Yes. 1st generation can be upgraded to 3 TB: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1125622&hilit=time+capsule
Make sure you've got the latest firmware before installation.
I've updated mine to 2 TB and no problems
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Best replacement hard drive for Time Capsule
- Thread starter jowie
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Yes. 1st generation can be upgraded to 3 TB: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1125622&hilit=time+capsule
Make sure you've got the latest firmware before installation.
I've updated mine to 2 TB and no problems
Sorry I'm a bit confused then
you said "only 1st gen can be modified this way"... What about the other models?
I put a 3TB Western Digital WD30EZRSDTL in my 1st gen TC and it works fine, the whole drive is accessible and it spins down as it should.
No, it's not the same as the original Seagate HDD. It works, it spins down, but it's still spinning...it never stops, so the TC stays warm...not hot though
I have no problem, but TC, definitely it's not a good option for a NAS.
In the future I will keep my TC for backups, and I will get a Synology or Drobo NAS.
Bought 2 new drives, one 3tb the other 2tb. Both are western digital green caviar. My plan was for the 3tb drive to replace my 1tb seagate drive that holds all my movies and tv shows. The 2tb drive was to go into my 1st gen time capsule just to future proof it.
WD30EZRX 3tb
WD20EZRX 2tb
Did the time capsule first and everything went well. The drive spins down like the original 500gb stock drive and it's quite really quite
The 3tb drive went into a mercury elite pro AL that I connected via FireWire 800. My iMac would only see 800gb. Reformatted twice, no luck. Did some googling and found out some other enclosures can't see past 2tb. So taking a chance swapped drives. Now 3tb drive in time capsule (and it sees all 3tb's) mercury elite pro got the 2tb (which it recognized)
The 3tb drive runs the same, quite and the drive spins down completely & 2 tb drive is currently moving my 700gb media to the new drive.
Info
WD30EZRX manufacture date 7-23-12
WD20EZRX manufacture date 5-17-12
Time capsule firmware 7.6.1
Mercury elite pro bought in 2008 (I think)
WD30EZRX 3tb
WD20EZRX 2tb
Did the time capsule first and everything went well. The drive spins down like the original 500gb stock drive and it's quite really quite
The 3tb drive went into a mercury elite pro AL that I connected via FireWire 800. My iMac would only see 800gb. Reformatted twice, no luck. Did some googling and found out some other enclosures can't see past 2tb. So taking a chance swapped drives. Now 3tb drive in time capsule (and it sees all 3tb's) mercury elite pro got the 2tb (which it recognized)
The 3tb drive runs the same, quite and the drive spins down completely & 2 tb drive is currently moving my 700gb media to the new drive.
Info
WD30EZRX manufacture date 7-23-12
WD20EZRX manufacture date 5-17-12
Time capsule firmware 7.6.1
Mercury elite pro bought in 2008 (I think)
thanks again great post..
i've been using two 2TB WD greeen eARS drives for over like 2 years or so now with seagate goflex desk to fw800 adapters with no issues.
i'm gonna shoot for the WD 3TB for my tc replacement.. this thread had me originally thinking seagate was the only way to go... i've had a great experience with the wd drives.
Was going to go from 1TB to 2TB, but I think it would be best to properly future-proof the TC now and go straight to 3TB.
Has anyone tried installing the WD30EZRX into a Time Capsule? Mine's a 2nd Gen...
Has anyone tried installing the WD30EZRX into a Time Capsule? Mine's a 2nd Gen...
I have a TC model A1302. I just installed the WD30EZRX and everything installed perfectly. It recognized all 3tb and backup went fine. Drive spun down after backup.
Can't believe I asked this after easy4lif left that useful post
think I'm gonna buy one this week, and do a data backup using the method suggested here:http://www.hutsby.net/2012/06/howto-replace-time-capsule-hd-and.html
I just received my WD Green 3TB drive, so will be installing it over the weekend!
