Time Capsule - External HD & Printer Setup Problems

Hi,

I am new to this forum & hope that someone may be able to help me with my problem.

I have a Time Capsule set up as a home network hub, with a LaCie 500MB HD and HP printer connected by USB. I access the Time Capsule through AirPort from my MacBook Pro.

I have formatted the HD as Mac OS Extended (journaled) and installed both through AirPort Utility, i believe correctly. Both are set up for sharing. Whilst I can see the LaCie HD in Finder (as a shared device) I have the following problems:

- I can't see the HD in Disc Utility.
- I can't see the HD in iMovie (I want to move my iMovie Events there from my MacBook Pro's HD)
- I can't access the printer through HP Utility (It can't seem to find the device - I can see it in the Printers & Faxes menu, but cant access any utility, or supply levels information)

Can anyone help please?

If I am wrong on these issues a am sure that someone will chime in with better information. With the exception of iMovie I have had similar issues with my Time Capsule.

1. AFAIK Disk Utility, as well as many other utilities such as Drive Genius, are designed to work with drives that are directly connected to the Mac. In order to access the drive for repairs you will have to disconnect the drive from the Time Capsule and connect it directly to one of the Macs.

2. I think this will work if you mount the drive on the desktop before iMovie launches. Try the following and see if it solves the problem. If so, the process can be automated. From the Finder Go menu select Network. Then double-click the Time Capsule and select the hard drive. Once the hard drive appears on the desktop launch iTunes and see if it can "see" the drive. If so let me know and I can send you a means of automatically mounting the drive when iMovie launches

3. Which HP printer is this? Some printer utilities do not play nice this way and seem to need to be directly connected to a computer in order to access the supply information.

Many thanks Sylvester. I have tried the following:

- connect both the HD & printer (HP Officejet J4580) directly to the MacBook & they both work perfectly. I can access all the printer options & the HD can be accessed by Disc Utility & iMovie perfectly, as you would expect.

- Connect the HD to the USB of my Time capsule & I can see/access it through Finder, but not through iMovie. Sometimes (& strangely there seems to be no reason why) you can 'see' it in iMovie, but it is marked with an error symbol & can't be accessed.

I followed your scheme, but sadly iMovie still doesn't t pick up the HD. Thanks for the advice anyway - any other ideas??

OK - it all works when plugged directly into the MacBook - but then what's the point of having a home network.............

I got an e-mail from the MacWorld gang today that might address the issue you are having with iMovie and the external drive. Relocate your iMovie projects

BTW If you can't see the drive to follow this procedure I wonder if the files could be copied with the drive directly attached to the computer as he describes in the article then move the HD to the Time Capsule.

As for a printer/multifunction showing supply levels and having all the functions I have only been able to do these things with a networking multifunction printers connected
via ethernet to an Airport Extreme then wireless to the Mac's aside from that I believe
only the print function will work. And yes wireless will not show the external drive in Disk Utility it has to be hardwired either Firewire or USB.

The networking multifunction printer does not always have to be connected via ethernet to get that functioning. The Canon line for example has some models with wireless networking built in. They can be a pain to connect but show supply levels without being hard wired.

I think the same is true for Disk Utility. The problem is not that the drive is networked wirelessly the problem is that that the drive is networked rather than directly connected to the Mac. In my case the drive does not appear even when I am hard wired to the network. It has to be directly connected to the Mac