How bad of an idea is this? — trying to leverage a Time Capsule in 2025?

[adingley]

I have been using a shared volume on my “server” (just a Mac mini w/ external OWC RAID) as a backup destination for all my Macs for years. Sometimes I notice those “You didn’t eject the volume “Backup HD” properly” alerts when I wake up the various household Macs that are backing up to that shared volume. Once in a while, it might even been 2-3 of them on top of each other. Some googling reveals other folks have been experiencing this for years since like Catalina or something.

A friend has a similar setup w/ a mini and an external USB drive where he’s doing the same thing (backing up the local mini + all of his portable Macs & other desktop Macs from around the house): it’s got two APFS volumes created; both used for Time Machine.

• Volume 1 is for the local backups of the Mini itself
• Volume 2 is for the rest of the Macs in the house to network backup via Time Machine.

He often wakes the mini and sees a dozen or more of those “You didn’t eject Volume 1 (or sometimes Volume 2) before disconnecting the drive” alerts… and they’re obnoxious. The volume is mounted, so it doesn’t even make a ton of sense in his eyes.


He asked for my help — Based on the memory that when I was using time capsules, this sort of thing never happened to me, I'm wondering if I can (and should) just grab a 2013 Time Capsule / crack it open and put in a much larger HDD (or SSD) and set it to bridge mode / throw it on a wired-port of his network switch, and use it as a Time Machine drive for all the Macs in the house.

a) Has anyone gotten those same "ah ah ah... you didn't eject the drive right" alerts for Time Capsule volumes in the last several years?
b) Is it likely enough that the Airport Utility app is gonna go bye-bye soon enough that I shouldn't even bother with this as an experiment?

 

[Bigwaff]

Time Capsule SMB network mounts don’t have the “eject” problem USB drives sometimes have. Your experiment will work, albeit much, much slower back up speeds. As for Airport Utility, only Apple knows Apple’s plans. If you want locally attached TM back ups, recommend USB attached to Thunderbolt hub or a Thunderbolt enclosure instead. More expensive, but no “ejects”.

 

[adingley]

If you want locally attached TM back ups, recommend USB attached to Thunderbolt hub or a Thunderbolt enclosure instead. More expensive, but no “ejects”.

Okay— intriguing. Seems like you’re suggesting the USB drive is momentarily disconnecting. Am i following that corectly?

Ive suspected as much bc my more-recent RAID at home is thunderbolt 3, and I haven’t had the issue recently at home. The friend is using just a USB 3.0 enclosure. I’ll be interested to explore a TB enclosure. The bummer is, he really needs a HDD and Optical drive; this chassis is one of those NewerTech USB3 drive & BD-R enclosures… and the optical drive isn’t really elegantly re-mountable, so swapping the HDD chassis means ALSO replacing his optical; He’ll be nervous to shell more $ out plus componentize the system if we’re not absolutely certain it’ll fix the issie.

Can you cite any documentation that suggests the TB connections will drop / disconnect less?

 

[Bigwaff]

No documentation per se, mostly from experience. If you Google, the “eject” message issue is predominantly USB drives. Also search this forum. Many threads. Consider used TB hub from eBay. Have yet to see the “eject” message from USB drives connected to TB hub. Then your friend can still use his combo enclosure.

 

[xraydoc]

I have an old Time Capsule that I'm using as a Time Machine target for my laptop and my wife's laptop. The wifi on it is turned off, so it's been reduced to just the network storage. I've never had an issue with it 'ejecting' or failing to mount. It's actually been remarkably stable.

However, it's very slow, even for a spinning HDD. I don't have much experience with NAS devices, so I'm not sure if they're all like that or if the Time Capsule's network drive is just super outdated tech (my network isn't the issue).

 

[Boyd01]

I have an old time capsule like that. Still works fine, I use it as a wireless access point for my iPhone and iPad. Stopped using it for backups some time ago. Had a few incidents where it said an integrity check failed and my existing backups would be deleted and started over. Got tired of that.

It's true, the Time Capsules are very slow (I have the 2tb 802.11ac version). The drives also spin down immediately when not in use, so frequently spinning up and that is surprisingly loud and annoying in a quiet room. I never had a disk eject issue with mine though.

Currently using a 2012 Mini with four 5tb hard drives as a Time Machine destination on my LAN. But I only backup my primary Mac this way (a 2018 Mini). Never saw an eject problem there but my Mini is set to never sleep, only the display. There are plenty of threads about disks ejecting when your Mac goes to sleep. Mine has 4 USB SSD's connected at all times, so I try to minimize that kind of problem and it runs 24/7 mostly (downloading/processing files overnight) or I do a full shutdown if I'm done for the night.

 

[Ifti]

OP - I'd be interested to see if this actually worked. In theory, I guess it should.
The Time Capsule was a great device back in the day - I used one successfully for many years. Never had any issues with it.

 

[livmatus]

I bough one A1470 a few months ago for around $30 converted... it has a 750GB HDD ... as the original ones tend to fail so somebody has replaced it before ... was planning to stick an SSD in there, but I don't really think that's financially the best thing to do

I only use it temporarily until I get all the parts for my DIY NAS solution and get it running.

Basically a collectible with some use ...

Not ideal for storing data as there's zero redundancy... and I'd say it's pretty inefficient for Time Macine backup
... the thing pulls 5W from wall at idle ... sometimes the drive is spinning for no apparent reason which increases the power draw to like 14W ... not the most efficient thing in terms of operational cost / usefulness ratio at least here in EU

hence I hooked it up to a smart plug and only power it on when I need to store or read some data... well I only store movies and TV shows there

 

[MultiFinder17]

I still use an ac Airport Base Station as my wireless router, and for Time Machine I have a 5TB HDD hooked up to its USB port. Works well for my needs, backing up half a dozen Macs. Until recently I used a 2012 mini with that same drive hooked up to it for my backup needs, though I recently decided to repurpose that machine and I haven't noticed any faster or slower backup speeds.