However, Ebuyer decided NOW to send me an email showing all the different WD drives available, and there's this new one called WD Red... Anyone heard about it? Apparently it's designed specifically for NAS use (I guess it's designed for prolonged use):
http://www.ebuyer.com/wd/red?utm_source=b2c_wd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b2c_wednesday
Does anyone know anything about these? I'll be happy with my Green, but wondered, if these are potentially better for use in the TC? My preference is for a quieter drive anyway, so I guess Green will be better for that...
However, Ebuyer decided NOW to send me an email showing all the different WD drives available, and there's this new one called WD Red... Anyone heard about it? Apparently it's designed specifically for NAS use (I guess it's designed for prolonged use):
http://www.ebuyer.com/wd/red?utm_source=b2c_wd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b2c_wednesday
Does anyone know anything about these? I'll be happy with my Green, but wondered, if these are potentially better for use in the TC? My preference is for a quieter drive anyway, so I guess Green will be better for that...
Well... Unfortunately the method didn't work for me!Can't believe I asked this after easy4lif left that useful post
http://www.hutsby.net/2012/06/howto-replace-time-capsule-hd-and.html
Unfortunately, it gave up about 5% through and said that the file could not be copied. So I tried ejecting the disk and then re-mounting it, but I kept getting the alert "Mac OS X can't repair the disk 'Backups.' You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
When I looked at the contents, huge chunks of files were missing. Backup sparseimages that were once 300-400 GB in size were only 50-100 GB, even though the size of the disk was showing correctly. I tried to copy the files again, but they immediately failed on every re-attempt.
So I'm backing up all machines again from scratch, which is a shame
but at least I have a shiny new (and very quiet!) 3 TB drive Meanwhile I got a proper NAS, the LaCie NAS PRO, and last week my Time Capsule died for the 2nd time in 6 years.
I managed to change some capacitors, and it's alive again...the hard drive isn't though.
I still don't know if the drive got damage when the capacitors fried, or the TC is no longer able to read the drive, but I get the error that internal disk needs repair.
I erased the drive in the AirPort Utility, but nothing changed, so I decided to replace this drive with a 3TB WD RED, but put it in the NAS, where I have 3 drives of this kind now, and 5.94TB for storage.
The speed that I get via ethernet is 111MB/s with 3 drives, and when I will have 5 drives I will get speeds up to 200MB/s.
So the Time Machine backups will be made on the NAS, and I will use the TC like a Airport Extreme, without any drive inserted.
Question: If I connect both my Mac Mini and the NAS to the Time Capsule ethernet ports via cat6, will I lose speed?
As far as I know, the TC has gigabit ethernet, so I shouldn't lose any speed.
Or would be better to skip the TC and connect the NAS, the Mac Mini and the TC also, to the main router, and let the TC to handle only the wireless network?
Could the TC slow down the ethernet network if I pass the NAS and the Mac Mini trough the TC ethernet ports?
I managed to change some capacitors, and it's alive again...the hard drive isn't though.
I still don't know if the drive got damage when the capacitors fried, or the TC is no longer able to read the drive, but I get the error that internal disk needs repair.
I erased the drive in the AirPort Utility, but nothing changed, so I decided to replace this drive with a 3TB WD RED, but put it in the NAS, where I have 3 drives of this kind now, and 5.94TB for storage.
The speed that I get via ethernet is 111MB/s with 3 drives, and when I will have 5 drives I will get speeds up to 200MB/s.
So the Time Machine backups will be made on the NAS, and I will use the TC like a Airport Extreme, without any drive inserted.
Question: If I connect both my Mac Mini and the NAS to the Time Capsule ethernet ports via cat6, will I lose speed?
As far as I know, the TC has gigabit ethernet, so I shouldn't lose any speed.
Or would be better to skip the TC and connect the NAS, the Mac Mini and the TC also, to the main router, and let the TC to handle only the wireless network?
Could the TC slow down the ethernet network if I pass the NAS and the Mac Mini trough the TC ethernet ports?
