how does Time Capsule work with both Windows and Mac

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im confused as to how i would be able to share an HD over a network with both macs and pc's. i know i was able to do it with a program called macdrive. so i guess my question is, does the TC come with a software of some sort to allow the sharing?
 
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I was wondering the same thing. With my current 500GB external drive, I had to partition it since my windows machine cant read the Mac partition.
 

dtravis7


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Time Capsule is REALLY for OSX machines with Leopard. That is why it's called Time Capsule as it's made to work with Time Machine which will never be on Windows.

You can use it as an external drive on a Windows machine, but if you want to read the Mac formatted drive you need MacDrive on Windows.
 
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Time Capsule is REALLY for OSX machines with Leopard. That is why it's called Time Capsule as it's made to work with Time Machine which will never be on Windows.

You can use it as an external drive on a Windows machine, but if you want to read the Mac formatted drive you need MacDrive on Windows.

I think the OP is looking for a response from someone who is using it on both OSX and Windows. Apple is marketing this as a cross platform solution, which many people have Mac and Windows machines (including myself).
 

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You can either make it all FAT32 so both machines will read it (FAT32 only supports SINGLE files less than 4GB in size just to let you know), Use MacDrive on the Windows machine and leave it all in OSX's format or make a Windows partition formatted NTFS or FAT32. You can read and write to that NTFS partition on OSX if you install Paragon or MacFuse.

Those are pretty much the options available.
 
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You can either make it all FAT32 so both machines will read it (FAT32 only supports SINGLE files less than 4GB in size just to let you know), Use MacDrive on the Windows machine and leave it all in OSX's format or make a Windows partition formatted NTFS or FAT32. You can read and write to that NTFS partition on OSX if you install Paragon or MacFuse.

Those are pretty much the options available.

Not very user friendly. Apple should make it easier to use on both machines.
 

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Not very user friendly. Apple should make it easier to use on both machines.

How would they do that? Convert Macs to NTFS and ditch their own filesystem just for windows users? It never anywhere on the site said the Time Capsule part is for Windows. Just the Wireless Hard Drive and I told you what do to to use it with both OSX and Windows.
 
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How would they do that? Convert Macs to NTFS and ditch their own filesystem just for windows users? It never anywhere on the site said the Time Capsule part is for Windows. Just the Wireless Hard Drive and I told you what do to to use it with both OSX and Windows.

If Apple ever does that and ditches BSD and their filesystem for some Windows one they will loose me as a customer.

woah, calm down.

For those who use Time Capsule on Mac and Windows, please post your thoughts.
 

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No need to calm down as I am far from mad.

I am a bit wondering why when I told you what options there are to make a Hard drive, Any External Hard Drive in fact work with both Windows and OSX, you need more info. I have 7 external drives here and own many Windows and Mac systems. I have tried every option to have the drives work on either system. Anyway I tried.
 
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I think the OP is looking for a response from someone who is using it on both OSX and Windows. Apple is marketing this as a cross platform solution, which many people have Mac and Windows machines (including myself).

Are you referring to this Time Capsule page ?

woah, calm down.

For those who use Time Capsule on Mac and Windows, please post your thoughts.

And I think trav did a splendid job in answering that very same query in a previous post. You obviously missed it...

You can either make it all FAT32 so both machines will read it (FAT32 only supports SINGLE files less than 4GB in size just to let you know), Use MacDrive on the Windows machine and leave it all in OSX's format or make a Windows partition formatted NTFS or FAT32. You can read and write to that NTFS partition on OSX if you install Paragon or MacFuse.

Those are pretty much the options available.

Not very user friendly. Apple should make it easier to use on both machines.

And probably Apple should have never released Leopard because Adobe CS2 has some compatibility issues with Leopard and Adobe refuses to update the suite to make it fully functional under Leopard, right ?
 
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Windows and mac with time capsule

I have had a 1 TB Time Capsule for a little over two weeks and think it is one of the easiest Network storage device I have ever used. Not to mention, converting from an Airport to the Time Capsule was painless and took less then 5 minutes.

