03-20-2008, 04:15 PM

I just received my new Time Capsule (500gb) a couple hours ago.

I have to correct a misconception, including a couple post I have made that may have misled others.

If I'm wrong about any of this, and you know so from personal experience, please correct me.

Research on this forum and others led me to believe you can easily partition Time Capsule. I have contributed to this by passing this on to others. You cannot. The Time Capsule does not show up in Disk Utility. Leopard does not recognize it as a typical external drive. It shows up in your Finder under Shared, not under Devices with other USB drives.

You can read and write to it just like any other external drive. Once I installed the AirPort utility on my wife's XP PC, she can also read and write to it. But you can not use Disk Utility to partition it to prevent Time Machine from hogging the whole disk.

I haven't researched the details of this (and I probably won't), but there may be a hack to get around it. Apparently, you can physically disassemble Time Capsule, manually connect the hard drive portion via USB and then partition the drive. (I guess it's just a standard internal drive.) You then reassemble Time Capsule with the partitioned drive and neither Leopard or Time Machine complain about this. I'm not entirely clear how the new partition shows up in your Finder.

Just thought I'd pass that on now that I've found out the hard way. If anyone has some info that conflicts with this, please feel free to contribute.

03-20-2008, 04:49 PM

Well since the TM drive is afterall basically a network share, I don't see how it is possible for DU to partition it.

03-20-2008, 05:04 PM

good to know, with that knowledge i dont think it is for me then

03-20-2008, 05:04 PM

Yeah the Hard drive inside the Time Capsule is being shared over the network... and so it is not physically connected to your computer, that would be why it does not show up under devices, it is not connected to your computer via USB. Disc Utility is for any drives physically connected to you computer which the HDD inside the Time Capsule is not, all it is-is a networked HDD. Sorry for any misinformation you may have received.

03-20-2008, 11:54 PM

We-e-e-lllll........
There is a hack for this if you are interested...

Basically, you crack the case, connect and partition the HD, and replace. Voila! Time Capsule sees two partitions. I, for one, don't want to crack my case all that bad.

03-21-2008, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Neo

We-e-e-lllll........
There is a hack for this if you are interested...

Basically, you crack the case, connect and partition the HD, and replace. Voila! Time Capsule sees two partitions. I, for one, don't want to crack my case all that bad.

Don't tempt me!

03-24-2008, 07:33 PM

couldn't use just connect it by usb? I am about to get a 500gb tc.(maybe the 1tb tc). I am fairly new to Apple myself. i just recently bought my mbp and i am 150x happier with it than my old laptop. has anyone tried using the usb ports to partition?

03-24-2008, 08:31 PM

I'm pretty sure that that would not work since the ports are wired for USB in on the TC not USB out.

03-25-2008, 06:15 AM

There is no port to connect via USB. It's wireless or ethernet only.

The USB connection is for a printer or another HD.

08-27-2011, 04:40 PM

Then to prevent Time Machine from taking all the space on the Time Capsule could I store large files such as 4-5 copies of my iPhoto Library to secure space for later use. Securing space for my growing iPhoto Library over the years is my main concern as it can no longer be kept on my old 80GB HD MacBook.

08-27-2011, 07:30 PM

You are right about the way the Time Capsule behaves. You could keep Time machine from eating all the space by storing other files on the drive. Rather than keeping multiple copies of iPhoto libraries around you could also keep things like your iTunes library or an files you do not access regularly.

I think there is also another way to control the size of the Time Capsule backup but have not tested it. When you use the manual setup options in Airport Utility and go to Disk settings you can set up accounts. It is probably possible to direct the Time Machine software to store its backups in one of those accounts. Haven't tried it though.

08-28-2011, 11:24 AM

Thanks Slydude.

As anyone tryed it? and succeeded in partitioning TC that way?

08-28-2011, 12:06 PM

Glad that helped. I did a little poking around and found an Apple article about this. It covers OS 10.5 but the procedure should work with newer OS versions as well.

The first part of the article is about Time Capsule security but the last half or so seems to address what you need. Mac OS X 10.5: Security tips for using Time Machine over a network

08-28-2011, 01:00 PM

Thanks, interesting article... I'm in the process of emptying my TC of its content and may venture into setting individual accounts though it doesn't seem to give the possibility to allocate a determined amount of space for each users/usage... once more, thanks a lot and any other input on the subject will always be welcome.

08-28-2011, 01:56 PM

I did find this video on how to create a fixed sized sparse bundle for use with the Time Machine/Capsule combo. Create a fixed size sparse bundle image for Time Machine on Mac OS X - YouTube. The process was first talked about on Macosxhints.com AFAIK. It's a bit convoluted but should work.

Here's one potential limitation I ran across https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

BTW Many people don't like doing things this way but Time machine will let other files co-exist on the same drive without eating the files. Let's say you have a 500GB drive with 300 GB of data on it. The max the Time Machine backup could be would be just under 200 GB. If more data is added the Time Machine would delete older backups to accommodate the available space. Same rules apply fir the Time Capsule.