I am moving my TM backups from my 3TB Time Capsule to a Lacie d2 6TB drive when it arrives next week. I will first use it to copy all the files from my LaCie 2Big 6TB that has been running RAID 1 3TB mirrored. The 2Big will be reconfigured as RAID 1 6TB. Once the reformatting is done I will copy everything from thed2 drive to the RAID 0 set. Once that is OK, I will erase the d2 drive and tell Time Machine to start using it.
Later I will replace the 2BIG drives with 6TB drives in RAiD 1 config. That will give put my data on two mirrored drives and backed up to a third drive. The next level of data security would be off site storage in the cloud or remote location.
Later I will replace the 2BIG drives with 6TB drives in RAiD 1 config. That will give put my data on two mirrored drives and backed up to a third drive. The next level of data security would be off site storage in the cloud or remote location.
6tb in 1st gen Time Capsule?
Guys - i've had my 3tb WD drive in my first gen (A1254) TC for almost three years now with NO issues. A great hack. (See my post in this thread from April 2012)
Now I'm thinking of swapping out the 3tb drive and putting in a 6tb seagate drive (they're down to just over $200). Has anyone done a 6tb drive in a first gen TC??
Since the first gen TC had no problems recognizing the 3tb drive, I'm hoping it will do the same with the 6tb drive...
I know I should just buy the new TC with the ac wi fi, but the old one is working just fine.
Guys - i've had my 3tb WD drive in my first gen (A1254) TC for almost three years now with NO issues. A great hack. (See my post in this thread from April 2012)
Now I'm thinking of swapping out the 3tb drive and putting in a 6tb seagate drive (they're down to just over $200). Has anyone done a 6tb drive in a first gen TC??
Since the first gen TC had no problems recognizing the 3tb drive, I'm hoping it will do the same with the 6tb drive...
I know I should just buy the new TC with the ac wi fi, but the old one is working just fine.
Wow, 6 TB would be awesome. I'm interested in knowing if this would work, also. Go ahead -- someone's got to be the first!
I had a 2 TB WD in my 1st-gen Time Capsule for years, but when I decided I needed to increase to 4 TB for my iMac backups I couldn't find out for sure if the 4 TB drive would work in my TC. So I ended up putting the new 4 TB into an external enclosure and plugging that into the TC's USB port. Then I put the original 500 GB drive back into the TC, and have been using that for my MacBook Pro backups. All with never a problem! With your 3 TB experience, though, it sounds like I could have put my 4 TB into the TC after all.
I know what you mean about having no reason to buy a newer device -- mine just keeps chugging along. Guess we were in the lucky group! I read someone's opinion (maybe it was you) that the very first units of the 1st-gen TCs didn't have the bad capacitors. I bought mine in May 2008 so maybe that's true. Do you know when yours was bought or manufactured? Just curious.
Let us know if you try the 6 TB drive!
I had a 2 TB WD in my 1st-gen Time Capsule for years, but when I decided I needed to increase to 4 TB for my iMac backups I couldn't find out for sure if the 4 TB drive would work in my TC. So I ended up putting the new 4 TB into an external enclosure and plugging that into the TC's USB port. Then I put the original 500 GB drive back into the TC, and have been using that for my MacBook Pro backups. All with never a problem! With your 3 TB experience, though, it sounds like I could have put my 4 TB into the TC after all.
I know what you mean about having no reason to buy a newer device -- mine just keeps chugging along. Guess we were in the lucky group! I read someone's opinion (maybe it was you) that the very first units of the 1st-gen TCs didn't have the bad capacitors. I bought mine in May 2008 so maybe that's true. Do you know when yours was bought or manufactured? Just curious.
Let us know if you try the 6 TB drive!
6TB in 1st gen Time Capsule WORKS!
Hi guys - I'm reporting back on the latest hack to my first gen (A1254) TC. As I mentioned earlier, back in early 2012 I took out the original drive and put in a 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green, WD30EZRS. The drive has been flawless in nearly three years of service, backing up 5 different MacBooks (and time machine sparsebundles).
