Mac Question

RobertoMoir

Leopard wrote: »

I don't have (and don't want) an Apple Time Capsule, myself. But, essentially, it is just an Airport Extreme Base Station with a hard drive inside it. I prefer, instead, to have simple Airport Extreme Base stations connected to conventional external hard drives by USB2.

(Although, for reasons of speed, I usually connect external hard drives by Firewire 800 to the old Power Mac G4 tower which we now use as a work-horse server and which is Gigabit networked; it runs 24/7, off an Uninterrupted Power Supply.)

Despite his vagueness, the OP did state that the device on his network is "a Time Machine backup drive". If this were a Time Capsule it would have been far simpler to write that. And it is hardly likely that he would have re-named a Time Capsule to give it the network title "PC Server".

Given what a Time Capsule actually is, you could re-format it with anything you liked; but formatting it in FAT32 would be self defeating if you wanted to use it for Time Machine backups because those would fall foul of the 4 GB file size limit which FAT32 operates.

Nonetheless, a FAT32 formatted drive can be a useful little thing to have somewhere on your network because both Macs and PCs can read it and write to it – which makes it handy for transferring things from a Mac to a PC (or vice-versa) and also for making stuff available to a networked Playstation 3.

If you attach a USB2 hub to an Apple Airport Extreme, you can also plug into it a an external hard drive formatted in FAT32, which it will then network. I put an old (IDE) 80 GB hard drive from a Mac into an enclosure and formatted that in FAT32: all my network can see it when I switch it on, including my companion's work-supplied Dell laptop which runs Windows.

You don't need FAT32 disks on a network in order for Windows and Macs to share files. The whole point of the file server functionality of both windows clients, mac clients and NAS drives is to share files across the network, and this abstracts away the disk format so the client doesn't have to worry about how the "server". I swap files between my NAS (formatted EXT3 I think), my Mac mini and macbook pro and my windows desktop quite happily. The native format of a drive shared on a network is irrelevant to clients on that network.

In my first post, I asked the OP if they were using a Time Capsule or something else because if they were using something else it may well offer files over SMB and may also be advertising its services using Bonjour, which would explain what they are seeing quite neatly. As such, I think that's a fairly reasonable point to ask for clarification on.

Leopard

RobertoMoir wrote: »

You don't need FAT32 disks on a network in order for Windows and Macs to share files. The whole point of the file server functionality of both windows clients, mac clients and NAS drives is to share files across the network, and this abstracts away the disk format so the client doesn't have to worry about how the "server". I swap files between my NAS (formatted EXT3 I think), my Mac mini and macbook pro and my windows desktop quite happily. The native format of a drive shared on a network is irrelevant to clients on that network.

In my first post, I asked the OP if they were using a Time Capsule or something else because if they were using something else it may well offer files over SMB and may also be advertising its services using Bonjour, which would explain what they are seeing quite neatly. As such, I think that's a fairly reasonable point to ask for clarification on.

"...so the client doesn't have to worry about how the server what? "

You fail to complete the crucial sentence which you describe as being "the whole point". :rolleyes:



I took the time and trouble to respond to your two questions because you wrote (but failed to explain your compunction) that you "had" to ask.

I certainly didn't feel that I "had" to reply, but, out of courtesy, I did. If you don't like my answers, fine; I shall somehow manage to contain my indifference.

We two choose to tackle the same obstacle by different methods and each of us is prepared to live with the limitations that our preferred solution imposes.

The way for the OP to diagnose what is occurring with his own network is to disconnect, one by one, the individual components of it until the device that describes itself as "PC server" disappears from his sidebar. That will identify it.

If he disconnects everything of his own from his network and the item is still there, he should reappraise his belief that no unauthorised person or device is connecting to it.

RobertoMoir

Leopard wrote: »

"...so the client doesn't have to worry about how the server what? "

You fail to complete the crucial sentence which you describe as being "the whole point". :rolleyes:

Yes I did. My mistake... "So the client doesn't have to worry about how the server stores files".

Leopard wrote: »

I took the time and trouble to respond to your two questions because you wrote (but failed to explain your compunction) that you "had" to ask.

I certainly didn't feel that I "had" to reply, but, out of courtesy, I did. If you don't like my answers, fine; I shall somehow manage to contain my indifference.

I was trying to hint that the disk format of the NAS / Time Capsule / Alien file storage device of as yet unknown capabilities is irrelevant, because your asking about it seemed to imply that it mattered.

Leopard wrote: »

We two choose to tackle the same obstacle by different methods and each of us is prepared to live with the limitations that our preferred solution imposes.

The way for the OP to diagnose what is occurring with his own network is to disconnect, one by one, the individual components of it until the device that describes itself as "PC server" disappears from his sidebar. That will identify it.

If he disconnects everything of his own from his network and the item is still there, he should reappraise his belief that no unauthorised person or device is connecting to it.

Agree with all that, especially the final point.