When I started my PC running Windows XP i was asked if I wanted to connect to the drive and for the password. After that initial question, every time I turn on my PC (which is about once a month), the drive is listed in the network screen and I can read and write the files. I am now using this as my primary backup for all of my machines and could not be happier.

In addition, the wireless coverage is very comparable, if not better, then it was with the airport extreme. I turned on Internet Robustness and it has not dropped the connection one time.

I would highly recommend the Time Capsule as both a wireless router and a networked shared drive. :)
 
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I have had a 1 TB Time Capsule for a little over two weeks and think it is one of the easiest Network storage device I have ever used. Not to mention, converting from an Airport to the Time Capsule was painless and took less then 5 minutes.

When I started my PC running Windows XP i was asked if I wanted to connect to the drive and for the password. After that initial question, every time I turn on my PC (which is about once a month), the drive is listed in the network screen and I can read and write the files. I am now using this as my primary backup for all of my machines and could not be happier.

In addition, the wireless coverage is very comparable, if not better, then it was with the airport extreme. I turned on Internet Robustness and it has not dropped the connection one time.

I would highly recommend the Time Capsule as both a wireless router and a networked shared drive. :)

Thanks for the reply. :)

What file format is the drive? When you browse the drive on your windows machine, do you see the files you backup up from your Mac also?
 
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Are you referring to this Time Capsule page ?

Yep.

And probably Apple should have never released Leopard because Adobe CS2 has some compatibility issues with Leopard and Adobe refuses to update the suite to make it fully functional under Leopard, right ?

Problem with that is Apple is the maker of Time Capsule. Adobe is the maker of CS2. Why would Apple be responsible for Adobes silly decisions?
 
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And why would Apple be responsible for Windoze decisions ? Time Capsule works with WinBoxes... I don't own a WinBox and I'll shoot myself before I do but I thought Apple released a piece of software to install on a WinBox to allow the sync thing or exchange of files. You'll find that in Apple/Support/Downloads.
 
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Woah there guys, hold up!

Isn't the whole point of Time Capsule that it's NETWORK storage?
As in you don't mount the file system directly, but you access it via AFS / SMB and it doesn't matter what format the drive is.

As I understand it, you connect via AFS or SMB and those protocols shuttle the files back and forth. Time Capsule then writes them to its HFS+ partition itself.
 
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Woah there guys, hold up!

Isn't the whole point of Time Capsule that it's NETWORK storage?
As in you don't mount the file system directly, but you access it via AFS / SMB and it doesn't matter what format the drive is.

As I understand it, you connect via AFS or SMB and those protocols shuttle the files back and forth. Time Capsule then writes them to its HFS+ partition itself.

That sounds pretty good. Is this documented anywhere?
 
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That sounds pretty good. Is this documented anywhere?
Apple keeps the info on their website very non-techy, so it's not there AFAIK.

But this is from Appleinsider:
Network Sharing

Finn in the UK asks: "Can it be used as a 'network storage' drive instead of a backup drive in a mixed PC and Mac environment. I would like to get one Time Machine to store all my Word, Excel, JPEG files, etc and have them available to both Win XP on a Dell, on an iMac in OSX, and on an iMac running XP under boot camp or Fusion. Possible? Can the different OS systems read/write to the file system?"


Yes on all counts.
 
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So let me get this straight:

The drive itself is a HFS+ and because it's "network storage" whatever, that means if I boot into Windows XP, stick an ethernet cable in, I'm going to be able to write files bigger than 4gb on it?
 
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Have a question, I'm a recent switcher and I removed an internal hard drive from my pc and put t in an enclosure, but my tc isn't recognizing it, when hooked to my mbp it finds it no problem, do i need to change the airport utility or something???
 
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Have a question, I'm a recent switcher and I removed an internal hard drive from my pc and put t in an enclosure, but my tc isn't recognizing it, when hooked to my mbp it finds it no problem, do i need to change the airport utility or something???
Is it HFS+ formatted?
 

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