Share Time Capsule Drive Partitions

For some reason from the MacOS side I cannot add files to the new partitions. Would someone know why that would be the case?

Mac cannot write to a network drive.....which what a Time Capsule is.....unless the drive is formatted for Mac in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or FAT16/32. If you are trying to copy over Time Machine backup files, the format must be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).....not FAT16/32.

My other question is how can I make these partitions(2 &3) viewable to Windows machines?

I doubt that you will be able to do this unless someone is offering special 3rd party software that is designed specifically for this purpose. If the Time Capsule is partitioned in Mac, Windows computers can "see" the drive as if it were formatted in FAT32 though, so that may be your best bet if you cannot find a 3rd party solution.

Have a 2 TB Time Capsule which I have partitioned into 3 parts to better utilize the drive.

You need to explain how you partitioned the drive.. did you actually remove the disk? Otherwise all partitions on the TC disk are virtual only.

If you actually pulled the drive and created partitions .. we need to see exactly how it was done.

Mac can write to network drive that is formatted FAT or exfat or NTFS even.. so I need to clarify Bob's comment.. it just cannot do it on a Time Capsule.. since Apple designed their stuff with Mac and only Mac in mind.

what is important is that Time Machine and any Mac system files have to be stored on Mac OS formatted partitions. If you copied a system file over network to any other format it will no longer work on the Mac.

Thanks for the clarification.

I may have made the mistake of taking at face value that Apple.JL removed the drive from the Time Capsule to format it.

Thanks for the clarification. Disk Utility will not "partition" a Time Capsule disk in a traditional sense......but it will allow you do set up different disk images on the Time Capsule drive. Each image can indeed have its own format.

I'll let LaPastenague explain the rest since he guessed right about what you were trying to do, and I was wrong.

Ok.. unless you created a virtual disk.. you did not actually partition a real disk.. you partitioned Time Machine's sparsebundle.. some web sites even advise this is a valid way to work with a TC.

It isn't.

A sparsebundle will be deleted by time machine when it is detected as corrupt.. an event that happens regularly. All your files will then be deleted.

What is more you have made the sparsebundle just that much more fragile as it can now be taken over as files are written to and from your new "partition".

My strong recommendation is you wipe the TC and start again. Use quick erase from the disk tab in Airport utility. Then do a fresh clean Time Machine backup. Do not ever touch that sparsebundle again unless you are restoring from it.. it belong wholly and solely to Time Machine.

You can create virtual disks with Disk Utility as Bob noted.. these are created under the Data main share.. fine and dandy.. You can even create a virtual disk from Windows that will be treated as NTFS.

See

Possible to create a windows VHD file on the TC.. format it GUID/NTFS and mount it to the windows computer.. Windows believes it is NTFS formatted.

From Finder it looks like a single large file just like sparsebundle.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7634417?answerId=30518554022#30518554022

But what is usable in windows is not usable in the Mac and visa versa. If you want a shared directory for files just create a folder under Data and yes, it can have permissions issues to another Mac but Windows pretty much ignores permissions.

You cannot create virtual disks for sharing between computers.. and never ever use FAT with anything in front or behind is still a weak file system.. Windows can write to HFS+ (Mac OS format) just fine as long as it is network drive and it is using SMB protocol.