disk drive... which essentially describes the only difference between the two devices. So if you want to implement your idea, you're not going to save "hundreds" no matter which solution you choose.

I'll NEVER fill up 3 TB with just Time Machine.

Actually you will, since Time Machine is designed to make use of an entire backup volume's capacity – all of it – for the purpose of storing as many previous backups as its constraints permit. 3 TB is not excessive. Some people find it inadequate.

We got the TC with the assumption that we could free up HD space on the MacBook Air (starting to slow down).

As others already noted, you can do that if you so choose, but it's probably not such a good idea. Furthermore, diminishing disk space itself does not cause a computer to become slow... until that space becomes exiguously small. If that should occur, OS X will inform you. If your MBA is becoming slow it is likely due to some other cause, which will require some investigation.

As LaPastenague wrote just return the TC if it does not suit your needs.