Airport Extreme Time Capsule as a classroom backup

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Airport Extreme Time Capsule as a classroom backup

I teach a film class at my high school, and we have a Mac lab for class work. I'm thinking of using an Airport Extreme Time Capsule (2TB) as a central server where students can upload their raw video, and then work on their video editing in the Mac lab by downloading from Time Capsule (we have school wifi to facilitate this). Is this possible? Or would I be wasting school resources by buying a TC for this express purpose?

Our current Macs use Yosemite and are two years old.

Thanks.

iMac (24-inch), Mac OS X (10.6.8), null

Posted on Oct 9, 2015 8:55 PM

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Answer 1

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Eric Root

Level 10

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Oct 10, 2015 5:17 PM in response to philseoul

That should work, but depending on the number of students and the file size of the video files, you may want a larger size drive.

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Answer 2

cdhw

Level 4

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Oct 10, 2015 5:17 PM in response to philseoul

Whether it works or not depends critically on how large the video clips are and how many students will need to down-/up-load them at the start/end of each class.

IMO the only cheap setup likely to be satisfactory for your use case is a MacMini running Server providing 'mobile accounts' and tell the students to pick a machine and then stick with it for the duration of the course.

C.

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Answer 3

Oct 10, 2015 1:18 PM in response to cdhw

The TC is a home backup device and you are going to use it for NAS, file storage.

The TC has a major weakness.. there is no inbuilt incremental backup .. and you surely want the students files backed up. Which means setting up another software somewhere and another disk and some sort of auto backup mechanism.. Time Machine won't work .. it is limited to local drives..

You see all these things are designed for home.. so I agree with cdhw.. something more robust is required.. unless the files are like 10MB and there are 10 students to a class. Even then downloading their projects at the beginning of the class might take a while.

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Answer 4

philseoul Author

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Oct 10, 2015 5:23 PM in response to LaPastenague

Thanks for your help. There are 11 students in the class, but as we are using HD video, the video files would, of course, be hundreds of MBs in size (or larger).

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Answer 5

philseoul Author

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Oct 10, 2015 5:27 PM in response to cdhw

I appreciate your feedback. While we are a small class (11 students), I can see a lot of time being spent on the uploading/downloading process. Hmmm.

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Answer 6

philseoul Author

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Oct 10, 2015 5:31 PM in response to Eric Root

You may be right about the larger drive. I just have to consider how much money I can extract out of my school for these resources. Thanks.

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