Took the plunge..Apple TV & Apple Time Capsule..Help

Another apple lover then Paul?

I really need to get this sorted out as it is making me crazeeeeeee

Would you like you TC to be used as a backup and have your itunes folder on it too ?

Firstly you want to think about how much space you have on your computer v TC 

e.g 500gb PC and a 2TB TC you would want to partition the TC 750GB and 1.25TB so the backing up can cover both amounts

are you using PC or MAC?

If you want a stable commercial quality jailbreak for atv, google firecore.  It's really very good, enables a plethora of codecs and most importantly will enable the atv to view nas drives.  

You should be able to get a refund if the guy at PC world told you you'd be able to use your stuff in the way you originally wanted, I've done countless refund because collegues of mine have "blagged" to customers about something because they didn't know the answer. The last one I remember was an opened copy of android that was sold to someone with an iPad by one of my collegues. (I work in Currys BTW, as it says in my sig). Then maybe a NAS or as other have said, a Mac mini.

I am using macbook for all media and it will be used exclusively with the tc.  The macbook has a 160gb hard drive in it.  

Ideally yes i want to organise my tc into folders say itunes music, Iphoto photos and any movies both home and bought in (wont happen a lot)  

I do have a iomega 1.5 tb usb hard drive as well which i used for moving all media onto via time machine.  It is tucked away safe.  Would this be useful for say plugging into my tc??

Thanks

John

Not that i have much experiance with the TC but i believe you can connect other external HDD to it.

So once you connect your TC you need to go to your Utilities and open up Disk Utility, this will show all your HDD connected to your mac. From there you can partition the TC .

So click on TC, go to partition and partition layout and set it to 2 partitions, you then have to work out how much you want to use for backing up and how much you want to use for remote storage for your mac 

You can name each partition so you know what they are.

You then simply copy the files you want from your mac but the hole file like all of iTunes that contains all of the sub folders and then paste it to your correct partition. 

Once done you will need to go into iTunes and redirect the folder to the TC and then the iTunes folder. 

Personally i would not delete the files on the mac until you have downloaded a song or something and made sure its ended up in the correct sub folder on the TC.

Once your happy you can remove the folder from the mac 

This also applies for all files, you just copy and paste and then redirect the application like iPhoto to the TC and folder 

Setting up the Time Machine is easy enough, just direct it to the TC and the correct partition 

Will try this again and let you know how it goes...

Thanks

John

John, a vanilla ATV will not work in the way you want because Apple hard code ATV's to have a local relationship with a Mac running iTunes and a cloud relationship with the iTunes store: You will need to jailbreak your ATV for it be able to see a NAS on your network. XBMC and FireCore have quite devoted followings though I've never attempted this personally.

I ran a TC as a NAS for a while, but the disk speed is too slow for it to be useful as a media server IMO. It will work, and partitioning the drive through Disk Utility (which is in your applications/utilities folder) will allow you to create the partitions you're seeking (photos, music, movies etc). However until you jailbreak your ATV this will essentially be meaningless (since, as mentioned,  ATV is designed NOT to be aware of NAS drives).

You are also starting to encounter the walled garden of Apple's design "philosophy": Apple wants you to store your content in iTunes on your Mac, this is why its ridiculously easy to get content on an iphone, or an ipad, or streamed to your hifi through an Airport Express. What you're trying to do is outside the design philosophy of "the average Apple user" and hence the pain curve increases exponentially.

I would strongly recommend returning your TC if you have no desire to use it for your Time Machine Backups: It excels at this function and frankly is only adequate at being a NAS: It sucks as a media server so that money could be better deployed elsewhere in your setup.

I would consider taking a look at a dedicated NAS, Buffalo are good and relatively price sensitive, Qnap would be better since their software now supports the Lion architecture and they have a dedicated iTunes server mode, which means you don't need to have your macbook running to stream music around your house (though not Movies and TV shows - which isnt a problem if you jailbreak your ATV).

Finally, the iLife apps on your Macbbok are all designed to work locally from your Mac, you CAN have remote libraries but again you're now outside the design philosophy of the "average Apple user" (Apple considers running an external photo library a pro requirement, and therefore THAT customer would use the pro photo app, which is Aperture - the net result, iPhoto sucks at managing libraries on a NAS). Check out iPhoto Manager, its around £20 and helps get round this problem.

This is a very long and waffly answer to your question, your next steps IMO should be:

1). Partition your TC thruogh Disk Utility.

2). Create the folders you want in your TC partition (Music / Movies / TV Shows / Photos).

3). Copy your content from your Macbook to the corresponding folder (do NOT delete the content fro yoru macbook).

4). Jailbreak your ATV.

5). Test your ATV to make sure it can see the volumes in your TC NAS.

6). Holding down the option key: Load iPhoto.

7). Select "other library" and navigate to the Photo's volume in your TC NAS.

. Update the iTunes Media Folder location (preferences/ advanced/ change)

TEST, TEST, TEST and make sure all your photos are there, they sync to your iPhone etc (in fact, do this for all your content).

For safety's sake, I would take a complete backup of all your content, ideally either into the other TC partition, or to an external hard drive and only then, consider deleting the content from your mac.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for all of that...  It does seem to be a bit of a faff with the tc, just cannot believe that pc world would take back the tc at this stage.  The guy in the shop did say that i would be able to access the tc content via my ipad...

I think i bought them on boxing day, but will need to check the receipt

This does seem the best option although i could go down a single bay NAS device while keeping the tc for backups alone

Are there any NAS devices that will allow me to run itunes without having macbook switched on?? 

Sorry just read your thread again...  will have a look at these products....

Thanks

Nope. For that you'll need a different solution like a Sonos / Squeezebox

Sorry, that's not the case. iTunes Server just means the music stored on the NAS will appear under a copy of iTunes in the Shared section. It won't allow you to stream music to an Airport Express / Apple TV without a full blown copy of iTunes running on a Mac or PC. See here for full details from QNAP.

Hi there what other NAS devices support the itunes server?  Was thinking about it there and could keep the tc for backing up to and employ a single bay NAS with say 1TB installed for itunes content?? Plus i needed a router through in the lounge anyway so the tc seems to be pretty good deal for backups and wifi router alone.  (justifying myself here) Looked at the Synology models and there is only 1 single bay unit (DS110j) on the market.  Does it do everything the much plaudited DS212j does???

The Qnap seem to be good although a little pricier than other NAS devices. Or is this because it has the itunes server built in where others do not??

If the answer to the above is correct this would mean i could access Itunes music and photos from iphoto via itunes on my apple tv??  Sorry jailbreaked Apple tv.  Want to get this right this time

From my understanding of what you're doing, if you're going to jailbreak your Apple TV, you don't need iTunes Server, just a USB disk drive. Do a search for "adding storage to Apple TV" in Google and you'll find plenty of sites linking to instructions on how to use a USB disk for the storage of your Apple TV. Once this is done, you just use the standard sync'ing mechanisms of the Apple TV to copy all your music, photos and videos to the Apple TV and you're there.

NB - I am assuming you have the 1st Gen Apple TV i.e. the grey / silver one, with the hard drive? Not the small black one.

Its funny how Apple don't allow nas or tc to be accessed be atv, its not like it can't be done and it would make lots of people happy. You can see Apple are trying to kind off stream purchased stuff to the atv but you have to have a good internet connection but it still doesn't work as well as others like zune, netflix and lovefilm