Time Capsule Over Wireless: No drive listed

Time Capsule set up with a networked harddrive on a wireless network?

Pretty simple really, Apple squares everything away by itself. One small thing that caused me problems, however, so here it is– hopefully so that it can be pulled up in a search.

My configuration is a Seagate FreeAgent 1 TB drive, connected to an AirPort Extreme. I can see the drive in Finder, and have iTunes set up to use it as the music folder. Everything’s peachy, almost.

When I tried to set up Time Capsule, it couldn’t find the drive. I searched around a bit and couldn’t find anything, then, on a hunch, I looked at the drive’s name.

The default name is “FreeAgent Drive.” There’s a space in this name. Mac OS X is a Unix system, which deals with spaces well, but specially. I’m making the assumption that the spaces are not properly escaped in the Time Capsule software.

So, I connected via firewire, renamed the drive to FreeAgent, and it came up immediately in Time Capsule.

Moral: Time Capsule can’t have spaces in the drive name used for the backup device.

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