When I put in the 3tb drive a few years ago I cut holes into the rubber foot to easily access all the screws. I also cut a larger round hole on the metal bottom plate around the fan (and on the rubber foot) so that the fan has no obstruction to the outside, except for a piece of fiberglass screen (good ole window/screen door screen) that I put in. Finally I also added rubber feet to prop up the TC by about 1cm to get more air to the fan.
This morning I put in a Seagate STBD6000100 6TB drive into the old TC and IT WORKS! Plugged it back in, opened Airport Utility which told me that the TC drive "needed repair", and in a few minutes Airport Utility formatted it and I got the green light. Time Machine preferences says that it the TC has 6TB available!
New time machine backups are underway for at least three of the MacBooks, so far no issues.
Hi guys - I'm reporting back on the latest hack to my first gen (A1254) TC. As I mentioned earlier, back in early 2012 I took out the original drive and put in a 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green, WD30EZRS. The drive has been flawless in nearly three years of service, backing up 5 different MacBooks (and time machine sparsebundles).
When I put in the 3tb drive a few years ago I cut holes into the rubber foot to easily access all the screws. I also cut a larger round hole on the metal bottom plate around the fan (and on the rubber foot) so that the fan has no obstruction to the outside, except for a piece of fiberglass screen (good ole window/screen door screen) that I put in. Finally I also added rubber feet to prop up the TC by about 1cm to get more air to the fan.
This morning I put in a Seagate STBD6000100 6TB drive into the old TC and IT WORKS! Plugged it back in, opened Airport Utility which told me that the TC drive "needed repair", and in a few minutes Airport Utility formatted it and I got the green light. Time Machine preferences says that it the TC has 6TB available!
New time machine backups are underway for at least three of the MacBooks, so far no issues.
My original TC was purchased in August 2008 but the power supply failed in November 2010, just like so many others. It was covered by Apple because I had the 3-yr AppleCare on one of my MacBook Pros (I think) - in any case the Apple Store gave me the option to get a replacement for free right away or wait to have mine repaired, so I took the replacement. They also took the drive out of the broken one and gave it to me (I still have it in a USB enclosure and it still works fine after all these years). So, what I have now is a refurbished first gen TC (A1254, MB277LL/A) with a serial number that indicates that it was "manufactured" in Sept 2010. The refurb TC came with a Samsung 1TB drive that I also have in an enclosure and still works fine.
The new 6TB Seagate was an Amazon one-day "gold box" sale for $208, so I took a chance. Very glad I did. I see no reason to replace this 1st gen TC - it provides great wireless "n" coverage and all of the family macs connect to it just fine. Plus, we don't have any "ac" wi-fi macs yet.
I everybody!
I tried to put 3Tb WD green into my a1254 timecapsule but... It won't power on! I replaced with the original 500Gb Seagate and it boots! Maybe a power iussue (not enought power to spin on the drive...) Any advice? I'm getting crazy!!!!
I tried to put 3Tb WD green into my a1254 timecapsule but... It won't power on! I replaced with the original 500Gb Seagate and it boots! Maybe a power iussue (not enought power to spin on the drive...) Any advice? I'm getting crazy!!!!
I don't remember ever seeing a report where the TC wouldn't power on with a new HDD. Did you get any lights on the front of the TC at all? Do you have an external enclosure or a HDD dock so that you can verify that the new drive itself actually works OK?
Other than that I don't have any great advice except trying a different drive. Glad the TC still works with the original one. It might be useful to others if you posted the exact model number of the drive that's not working.
(And regtor, thanks for supplying all that info. Somehow I missed responding. Someday I might put a 6TB into mine but right now my setup is working well and I'm not ready to spend the $!)
Of course the light is green for the first 2 seconds and then no light. the drive is wd30ezrx model.
The drive is good (I plugged into an external enclosoure and formatted). If I connect external power supply to the drive it works, also in timecapsule. When booted with external power supply the led is perfectly green, then disconnect from the external PS and connect to the internal one works. It seems to be the power on...